Them- 1954- Gordon Douglas

Them – 1954 – Gordon Douglas

The opening scenes of Them take place in what looks like a southwest American desert where two police officers find a little girl who is lost, speechless and in shock. She won’t say a word she just stares blankly into nothing, as though the last images she saw were burned into her retinas. The two police officers head out to find the little girl’s parents and they end up finding a trailer that is in shambles, there are huge holes in the walls and eventually they find a man who has been killed in a very suspicious manner. The officers’ investigation uncovers a weird foot print outside of the trailer; this print is obviously not from a human and is from some sort of large creature. The FBI is informed of this strange finding and they send out a couple of entomologists by the name of Dr. Medford and his daughter, Pat. Dr. Medford is quite surprised when he sees the print and is unsure of the origin of such a creature. The autopsy report of the dead man uncovers that he had the doctor along with his daughter and two officers seek out the unknown nest of the creature, they find an incredibly large ant; using the doctor’s knowledge of ants he instructs the officer to shoot the antenna of the ant in order to blind it and eventually kill it. The nest is gassed in order hopefully kill the rest of the ant of the nest. The doctor and his daughter fear that the ants might have mutated due to nuclear bomb testing in the area and that there could potentially be a lot more of these mutated ants. It is figured out that some queen ants have migrated elsewhere; one place is a U.S Navy ship. The mutated ants are shown destroying the ship's vessel and killing the crew members; the special effects in regards to the ants is well done and somewhat believable, they appear to occupy the set space well enough to get the point across without seeming too fake and set up. The ship full of invading ants is eventually destroyed and sunk into the depths of the sea. Another ant is reported near the Los Angeles River and ends up killing two men, one being a police officer while rescuing the sons of the other man killed. More cops and officers show up to destroy the nest and burn the queen to death.

Atomic fear and imagination fuels the plot of Them, while this movie wasn’t fantastic it was creative and entertaining at times, the atomic ants exemplify the potential hazards and fears of continued atomic use in a creative, imaginary way. The cast is at times a bit of dramatic and lengthy in their dialog but the sets are decent and effective . Atomic giant ants would definitely be terrifying; unfortunately, my mind couldn’t escape a certain scene from Honey I Shrunk the Kids where the son and daughter of Rick Moranis are riding a regular sized ant in their backyard after being shrunk by their dad’s shrinking ray.