Review: Them!

In the New Mexico desert, cops find a little girl wandering around in a daze and talking about ‘them’. Meanwhile, nearby caravans and buildings are completely obliterated. An investigation eventually uncovers a nest producing giant ants, presumably the super-sized side effects of nuclear testing being done. Police sergeant James Whitmore and FBI man James Arness receive help from father-and-daughter scientists Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon in how to solve the crisis. Fess Parker, Dub Taylor, William Schallert, Willis Bouchey, Douglas Spencer, Leonard Nimoy, Ann Doran, and Dick York all have tiny roles.

 

If you see only one giant ant movie, make it this 1954 classic from director Gordon Douglas (“In Like Flint”). In fact, the first act of the film is so incredibly strong and so eerie that you’re completely hooked possibly before you’ve realised you’re even watching a giant ant movie. The stunning B&W cinematography by Sid Hickox (“White Heat”, “Distant Drums”), sparse desert landscape, and creepy sound FX provide a frankly extraordinary opening 15 minutes. This may be a B-movie creature feature, but it’s one of the best B-movies ever made. It take a lot of confidence to start a creature feature with a lot of talk and no on-screen monsters yet, Douglas and his screenwriters Ted Sherdeman (“St. Louis Blues”) and Russell Hughes (“Jubal”) pull it off.

 

The cast is pretty good, save for the slightly wooden James Arness and Joan Weldon. Before lauding the film for featuring a female scientist, note that Weldon screams at the first sight of a giant ant. Chicks, man. The underrated James Whitmore (who looks like Spencer Tracy with bushier eyebrows) was probably most well-known for repeating Roberts Blossom’s turn as the elderly prisoner from “Escape From Alcatraz” in the overly lauded “The Shawshank Redemption”. However, he’s a damn good, long-serving character actor who manages to do damn good work in a movie about giant ants. It’s not easy. Meanwhile, Edmund Gwenn is immediately perfect and a wonderful, scene-stealing actor. It’s amazing to see him in this and “The Trouble With Harry” and then see him in his startling turn as a murderously intended henchman in “Foreign Correspondent” (both Hitchcock films). There’s also an interesting cameo by Fess Parker of all people as a hayseed who thinks he saw ant-shaped flying saucers. That’s western veteran Dub Taylor as a railroad yard watchman looking about the same damn age as he looked in 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde”. I have to commend Sherdeman and Hughes for writing surprisingly credible cop characters. They’re not idiot Doubting Thomas-types, they’re shown a giant ant, told what it is and fairly quickly accept that the impossible is somehow possible. It helps save a lot of precious screen time and eye-rolling from the audience. Also, look out for the documentary footage of ants about 50 minutes into the film, which is frankly terrifying and does a great job of helping to convince you to go along with this for 90 minutes or so.

 

Usually in creature feature movies the attack scenes are key, but I reckon the post-attack wreckage is even better here. Look at those skulls and carcasses, these ants do not fuck around at all. I was a bit less impressed by the anti-atomic message delivered right at the end, which is a touch eye-rolling now but fairly indicative of the time.

 

A marvellous creature feature that makes the impossible seem rather scary and eerie for its length, and features several good performances too. Must-see.

 

Rating: A-