Burt Gummer

Burt Gummer
Michael Gross as Burt Gummer in Tremors 2: Aftershocks.
First appearance	Tremors (1990)
Last appearance	Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)
Portrayed by	Michael Gross
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Survivalist, weapons expert
Family	Hiram Gummer (ancestor)
Children	Travis B. Welker (son)

Burt Gummer is a fictional character, played by actor Michael Gross, from the Tremors film series and the short lived SciFi Channel TV program of the same name. Appearing in Tremors, Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, and most episodes of the TV series, Burt Gummer is a firearms enthusiast and a paranoid survivalist. He and his former wife, Heather Gummer (played by Reba McEntire), were the first persons in the film series to directly kill a Graboid. He has an "overkill" approach to trouble and takes himself deadly seriously. Although he is only the central character in Tremors 3 and the TV series, his eccentric personality has made him a favorite among Tremors fans and the de facto star of the franchise, along with the vicious Graboids who oppose him. His ancestor, Hiram Gummer (also played by Gross), appears in Tremors 4: The Legend Begins. He finds out he has a son Travis B. Welker in Tremors 5 who is the son of the girlfriend he had before he married Heather.

In an interview, when asked, "Did you ever think that Burt would become part of a franchise?" Gross replied, "I knew it was an intriguing character." The actor goes on to assert, "Well, I love Burt. You know, there's a little scene in the third movie that is quintessential Burt. Burt is so fear-driven that he's a paranoid, ultimately, but a comic paranoid. And there's a scene in which he goes up to his house to punch in his keycode on his pad. But before he does, he takes a good look around and stands in front of the pad - there's nobody there for miles! - but he blocks the keypad with his body. Because Burt would rightly assume that there's somebody in the hills with a high-powered telescope who wants his keypad information, wants the code. Now that's the level of paranoia. Does it get funny? Yeah, because it's just so over the top. I love that. I love that about him. It's inherent in the fact that he has no sense of humor. It's because he doesn't consider life funny that we find him funny and his extremes which are so marvelous in human behavior....And one of the great things I love about Burt and what the writers do with him is he will prepare himself in certain ways and then we find out that, once again, he's not prepared because the animals have mutated in such a way that they've found a way to get around his best defenses. He couldn't possibly plan for every contingency and he thinks he has."