There are a lot of people working on TREMORS: ISLAND FURY who are clearly big fans of social media. A constant stream of Instagram and Facebook posts have been coming from the set of that film, giving us a preview of such sights as stunts, flamethrowers, and miniguns… and one image might have revealed more than intended. It appears to have been removed now, but for a while there was a picture online that showed a board on the TREMORS: ISLAND FURY set that had the word "Shrieker" written on it. And that was enough to get fans of the TREMORS franchise hyped that this movie could feature the return of a creature that has been sidelined in recent installments.
Introduced in TREMORS II: AFTERSHOCKS, the Shrieker is a bipedal stage of the Graboid life cycle. Graboids are the subterranean monsters at the core of the series, and they eventually split open to allow the two-legged, heat-seeking Shriekers to emerge from within them. Shriekers then molt and become Ass-Blasters, which are able to propel themselves through the air with a fiery mix of chemicals released from their rear ends. Thus the name. Ass-Blasters lay Graboid eggs and the cycle starts all over again.
After AFTERSHOCKS, Shriekers appeared in TREMORS 3: BACK TO PERFECTION and episodes of the Tremors TV show that aired in 2003, but when TREMORS 5: BLOODLINES and TREMORS: A COLD DAY IN HELL came along (from a different production team than had made the previous movies and TV show), they seemed to ignore the existence of Shriekers and only focused on Graboids and Ass-Blasters.
It hasn't been confirmed that Shriekers will be seen in TREMORS: ISLAND FURY, but just the fact that they're being acknowledged in some way on the set of the film is a step up from how they were treated on BLOODLINES and A COLD DAY IN HELL.
Directed by Don Michael Paul from a script by Brian Brightly, TREMORS: ISLAND FURY finds that
the deadly Graboids are back, illegally brought in to a new island resort by a rich playboy looking for a trophy hunt.
Michael Gross stars as franchise hero Burt Gummer and is joined in the cast by Richard Brake, Jon Heder, Jackie Cruz, Cassie Clare, Caroline Langrishe, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Matthew Douglas, Randy Kalsi, Bear Williams, David Asavanond, Boonma Lamphon, Aukrawut Rojaunawat, Iris Park, Mikey Black, and Ron Smoorenburg.
Going by the images that have come out from the set, it would certainly make sense for Shriekers to be running around in this movie. The characters could be hunting Ass-Blasters as well, but you don't hunt Graboids by slogging through the swamp with rifles.
We'll keep you updated as we hear more about TREMORS: ISLAND FURY. In the meantime, all six previous TREMORS movies can be purchased in this collection. Completists will also want to pick up the episodes of the TV series.