You know, there's a funny thing about this week's film. It's a
thrilling mystery with a stylish noir
flare, it has solid action, with rousing
battle scenes, and when you combine all of
that with a
great cast, outstanding special-effects,
and startling imagery, you get a very
entertaining film.
So what's so funny about it?
Well, it's a film about giant ants...
A little girl (Sandy Descher) is found wandering the desert
alone in a state of shock. Following he
trail, the local
police, led by Sgt. Ben Peterson (James
Whitmore), find a destroyed campsite where
the girl came from with no sign of her
family. (Well, Descher was one of The
Space Children...)
Then several more people turn up missing
or dead amidst
violent wreckage, and the only clue found is a
strange footprint.
The FBI in the form of Agent Bob Graham (James Arness --
e'yup, Marshal Dillon starred in two of my
favorite sci-fi classics, this and The
Thing from Another World)
is called in. A cast of the print is sent
to Washington, D.C., and they send two
experts on insects to investigate; the
Doctors Medford, a father and daughter
outfit. (Joan Weldon and the irascible
Edmund Gwynn.) This confuses the
local authorities until they head back into the desert to
prove their mysterious theory that we
won't elaborate on until they find further
collaboration.
And it doesn't take long for the 15-foot proof to lumber over a sand
dune, the proof in question being a giant ant!
After dispatching the beast, they call in the army to
look for the ant's nest. They eventually
find it, but the scientists prevent them
from bombing it to smithereens. And
again,
they are very coy with their reasons.
Saturating the nest with gas, they descend into the darkness to
explore the egg chamber. To their horror,
they find they are too late. Two queen
ants have hatched and escaped. And if they
aren't found and destroyed before they
establish other nests, it could mean the
end of civilization as we know it!
As
a wide net is cast for any news on strange sightings or phenomenon, one of the queens is tracked down on board
a ship at sea. The freighter is sunk, but
that still leaves one queen ant
unaccounted for.
More clues -- a substantial sugar theft, and the mysterious death of a
man and the disappearance of his two boys
-- leads the team to Los
Angeles.
More clues lead them to a drunk
tank where one of the winos claims to have
seen giant ants crawling around in the
drainage basins nearby.
Further investigation proves the old drunk was right. Since they can't use
the gas because the two missing boys might
still be alive somewhere in the 700 miles
of sewer lines underneath the city, the army is mobilized and starts a grid search. Peterson finds the
nest and the boys still alive. And as the
others head toward him, Peterson lifts
the boys to safety as the ants swarm him to protect their nest.
The End?
While THEM! was in production, the studio execs at
Warner Bros. kept the film under tight
security. Originally, it was supposed to be
in color and Warner's first film in 3-D,
and no one, except those directly involved,
knew exactly what was going on or what the
film was even about.
At some point, though, the studio lost all faith in the film. The
budget was slashed -- out went the color,
and the 3-D idea was abandoned. When the
film was completed and then screened for the
big brass, Jack Warner, himself, was not
amused and said
something to the effect that anyone else
who wanted to make a giant bug picture
would be banished to Republic Pictures (the
bottom of the
Hollywood
food chain.)
Without much fanfare the film was released, and went on to be the
studio's biggest money-maker of 1954. And
with good reason.
What makes
THEM!
work despite its wonky premise, is
everyone takes it very seriously. It
starts with the cast. Whitmore and Arness
play the roles straight with great effect.
(And
not
only do we get Marshall Dillon, we also
get cameos by Mr. Spock and Davy
Crockett!)
Weldon does well as the feisty female
scientist, and for once we don't get the
idiotic obligatory romantic subplot until
the very last scene in the movie. But Gwynn
steals the show as the fuddy old crackpot.
Seriously, you don't want these guys to become
ant-kibble, and Whitmore's death at the end
will probably hit you harder than anything
else. At least it did me.
These actors were then given an intelligent and believable script that takes the audience along with
them
as they discover what's going on. It
manages to juggle intrigue, humor (not
campy humor)
and action without incident. There is no
overblown melodrama or obvious sci-babble.
(The
ants are mutations caused by the atom bomb
tests, it's as simple as that.)
The film is more a mystery than a sci-fi
epic, although the army's big shoot out with the ants
in the storm drains of Los
Angeles
at the end is
outstanding!
Where most of these sci-fi potboilers fail is in the special-effects
department. (I'm sure images of bugs crawling along postcards
of scenic locales are dancing in your
mind.)
That isn't the case here. All the ants
were giant mock-ups and run with rods and
wires. With their high-pitched shriek,
these monsters are more than convincing.
The effects team was even up for an Oscar but they
lost to Disney's giant squid from
20000
Leagues Under the Sea.
The best thing about THEM! is that it is a mystery that doesn't cheat the audience. I don't
think I've blown the mystery here, the
cover box for the video does that already.
THEM! was the first giant bug
movie of the '50s, often imitated but
never bettered, I encourage you to track a copy down and
enjoy.
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