Nine years later, Warner Brothers gazed upon the same New Mexico desert......and translated Oppenheimer's dire warning about unleashing atomic power into something us popcorn munchers could more easily understand.....
Giant ants. Bigger than Ford Broncos, hungry for humans and generally more pissed off than Donald Trump on an all-night twitter rant......
A genuine classic was born, despite every effort of mogul Jack L. Warner to strangle it in its crib (or nest.) Keep in mind, this is 1950's Hollywood we're talking about.......big studios treated their science fiction films the way Harry Potter's mean aunt and uncle treated the boy wizard....mocked, abused.locked in a closet and barely taken care of. No 150 million dollar budgets for these movies......their budgets hovered slightly above the cost of a tuna fish sandwich at the Warner Brothers commissary....
"Them!" and its rampaging jumbo ants had been planned for Technicolor and 3-D.....Jack Warner, already mortified at the idea of making such a film, vetoed spending the extra money, condemning the film to black and white. Warner didn't realize how much his decision enhanced "Them!"......the sturdy B-movie journeyman assigned to direct it, Gordon Douglas, took a straightforward intelligent approach to its fantastic storyline. . Making use of the full ominous visual power of black and white photography, Douglas shot the film as a kind of semi-documentary sci-fi noir......complete with a hellish noir showdown between the military and the ants in the storm drains of Los Angeles....
Like Steven Spielberg's famously malfunctioning Bruce The Shark, the ants of "Them" are full sized props. They probably didn't work any better than Bruce, so Douglas wisely makes sparing use of them for maximum impact. But when he does......the sight of one the ants crushing one of the beloved lead actors in its pincers still remains every bit as horrifying as Robert Shaw getting chomped on in "Jaws".
63 years later, "Them!" still exerts tremendous power. Our favorite moments: Composer Bronsilau Kaper's pounding piano chord for the Warner Brothers logo.....child actress Sandy Descher as the traumatized ant attack survivor wandering in the desert (her screams of "Them....them!" can still chill you to the bone)......Fess Parker's good ole Texas boy comedy relief bit, which tickled Walt Disney enough to award him the part of Davy Crockett.......the long roster of familiar faces popping up throughout the film - Leonard Nimoy, Richard Deacon, Lawrence Dobkin, William Schallert, Dub Taylor and premier scene stealer Olin Howland ("Make me a sergeant in charge of the booze!")......female lead Joan Weldon's impatient snap at James Arness when he unwisely tries the typical 1950's 'this is no place for a woman' shtick on her...... .Gordon Douglas's skilled handling of the ant attack sequences, freely mixing terror and suspense together.....from the brief but unforgettable scene of the storm tossed battleship infested with ants to the pure unadulterated nightmare of the storm drain battle.....
Despite all the contempt Jack Warner felt for "Them!", the movie stunned him by becoming Warner Brothers number one box office performer for 1954. But it didn't lessen his embarrassment for having produced a giant ant movie and studio moguls, with rare exception, continued to treat science fiction movies like bastard mutant stepchildren they kept chained in the basement.
Though few of its imitators ever came close to the slick professionalism and artistic prestige of "Them!", the movie opened the floodgates for hordes of mutated insects and dinosaurs spawned by wanton nuclear testing. These giant roaring, scuttling, stomping crawling metaphors-for-atomic-armageddon (led by Japan's Most Valuable Destroyer, Godzilla) invaded our neighborhood theaters to remind us of the unimaginable power we'd liberated from the universe......
While Ishiro Honda's original version of "Godzilla" resonated with it evocation of atomic horror, these movies mostly remain what they were at the time of their release.....laughable, ridiculous, shoddy, and guilty fun to watch. "Them!", however, stays as strong as ever, with all its dread, scares and powerfully disturbing sequences still intact. For the BQ, it's forever a 5 star FIND OF FINDS (*****)......stay out of those storm drains.....
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