I talked a little bit about this in an earlier post, but that was made amidst an ongoing double-feature of Tremors and Tremors 2: Aftershocks (because I can't watch one and not the other!) but I wanted to elaborate on it a bit more because I don't think I did it justice the first time around.
First, allow me to introduce you to the magnificent creature known as the Graboid. This beautiful babby has been classified as a land squid, thanks in part to the boney beak and the tentacles that protrude from its mouth. The beasts range anywhere from 20 to 30 feet in length and are capable of flying through soft sand and soil. They are a creature that goes through multiple stages of life, each sporting unique features that aid in its survival, but all sharing a similar look that would tell you at a glance what they are.
The creatures were dubbed "Graboids" by Walter Chang in 1989, right before they slurped him. After news of the creature's existence went mainstream following the Perfection Valley incident and the (supposed) complete eradication of the monsters, Graboid had seemingly gone on to become a household name for the first half of the 1990s, with Val Mckee and Earl Basset becoming minor celebrities, striking up brand deals and capitalizing on the phenomenon that the creature's existence must have sparked, both in the merchandising world and the study of animals.
I'm rambling, but I love talking about fictional things and events as if they had actually existed or occurred in real life. And while the Graboids at first glance seem derived from animals that already exist in the real world, I want to take a closer look at them from a theoretical point of view and explain what my theory is regarding their own existence and where they might have come from.
You ready? Because here we go. (Spoilers ahead!)
I vote for outer space. No way these are local boys.
- Earl Bassett
In Tremors 2, geologist Kate Riley discovered a fossilized spike that the creatures use to push themselves through the ground. dating them back billions of years ago to the Precambrian period, a period of life on Earth where the Graboids couldn't possibly find prey large enough to sustain their mass.
And that takes me back to Earl's earliest theory which I feel was actually correct. If the Graboids' earliest known existence was during a time on Earth when life was still water-bound, the massive beast couldn't have been able to exist during that time, which I personally feel means that an alien species had dropped them on the planet as an experiment, both in testing the creature's ability to adapt but also their own effectiveness overall as a weapon for use in interplanetary wars.
Yeah, I'm going out there: Graboids are not only alien but also biological weapons created by an ancient alien race!
So the aliens unknowingly dropped their experimental new bio-weapon onto a barren planet still in the early stages of life. The graboids seemingly die off due to a lack of food needed to sustain their life cycle and the aliens move on to try them on another planet. Unbeknownst to their creators, the creatures they deposited on young Earth managed to develop and lay eggs, which would later hatch in 1889.
Yeah, I'm reaching. Reaching waaaay out there, but hear me out here...
The Graboids seem almost too perfect a creature to be earth-borne. Their ability to rapidly learn and adapt to the situation and prey they are after is a trait that is evident all throughout their life cycle. Their massive girth makes them tanks for exterior damage, and the added cover of the soil adds an extra layer of defense to an already hard-to-kill foe. Add to that a mouth full of prehensile and seemingly uniquely intelligent tentacles that are capable of vocalizing adds more fuel to the fire.
But I'm not done because I haven't even talked about the aspect that leads me to flesh out this theory of mine: The sounds!
The next time you watch either of these movies, pay close attention to the sounds the graboids make. They don't make noises like any animal on earth; Like their appearance, their growls and roars were meant to intimidate their foes. They don't sound animal-like in the slightest but instead made to sound as evil and menacing as their creator could manage.
On a side note: Is the ghostly howl a graboid makes not one of the eeriest creature sounds to ever come out of a movie? I really wish I knew the source and whether it was an original sound byte made by the production's sound team or not. I've heard it sampled in other media before, so I imagine it has got to be out there somewhere.
But anyway. That's my theory. Graboids are bio-weapons created by an ancient race of aliens. They were dropped on earth either during or shortly before the Precambrian period. Somehow they survived, bred, reawakened when life was sustainable, evolved and split into different species.
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