There are dedicated fans, and then there are dedicated fans who organize entire conventions for their favorite horror movie, and then actively fight to get the rights for their favorite movie back in the hands of its creators. That dedicated fan that we’re talking to today is Levi Dylan Burzlaff-Luett.

Armed with lots of names, and an undying love of the Tremors franchise, this member of the horror community has been one of the frontline voices trying to revive the franchise and helping to create Santa Fe’s wildly popular Tremors Fest.

Today, we talk about everything Tremors with them.

An Interview on All Things Tremors With Levi Dylan Burzlaff-Luett

Horror Press: First of all, thank you, Levi, for speaking with us. It’s always lovely to talk to people in the community and give them a chance to speak about their hyperfixations.

Levi Dylan Burzlaff-Luett: You’re going to regret letting me talk about my hyperfixations. But thank you for having me!

What was your first interaction with the Tremors movies?

I was 6 years old, and it was Tremors 2: Aftershock. We were at a gas station that had a video rental, and also a bar? My mom saw it, thought it was the first film with Kevin Bacon, rented it for Kevin Bacon, took it home and there was no Kevin Bacon!

They put it on, basically checked out because he wasn’t there, but it instantly became my favorite movie of all time. And it snowballed from there, then I watched the first Tremors, then the TV show and Tremors 4 when they premiered. But yes, from a young age I was really into it.

In ten words or less, how would you convince people to watch the Tremors movies?

Everyone is neighbors when the worms attack your town.

Could you give readers a little insight into the Talking Tremors Podcast, maybe shine a light on how it started? What prompted you to start the podcast?

Around 2020, I watched Tremors 7, didn’t like the ending, and found out about Michael Gross and Stampede Entertainment getting screwed over during the production by Universal Pictures.

I went on a social media crusade, determined to let people know about what happened! I told anyone who would listen, went on a bunch of podcasts.

One of the podcasts I guested on about Tremors was the Everything Sequel podcast with Michael Shantz and Tom Steward, and the hosts came up with the name and told me I should do a podcast.

A couple of months later, more of my friends told me to, and they gave me a whole bunch of tips on how to make it happen. I sat down and recorded the first four episodes, with the early ones being commentaries for the 5th, 6th, and 7th films, because I wanted to start from the end and work my way back and do something other people hadn’t.

I did Tremors 3 last month but still haven’t done an episode on Tremors 1 and 2 though!

Recently there was a flare up of people in The Tremors Saga Facebook group you run, going after you over your identity as a trans woman. Hundreds of people began targeting you with their posts and messaging. I’m curious how much support you’ve gotten from the Tremors fan community in response to these recent problems.

In all honesty, the response has been amazing. And I don’t want to dwell on the negative, but it was insanity. I didn’t even know some of the slurs they were saying until they started insulting me, it was like Troy on Community said “that guy was so racist, we learned new ways to hate ourselves!”.

After the election there was a lot of outright hatred ramping up slowly but surely. Iowa passed one of its first anti-trans bill, it was a really hard time.

One day I had taken a photo with Burt and Heather Gummer, made it into an image that said “Trans Rights Are Human Rights”, and posted it.

I don’t know what specifically spurred me to post that, but there was this slow buildup of people telling me that I didn’t belong in the Tremors community. When the only reason they have the platform and the community to say that to such a broad audience is because of a platform I made!

We lost maybe a thousand people after that. But after that, people came out on different social media platforms supporting me, who had no idea I was running all of this. And it became more about a Tremors fans’ willingness to protect each other and come to each other’s defense. I’ve received so much support.

We may have lost some people, but I’m okay with that because the fans who know and understand that the movies are about community are the ones standing by us.

To other people in the horror community at large who are struggling with that kind of discrimination and abuse, do you have anything you want to let them know? Any words of encouragement from someone who has gone through it?

Find your tribe and vibe. My friend Dan Harmon who wrote Community and Rick and Morty, who I love very much– if you’re out there reading this, thank you Dan! I have been friends with that man for a long time, but he has this saying: get on a rooftop and start yelling for your people, eventually they’ll come.

I’ve been doing this Tremors thing for five years now, but only this past year have I found the people who get it! Fight, be weird, do what makes you happy.

It may be hard, and scary, and terrifying, but you’ve got to keep being yourself. Theres only one of you, be that you. 

You have quite a few episodes on the political nature of the Tremors movies. We here at Horror Press have talked many times about the inherently political nature of horror. So, I wanted to dive into what Tremors has to say in particular.

I feel that most people who see it as a simple series of creature features might be surprised by those assertions because it’s easy to dumb down a series to its core elements of: big bugs and bigger guns.

Does it go beyond the idea of building community? Is there something more there?

What you just said is the inherently political meaning of Tremors; that is the ethos of the Tremors films. The spirit of community, the idea of building community, protecting each other, that’s the spirit of the films.

When you’re in a town of fourteen people, your beliefs and politics are always under the surface, they will mesh eventually. Burt Gummer is one of the most politically charged apolitical characters in all fiction. Michael Gross asserts he is an apolitical character, but Burt goes on and on about all of these issues like eminent domain or taxes, and eventually in Tremors: The Series, he butts heads with people who have even crazier beliefs than he does!

Still, you may not always catch it on the first watch, but it becomes more and more apparent the more you watch. Later on, in the show and films, the Graboids become an allegory for environmental conservation, and there are some episodes of the TV series that tackle that in an incredible and poignant way.

And people will say you’re just reading into that, but it’s there!

Beyond Talking Tremors, you’re also heavily involved in Tremors Fest, which for the uninitiated is a Tremors film festival that takes place in Santa Fe every year.

Could you give us a little insight into the process of organizing the festival, and the biggest challenges to getting things together?

The biggest challenge is trying to get a whole bunch of famous people to go to one location without giving them money [laughs]. I get it! As the one who’s always pitching it, we can get you a hotel, but providing a per-diem and a flight, getting them there can be hard.

It’s not like they don’t want to come, we’ve had it the past three years, everyone who showed up is happy to do so.

Of course, the people who have made Tremors over the years had such a great time making them, that when you give them the opportunity to come back and reunite and meet fans, they’re here for it.

But I’ve got to give you the whole snapshot from the beginning. Tremors Fest started with Michael Gross, George R.R. Martin, and Bill Banowsky, who owns the theater we host this in. They bought a railroad together.

…An actual railroad?

I know all the steps that led to this festival, and it’s still so…what? [laughs] So, they bought a railroad together, one night they’re drinking together, and George mentions he’s a big Tremors fan.

George owns a theater nearby, but Bill Banowsky’s [theater] is a little larger, so that’s where we hosted. So that’s where we screened the films and did Q&As.

The second year, we upgraded a little bit, we had a costume contest, and didn’t get to show as many movies because Universal intervened; because Tremors 2 through 7 are direct-to-video films, so the licensing to screen them is nearly impossible to get.

One of the main mantras of Tremors is to plan ahead.

So we started looking ahead last year, and now we’re setting up shop in Lone Pine, California this year, where the first Tremors film was shot.

We’ve slowly been working and building towards this, so I’m happy to announce we’re hosting Perfection Fest this year in Lone Pine, California, from November 7th through 9th!

Congratulations! What did you have in mind for Perfection Fest? Are there any new guests in particular?

Zoran Gvojic from Dead Meat, who hosted the Tremors Kill Counts, will be hosting as MC. I know people were expecting me to host, but I specifically asked him to host because…he’s Zoran! With the flannel and everything, Zoran “BIXBY!” Gvojic! And he said he was in.

We’re going to have a script reading of the never produced Tremors 9, written by Dave Made A Maze director Bill Watterson.

There’s hope that Kevin Bacon will be available to join, and if he comes, we’d love to screen the television pilot and hear his commentary.

We plan to tour the various filming locations for the first film; we have a filming location map directly from Lorie Hudson, who worked on the first film.

It’s the 35th anniversary, so we’re going all out. We hope to keep it going and take it around to other places.

Being one of the organizers for Tremors Fest, you’ve interacted with much of the cast and crew for the movies. You’re well acquainted with S.S. Wilson, the original writer of Tremors, you mentioned Lorie Hudson, lead costume supervisor on not just Tremors but also Twin Peaks, and obviously, you’ve talked quite a bit with Michael Gross, who plays the unforgettable Burt Gummer.

And Hiram Gummer! Can’t forget Hiram!

Of all the cast and crew members in the series, are there any truly unsung heroes you think deserve a shoutout for their work on the franchise?

There is one name that I’m consistently sad about not getting mentioned. People will say Stampede Entertainment, they’ll say Steve S.S. Wilson, Brent Maddock, and Ron Underwood…and they forget Nancy Roberts.

Nancy Roberts is the godmother of Tremors! She’s the reason the Stampede era lasted up until Tremors 4 and going into 5. She put all her projects aside to make sure Tremors succeeded. She shopped it around Hollywood for five years to make sure the film got made because she saw the potential in Stampede Entertainment!

On the first Tremors movie, she chose not to take an executive producer credit on the film, because she feared it would take away from the power Steve and Brent and Ron could get. There’s a reason the last name after all the credits have rolled, in the special thanks, is Nancy Roberts.

She has fought for this series time and time and time again. And I’ll say it: it’s because she’s a woman that she continues getting overlooked. She is probably the reason we’re even here talking about Tremors, and I’m tired of her getting overlooked.

Nancy Roberts is the queen of Tremors.

Which of the Tremors films do you feel is the most underrated of them? Personally, I am a big fan of 4 because I’ll take anything with wild west aesthetics and monsters.

4 is an amazing movie. I catch a lot of flak for saying it, but it is the best Tremors movie.

Tremors might be the best movie in the series from a screenplay perspective, Tremors 2 might be the best direct-to-video film of all time, but Tremors 4 is the best “Tremors movie” specifically.

But if I had to say most underrated, Tremors 3 is the most underrated, I do love that movie.

If you could make everyone aware of one odd piece of Tremor’s lore, either about the production or the in-universe lore itself, what would it be?

The out-of-universe piece of lore I want to talk about is a Tremors 3 fact about how it was made.

People always complain about how bad it was, but I love to point out that it was made in 22 days. The first Tremors movie was shot over four months, but Tremors 3, from start to finish, took 22 days.

Universal told them it would be the final one, told them to wrap it up and make it big, but that they only had 22 days.

Something tells me Universal doesn’t like Tremors that much.

Oh, we’ll talk about it!

Actually, yes, let’s talk about Stampede Entertainment. There was a bit of back and forth regarding the rights to the first film being given back to Stampede by Universal Pictures.

There was the announcement at Tremors Fest last year, but recent developments have made it clear it’s a bit more complicated.

Could you explain what happened with the first film and how the franchise ended up in copyright purgatory?

After Tremors 7 aired, I went on this crusade, writing these posts about what had happened behind the scenes and the kind of self-sabotage that was happening.

I found out about this copyright clause that after 35 years the creators can negotiate for the return of their IP, so long as they weren’t asked to write a script and they came with a script already prepared.

This happened with Friday the 13th, with Child’s Play, and with Predator. And I contacted this lawyer who helped with the creators of all three of these franchises, an attorney named Marc Toberoff. I sent him all the information I had, they agreed to help and asked me to get them in contact with Stampede.

It takes years for this process to happen. For the past five years it’s been moving slowly through court, and finally, Stampede now has the rights to the very first Tremors script, which was called Beneath Perfection. And when it made it to the marketing department, they said they couldn’t sell a movie called Beneath Perfection.

One of the things they had said was, “Earthquakes are big in Japan right now, we want to sell it in Japan, let’s call it Tremors”.

…That was the reasoning? “Earthquakes are big in Japan”?

I’m not messing with you. And most of the Stampede crew weren’t a huge fan of it behind the scenes, but they begrudgingly went with it. So, the thing that’s now happened because of the copyright dispute, they have sole claim to the name Tremors.

Which means anything Stampede could have licensed or merchandized, it has to specifically be Beneath Perfection media.

After the dispute, Stampede wanted to merchandise for Tremors because of all the fan requests, but we’ve discovered they can’t even use any form of visual IP from the movie.

They can’t make art of the characters that resemble Val and Earl and Burt, specifically those actors’ likenesses. They can’t even put a graboid on a t-shirt. They can use the name graboid, but they can’t depict Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr.’s specific design of the Graboid which Universal specifically paid for.

Basically, if it’s not in the script, or specifically described, they don’t have claim to it.

If it’s dictated by all that’s on paper, where is the line between the script as it’s written and the original film in terms of what they can use?

I don’t know exactly how far it goes. Now there’s the whole question of whether Michael Gross and Kevin Bacon (who have expressed interest in coming back and doing another Tremors project), if they were to come back for a Stampede film based on the Beneath Perfection script, we’re not even sure if they’d be able to play their original characters.

Where is the line drawn? Can they look like Val and Burt? Can they even act the same way as they did before? I don’t even know if I want to know, I have a sneaking suspicion they can’t.

It does my head in, and I hate that it’s a possibility at all.

Regardless of attempts to stifle the franchise, the fans have kept it alive and well. You’ve shot six Tremors fan films and are currently filming a Shriekers fan film.

Could you tell us a little about the process of making a Tremors film as a fan of the franchise, while trying to stay true to the spirit of the movies?

Steve Wilson has mentioned this quote about Universal often bragging, saying they’d be able to sell an empty box with Tremors written on it, so why shouldn’t I try to actually make something? 

I’ve started to love doing the special effects, and it’s become my favorite part of shooting. Making guts out of pumpkin innards and blood sprays out of paint and dye, we even made a shrieker puppet out of a chopped-up bucket. It’s about going out and contributing, making something.

I love the original new content fans make, because everyone should be a part of Tremors as long as they’re adding something. I think every fan film is canon in one way or another.

Throughout all the short films I’ve made, the goal is to add something, never to take anything away. Tremors is one of those perfect scripts, and the aspiration is checking the things I make against that bar. Have I reached that? No, and I don’t think I ever will, but I’ll keep going out there and keep going.

I have friends who want to make short films and fan films. If you’re afraid it will look bad, of course it will look bad, but it will be there. And you will always get better each time you do it.

People are very worried about a film that looks bad, but no film looks worse than a nonexistent one.

Exactly!

Now this is the question that might make some people angry…does the Latin American name for Tremors, Terror Bajo La Tierra (Terror Under The Earth), go harder than the original English name? I have to say I kind of prefer it.

Terror Bajo La Tierra is pretty good—wait, I just realized there’s some good alliteration there. That goes hard! But…there’s one that goes harder.

It’s the German version, which is called Im Land Der Raketen-Wurmer, which means “In The Land of the Rocket Worms”.

Well, you got me there.

Be sure to check out Levi Dylan Burzlaff-Luett’s podcast, Talking Tremors and follow them on X (Formerly Twitter) and Bluesky to keep up with all things graboid!

In addition, if you’re a fan of Tremors (who isn’t?) be sure to join The Tremors Saga Facebook group!