The 1954 b-movie classic that inspired every "giant bug/animal is taking over the world" that's followed it, Warner Bros. classic THEM! is surprisingly well made, fast and fun.
I tend to remember some of those American International 60's classics like "Frogs" or "Food of the Gods" when remembering the genre. Those flicks had no scripts, horrible actors and bad special effects. Could they still be fun? Sure, in the right mood.
But THEM! is a much more solid base, grabbing you from the opening scenes as police sergeant Ben (James Whitmore from "The Shawshank Redemption") finds a young girl in shock, wondering through the desert. James Arness (Gunsmoke) is an FBI agent called in to solve the mystery, alongside the aging Professor Medford (Edmund Gwenn, Santa in the original "Miracle on 34th Street") and his daughter Pat (Joan Weldon). When the Professor shows the gathered law enforcement and military a movie about ants to establish the ground rules of the newly giant creature, it's a scene often replicated in every ripoff that followed.
Before you can grab a can of Raid, Giant Ants mutated by atomic testing are attacking folks and creating one hell of an underground complex.
Among the citizens that have a run in with the ants, Fess Parker (Disney's Daniel Boone) stands out as a pilot who flew next to a giant Queen ant relocating to spread the colony. Everyone thinks he's nuts, until he isn't! Parker is hilariously charming.
The cast gets the tone perfectly, playing it slightly tongue-in-cheek but always with a nod to straight dramatics.
Director Gordon Douglas proved to be an inspired choice, showing deftness in straddling Sci-Fi, scares and some decent laughs. He would go on to make James Coburn's beloved tongue-in-cheek spy thriller "In Like Flint", Frank Sinatra's "Tony Rome" films and "They Call Me Mister Tibbs", a great resume of 60's classics by any definition.
In Them!, you only ever see 3 giant ants at once, as that's all the Warner's effects team created. They also cut the budget last minute and went to black and white photography, but all their worries proved unfounded as the film became one of their biggest hits of 1954, especially at drive-ins across America.
You cant look too closely at the logic in the movie (hey wait a minute, I thought we wanted to attack the ants during the day, why is the entire conclusion at night?) but the fun overpowers any desire for scrutiny.
I was having way too many laughs watching this cast, including classic character actors William Schallert and Dub Taylor, battle the creatures. After seeing this again for the first time in decades, I have to think that James Cameron also LOVED it as a kid. The flamethrower scenes are so cool that I immediately thought of "Aliens". Those flamethrower scenes in Cameron's thriller are a close match.
Hey wait a minute, the entire scene where they find the Ant larva looks a whole lot those Alien eggs with the facehuggers inside.....
Goofy, B-movie fun of the absolute highest pedigree, THEM! gets an admirable B and a place in history as the first insects/animals run amok feature to hit the big screen.
(Watch closely for Leonard Nimoy as a young army man reading news off a teletype, long before his Spock days.)
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