THIS 70-YEAR-OLD SCI-FI FILM REMAINS A MILESTONE IN PRACTICAL EFFECTS

The genre of giant bug movies has never been a noble one. It arose in the 1950s as fears of nuclear war seeped into the zeitgeist, while giving filmmakers an easy hook for some flashy (for the time) special effects. It rarely attained high art, but it captured some of the era's core anxieties, and insects are creepy enough to ensure that the genre has survived in some form or another right up to the present. It's even attracted Oscar-winning directors in recent years, such as Guillermo del Toro's Mimic and Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of King Kong.

The classic era of giant bug movies, however, really has just one indisputable masterpiece. Them! is a 1954 black-and-white effort from director Gordon Douglas that embodies all of the genre's classic tropes assembled in just the right way. Most notably, it relies on practical effects combined with efficient technical filmmaking to make up the occasional gaps in believability. 70 years after its release, it retains its ability to send chills down the spine, as well as make a first-class piece of throwback nostalgia. It's probably the perfect (to coin a term) specimen to see the giant bug movie at its purest and most unfiltered.

Giant Insect Movies Embodied Fears of Nuclear Power

The detonation of the first atomic bomb and subsequent launch of the Cold War sent quiet shock waves through the American public during the 1950s. The hard-won victory of World War II seemed to vanish beneath the constant specter of instant annihilation, and as is frequently the case, horror films seized on the underlying zeitgeist before more straightforward movies could address the issue directly. Horror had fallen out of fashion during the war, still propped up by the classic Universal Monster cycle that started in the 1930s. 20 years on, it was well into decline, with the likes of Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein turning them into open parodies. It was time for something new.

Giant monster movies predated the era, with 1933's King Kong being the most obvious example. The concept really took hold with 1953's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, about a prehistoric reptile released from the Arctic ice after an atomic bomb test. Its success prompted a rash of similar projects, which included not only Them! but the original Godzilla from Japan in 1954. The latter has been widely read as a statement of shared trauma from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the war, and effectively launched the kaiju subgenre which -- like giant bugs -- endures to the present day.

The trend also gave the Universal cycle a late-inning classic in 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon, which eschews nuclear mutation, but similarly chides humanity for violating the laws of nature. Amid those efforts, it can be easy to overlook Them!, which is more resolutely of its time, and which lacks the deep pop-culture footprint of Godzilla and the Universal monsters. It holds up very well, in part because it's one of the earlier efforts in the genre, which gave it the ability to set the bar without worrying about imitating a predecessor. Douglas succeeds not only because he takes his scenario seriously, but he understands exactly how to deploy the giant insects his audience presumably paid to see.

Them! Pays Attention to the Little Details

Them! begins in the New Mexico desert, as State Police Sgt. Ben Peterson investigates a series of mysterious disappearances. The culprits initially prove elusive, and the details are baffling. No money is taken, for instance, but there is a strange attraction to sugar. Soon a pair of experts -- Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter Dr. Pat Medford -- arrive to confirm an unthinkable hypothesis: a nest of giant ants is behind it all. Irradiated by fallout from nuclear tests at White Sands, they soon spread, as a pair of new queens leave the nest to build new communities of their own.

If they aren't stopped, they threaten to overwhelm the entire world, forcing the heroes into a desperate race against time to track them down and kill them. It leads to the film's famous climax in the Los Angeles sewers, now overrun with a rapidly expanding giant ant colony. Douglas does himself a huge favor with the careful way he deploys the film's special effects. The ants themselves are rendered as giant mechanical puppets, and are convincing despite their obvious artifice. Them! deploys them with great care by using smoke, shadows, and brief cuts to give the audience a good impression without lingering too long. Most importantly, it uses a very specific sound effect -- a creepy keening noise -- to signal their presence.

It makes the giant ants quite unsettling, even when it's apparent that they're visual effects. That stands out not just with the film itself, but with subsequent efforts in the genre which were often ignoble in the extreme. The best of them was 1957's The Black Scorpion, which featured stop-motion effects from the legendary Willis O'Brien. Others fared less well, ranging from the shoddy puppetry of 1957's The Giant Mantis to the extremely dodgy use of actual locusts in Beginning of the End that same year. All three of them have been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Them! hasn't, at least as of this writing.

In addition to the effects, Douglas delivers a relentless pacing to the film by generating suspense through implication and suggestion whenever he can and saving the big effects shots for the right moments. The script pays close attention to the details, and framing the early scenes as a murder mystery pays big dividends when the ants finally show up. He's aided by a strong cast led by James Whitmire, whom more modern audiences will remember for his unforgettable role as the old con Brooks in 1994's The Shawshank Redemption. The rest of the cast has similarly long and respectable credentials -- including James Arness, who went on to star in the long-running TV Western Gunsmoke -- that doesn't include a lot of third-rate monster movies.

Them! Is the Ideal Giant Bug Movie

Beyond being a smart and entertaining sci-fi thriller in and of itself, Them! embodies all of the themes associated with the giant insect genre. Their origins from nuclear tests speak to the obvious anxieties about the Cold War, and the movie taps directly into those fears with promises of ant-driven annihilation. It credibly presents the insects as a threat to the human race, able to reproduce very quickly and overwhelm all resistance if they're not contained. It's not hard to see the threat of nuclear genocide peeking out from behind those big puppets, and the ants provide oblique cover for the audience to contemplate the issue without surrendering to despair.

The film also has an interesting relationship with authority figures, which is another dominant trait of 1950s science fiction. Most films of the era embrace a pro-government stance, with heroes representing the forces of law and order, and military responses as the correct answer. Scientists are often depicted as dangerously naïve and overtures of peace roundly rejected in favor of kill-or-be-killed. The exceptions are notable like The Day the Earth Stood Still, but comparatively rare. Them! takes a surprisingly nuanced view on the issue, as the authorities try to keep word of the ants a secret in order to prevent a mass panic. The film ultimately justifies such tactics, but neither does it sugar-coat the fallout, such as one scene when the ostensible hero keeps a psychologically healthy man committed to a psychiatric institution just to keep him from spreading word of what he has seen.

Those touches make the movie as much about the human characters as the ants, and with the audience invested in their story, the giant bugs become a fun expression of much bigger issues. Them! accomplishes its larger dramatic goals without missing the fact that this is all supposed to be entertainment first and foremost. In the process, it becomes something more than the sum of its parts. Its shortcomings -- the obvious nature of the effects, for instance -- actually become assets thanks to the film's careful presentation. Taking care of all the little details adds up to the closest thing a shabby genre has to an evergreen classic, and still a lot of fun seven decades later.

Them! is currently available for rental and download on Amazon Prime.

2024-05-31T03:34:26Z dg43tfdfdgfd