(1990) Within an isolated valley of Nevada, surrounded by granite mountains, a pair of handymen, Valentine McKee (Kevin Baco) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward), doing chores for Nestor in the small community of Perfection, make acquaintance with Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter), a college graduate student in seismology. While Rhonda, monitoring seismographs with zinc oxide on her nose, doesn't initially meet Val's expectations for the ideal woman of his fantasies, nonetheless the earth moves under her.

Fed up following a mishap while evacuating a septic tank, Earl and Val decide (paper/rock/scissors) to depart Perfection for Bixby, 38 miles away; but on their futile attempts to get out of town they find an old man dead of dehydration on a high-voltage electrical tower and Fred's sheep mutilated as well as Fred dead with a severed head. "Is there some higher force at work here?" asks an astonished Earl.

Things only get worse for everyone in Perfection in director Ron Underwood's sly sci-fi horror flick - full of frightening fun - from a screenplay by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock. The only road out is ruined; the power lines are down. Subterranean snake monsters, about which Rhonda exclaims they're "the biggest zoological discovery of the century" and for which Walter Chang (Victor Wong) coins the term "graboids," have the surviving residents confined inside a store as they begin breaking through the floor.

Questioning where these creatures came from, Earl guesses outer space, "not local boys." Survivalists Burt (Michael Gross) and Heather Gummer (Reba McEntire, who sings during the closing credits) in their house across the road have an arsenal in their basement, but to get rid of these stinking, hideous serpents will require more than they alone can shell out. In this case, it takes courage and cooperation to survive.

Three sequels and a television show capitalized on its success.

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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