Them!

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From the German expressionistic films of the twenties to Universal's movie monsters of the thirties and forties to the gigantic, mutated critters of the fifties, horror cinema underwent considerable change in its early, developmental years. Growing up in the fifties as I did, though, the history of film didn't matter so much as the here and now, and a lot of the old creature features from that era still mean a lot to me. Of all of them, I think "Them!" from 1954 stands out as both a personal favorite and the epitome of the breed. After half a century it remains THE quintessential giant-bug picture.

Just when audiences were beginning to tire of watching Dracula, the wolfman, the mummy, and Dr. Frankenstein's creation reducing folks to dust, along came the nuclear bomb and fantasy monsters turned to sci-fi monsters. The late forties and fifties ushered in a new era of cinematic oddities from within our own world and from without. The space alien invaders were fun, of course, "The Thing from Another World," "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers," "Invaders from Mars," and such, but for me the transfigured insects held a special fascination. There were giant every things back then from overgrown tarantulas, scorpions, and grasshoppers to supersized humans, and invariably these mutations were based on the same pretext that in reality was scaring a lot of the world's citizens namely, that nuclear radiation was having an unforeseen and devastating effect on all of Earth's life.

Our movie begins in New Mexico, where a pair of police officers find a little girl in a state of shock wandering the desert. The only word she is eventually persuaded to say is "Them!"

In the best horror-movie tradition, the creatures are not immediately revealed. The mystery and suspense surrounding a series of bizarre events mount as the investigation goes on. Strange occurrences are happening: a trailer is caved in, odd footprints are discovered, weird noises are heard in the air, and several people are found brutally killed.

The first investigating officer is Sgt. Ben Peterson (James Whitmore), a local cop, but it isn't long before an FBI agent shows up, Robert Graham (James Arness). Then, when it appears that maybe, perhaps, conceivably, there's an off chance that insects, of all things, may be involved, two experts in the field are called in, the father and daughter team of Doctors Harold and Pat Medford (Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon). Whitmore and Arness take care of the macho heroics Gwenn is the old, absentminded, fuddy-duddy professor (think of Richard Attenborough in "Jurassic Park") and Weldon handles the beautiful-heroine angle.

What the team quickly discovers is that the government tested the first atomic bomb nearby in White Sands, and after almost a decade the result of the radiation was to turn a nest of normal-sized ants into eight-foot monsters. When the first big ant puts in its appearance, it's like seeing the shark for the first time in "Jaws." It's a surprise, if not so much a scare.

Knowing what they're facing, the team calls in the army to do battle with the ants in the desert, but then the team learns one more piece of bad news. They may have defeated the huge critters here, but a queen has escaped and started its own nest in the storm drains of Los Angeles!

The ant constructions are understandably less sophisticated than what Hollywood can conjure up today on a computer screen, yet they're effectively menacing in their awkward, lumbering way. They appear to be huge puppetlike contraptions manipulated by unseen wires. Still, the special-effects department did a good job in detailing them, and the lighting used always keeps them appropriately shadowy and partially obscure. It works in both a corny and a frightening way at the same time, which contributes to the film's charm.

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