(Originally posted on
I first viewed Them! (1954) in my early teens. It was playing late at night with a lot of wind outside. Perfect environment for tension, especially for this movie. It’s the best of the fifties “giant bug” movies and manages to stand up even today.
Pretty much every fifties science fiction cliche is in evidence, although they weren’t cliches at the time. This movie laid the framework for a lot of them, and actually did a much better job than any movies that followed for some time.
Anyone who’s seen anything about the movie knows it’s about giant ants. Seen through a modern day prism, that doesn’t sound too frightening, but it still packs a wallop. A great deal of the impact comes from minimalism. The ants don’t get that much screen time. When they do, the mechanical effects are somewhat dated, but still work. Every ant is created with practical effects, rather than photographic effects (and CGI wasn’t even a gleam in Hollywood’s eye in 1954.
The basic plot is straightforward and should be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Hollywood monster movie. Giant ants appear in New Mexico, after being irradiated by the atomic bomb tests of the era. The obligatory old scientist, Doctor Medford (Edmund Gwenn) predicts that if they aren’t destroyed quickly, they’ll overrun the earth.
Sound familiar?
Thing is, Them! feels a lot more like a procedural drama than a giant monster movie. It transcends the slightly silly and dated material with sharp cinematography and solid performances. Originally the movie was supposed to be both in color and in 3-D, but due to mishaps it was changed to black and white. The gritty B&W tones work better than color would have, I believe. Not only for the feel, but to help disguise weaknesses in visual effects.
The movie begins with a young girl (Sandy Descher) wandering through the New Mexico desert in a state of complete shock. She’s found by a local trooper, Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) and his partner. They trace her back to a camper in the desert which has been torn apart. They do a lot of investigative work, but nothing makes sense. During this time, a windstorm picks up and a strange chirping/whistling noise is heard. In a great framing device to build tension, everyone at the scene looks around in confusion, but the girl sits up from her stretcher in the ambulance with a look of horror until the sound fades. No one sees this but the audience.
The two troopers head towards a local general store as night falls and find the owner murdered and the store torn apart. Ben’s luckless partner (Chris Drake) stays behind to wait for the ambulance. He then hears the weird chirping again and heads outside to investigate. With another nice framing effect, we see him pass through the store window, hear gunshots and a scream.
It turns out the missing father of the young girl is an FBI agent on vacation, so the FBI sends an agent to New Mexico to help with the investigation. Agent Robert Graham (James Arness) arrives and soon brings in Doctor Medford and his daughter, Pat (Joan Weldon) to help.
What follows is very much a type of crime drama. The group follows clues to locate the giant ants’ nest and track escaped queens as they spread. There’s a scene in the ants’ nest that surely influenced a generation of filmmakers (like James Cameron’s Aliens.)
The final showdown in the storm drains of Los Angeles is tense and iconic.
One of the big cliches of monster movies in general is actually lacking here. The ants have no particular weakness. They aren’t vulnerable to electricity or “element x” or something. You can kill them with guns, bombs and flamethrowers. The point of the movie is to find them and destroy them before there are too many to fight.
A couple of interesting footnotes. Leonard Nimoy has a tiny bit part as an army sergeant working in a communications room. Fess Parker has a short, but memorable appearance as a pilot in an insane asylum. This appearance landed Fess the title role of Davy Crockett in the Disney television series.
Them! has surfaced in pop culture for ages. I played a computer game called It Came From the Desert (which actually inspired a cheesy movie in 2017) back in the early nineties which was an homage to the movie. Fallout 3 has a side quest with giant ants called “Those!” Many more examples abound.
If you’ve never seen the movie, grab a copy, microwave some popcorn and enjoy.
