“When Man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we’ll eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.”
I have a friend who is absolutely terrified of ants. Just freaks out if any get on his skin. I remember him telling me a story about working on a job site and suddenly realizing he was laying on an ant nest. He was absolutely covered in ants. He ended up stripping his clothes off as he ran, screaming, out of the house and past the rest of the crew.
Not sure he went back to that job.
Me, I’ve always been fascinated by ants, rather than scared of them. The social organization, the ubiquity – Antarctica is the only place on Earth without indigenous ants – the capacity for absolute carnage when they go to war with each other. I mean, sure, bullet ants, fire ants, army ants – those are all terrifying in an abstract (for me in Maine) way – but generally I’m more interested than worried. I think that would change if I stumbled across ants that were six feet long.
Them! was one of those classic giant bug/monster films I first saw at my Gram’s house on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The first of those was Tarantula – and spiders I was deathly afraid of – but Them! must have been soon after. Much as I love the titanic arachnid of the 1955 film, it’s not quite as good a film as Them!. Director Gordon Douglas crafts suspense as well as spectacle, drawing us in with the mysteries of why a little girl is wandering alone in the desert and what could have destroyed a local general store.
Honestly, I think that scene with the two policemen investigating the ruins of the store at night, the wind blowing, that weird sound in the distance… that’s what makes this a horror movie for me, at least as much as any of the giant Formicidae.
Those two giant bug movies are really what led to my love of the whole genre. They’re comfort food to me. When I’m stressed or down or just need something fun to relax and watch at the end of the day, I can’t go wrong with anything featuring radiation-mutated insects, grown massive and on the rampage. Throw in a beautiful scientist, her aged father/mentor and an outclassed military man? Yeah, I’m in for a good time.
History
“We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true – ‘And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth.'”
In 1952 RKO re-released King Kong, and the giant ape once again stormed screens all across the world. It was a massive success, and in Japan did even more business than when it was first released. That success would eventually lead to that OTHER classic giant monster film of 1954, Godzilla, but first it would bring a giant dinosaur up from 20,000 fathoms.
Yes, this eventually gets us to giant ants, just hold on a second.
The film that would become The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms started out in 1951 as a project with Mutual Films Corporation. The fact that it was first announced the week after publication of Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Foghorn” didn’t escape the author’s notice, and the producers quickly bought the rights to the story. (The whole sequence with the Rhedosaurus and the lighthouse is lifted wholesale from Bradbury’s story.) Warner Brothers eventually bought the film and released it in 1953, when it became a hit.
Which brings us, finally, to Them!. Warner Brothers was hoping to recreate the success of The Beast and initially planned for the film to be shot in 3D and color. Unfortunately, initial 3D tests went awry and nothing useable could be filmed. Warner Brothers immediately scrapped the color as well and Them! went into production with a much smaller budget and only the two-color title as a hint of what might have been.
Despite the sudden decline in enthusiasm from Warner, Them! was a success at the box office. While not QUITE as successful as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it was more than enough to launch an entire subgenre of monster movies. The 1950s was about to become the decade of the giant bug movie.
Importance
“I don’t get it. You two act like it was the end of the world.”
“Well, it could be.”
Them! was released a few months before Godzilla, but they’re cinematic siblings anyway. They both deal with post World War II anxieties, and they both managed to crystallize those concerns in ways that worked specifically for their individual audiences. In Japan, Godzilla represented the horror and destruction of war, but the film also allowed Japan to reflect on and deal with the fear of nuclear weapons.
The US was also worried about the effects of radiation, but they hadn’t been subjected to the massive destruction and widespread radiation poisoning that Japan had. Their fears and concerns over this new technology were both more amorphous – what could this energy, invisible and powerful, do? – and somehow also a source of national pride. After all, the US had won the race to develop the atomic bomb. They’d won the war with it. There was a reluctance to place any blame for the negative effects of the new science on military, so it was those poor eggheads – the scientists – who would eventually shoulder much of the blame for events in 50s monster movies.
Not that this is the case in Them!. The scientists – Dr. Meford (Miracle on 34th Street’s Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter Dr. Meford (Harold and Pat respectively) – are fonts of knowledge and help to eventually defeat the ants. At least for the moment. No, in this film at least the radiation that causes the ants to grow large are the results of nuclear tests, but no one points a finger. It’s an accident, an unintended side effect of progress. Who could have known? Later films won’t be so forgiving.
A slew of giant insect/bug movies followed, featuring praying mantises (The Deadly Mantis), locusts (Beginning of the End) and scorpions (The Black Scorpion), but Them! opened the doors for more than just giant bugs. Films like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Fiend Without a Face, and even (oddly) The Incredible Shrinking Man all owe a debt to Them!. The focus on the effect of man’s meddling with nature on everyday creatures even extends to the 1970s creature feature explosion, with films like Day of the Animals, Piranha and Kingdom of the Spiders (bringing us back to bugs, even if spiders aren’t insects).
Legacy
“We haven’t seen the end of them. We’ve only had a close view of the beginning of what may be the end of us.”
The giant ants of Them! are still with us, haunting our media, even if giant bugs aren’t much in fashion anymore. You can fight them in the Fallout games or cheer them on in Ant Man (I know they’re not giant in Ant Man, but they LOOK big when he’s small!). More generally the concern over man’s quest for knowledge and its effect on nature is still entertaining us on screens big and small, whether that’s the dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park films, the creature mutated by dumped chemicals in Bong-Joon Ho’s The Host, or any given Asylum monster movie. (I’m partial to Lavalantula Two: 2 Lava, 2 Lantula, myself.)
As long as our reach exceeds our grasp we’ll be worried about what comes next, and that’s the real legacy of Them! – it took our fears and made them big and carnivorous and damn entertaining. As long as that concept still makes money, then we truly haven’t seen the end of Them!.
Conclusion
Them! is still the best giant bug movie ever made, as much as I love Tarantula. It took a concept – giant monsters – and married it to then-current fears about radiation, added some fuzzy, dodgy-looking special effects and some above-average character performances to give us an entertaining and surprisingly effective monster movie. And it proved that this was a formula that would resonate with audiences, giving us a whole sub-genre of similar films. It might not be art, but it’s damn fun, and absolutely belongs in the Canon.
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