Them!

By far the best of the '50s "radiation-mutated monster" flicks, Them! (1954) is a pleasant childhood memory. AMC always showed this movie in a loop around Halloween and the ten year-old me gobbled it up, watching it every chance I got. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Them! holds up to adult viewing; more than goofy fun, it's a surprisingly smart and enjoyable sci-fi flick that stands among the genre's best.

New Mexico State Trooper Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) encounters a girl (Sandy Descher) wandering through the desert in a catatonic state. Things grow more alarming still when Peterson finds her family's trailer ransacked - and when his partner (Ed Blackburn) is killed by the same creature. Joined by FBI Agent Graham (James Arness) and entomologists Harold (Edmund Gwenn) and Pat Medford (Joan Weldon), Peterson investigates the crimes, only to find them caused by a colony of giant, irradiated ants! The authorities quickly annihilate the nest, but several queens manage to escape, taking off for parts unknown. Our heroes race against time to locate any potential nests, hoping to head off an apocalyptic threat - all while maintaining the strictest secrecy.

Them! deftly plays on the two biggest preoccupations of post-WWII science fiction: nuclear holocaust and Commie paranoia. The hideous effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the onset of the Cold War terrified Americans with the dual threat of imminent destruction and insidious menace. The Japanese released Godzilla the same year as Them!, creating a cultural icon - and a slew of imitators. Other beasts, from humans (The Amazing Colossal Man) to grasshoppers (Beginning of the End) to, hand to God, a killer tree (From Hell it Came) were unleashed by radiation, each creature sillier than the last. Even the larger budgeted pictures like Tarantula and The Deadly Mantis are hokey and cartoonish. In this regard, the intelligence, craft and quality of Them! is a refreshing surprise.

Them! really belongs in a class of more sophisticated science fiction: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came From Outer Space. The film depicts a Cold Warrior's wet dream: a super-efficient government, with local authorities, G-men, soldiers and scientists cooperating seemlessly to eradicate an unstoppable threat. Secrets are ruthlessly kept - Fess Parker's amusing character is incarcerated for "knowing too much" - but our heroes are nonetheless concerned with the human cost: Medford refuses to gas the sewer system while two children are held "hostage" there (shades of Rio Grande?). The Communist analogy isn't especially apt - can you leak intelligence secrets to ants? - but then sci-fi is rarely concerned with literal interpretations.

There's plenty for the less pretentious filmgoer to enjoy in Them!, too. It plays more as a thriller than a horror film, with an atmospheric, creepy, noir-inspired opening: a catatonic girl wandering through the desert, the wrecked trailer, and the cop slain by an unseen monster strike a jarring note from the word go. The ants don't even appear until half-an-hour into the film, heralded only by eerie chirping noises; the story is just as concerned with its investigation and explanation of the ants as its scares and thrills. The movie embraces its serious tone, allowing its fantastical plot to feel grounded and frighteningly real: the science is silly but convincing enough, the ants aren't ridiculously large and can be killed by conventional firepower.

If the film weren't such a top-notch effort the serious tone might backfire, but veteran Gordon Douglas helms a superb production. Douglas makes excellent use of a respectable budget, creating a tense, richly-paced show. Douglas and photographer Sidney Hickox mix nice location shooting with gritty, and stage impressive subterranean action scenes in an ant's nest and LA's sewers. The film won a well-deserved Oscar nod for Special Effects: the Warners studio artists craft full-sized hydraulic model ants that beat the pants off the era's superimposition and stop-motion efforts. Bronislau Kaper's creepy score is also notable. The movie was heavily influential on later efforts: its plot structure and clearly inform Jaws, while the Alien films appropriate the scenes of soldiers combing through the ant's nest.

The excellent (if not A-list) cast is another pleasant surprise in a genre reliant on hams like John Agar and Peter Graves. James Whitmore (Battleground) is excellent, his Everyman cop an appealing and sympathetic protagonist. James Arness's (Hondo) stiff G-Man is more in-line with the genre's usual heroes. Edmund Gwenn (Foreign Correspondent) is amusingly eccentric and Joan Weldon more than holds her own. The supporting cast includes an interesting assortment of character actors, including Fess Parker (TV's Davy Crockett), Willis Bouchey (Sergeant Rutledge), Ann Doran (His Girl Friday), Dub Taylor (Bonnie and Clyde) and a pre-Star Trek Leonard Nimoy.

Them! proves, if nothing else, that a movie about giant, radiation-infused ants needn't be cheesy nonsense. It's both fun and thoughtful, a wonderful bit of vintage entertainment.