Them! A classic movie reviewed

0 Comments

Them!
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Written by Ted Sherdeman, Russell Hughes, George Worthing Yates (story)
Starring James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness
Released June 19, 1954
Running time 94 min.


"When man entered the atomic age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict."
The above lines are intoned by a Professor Medford at the culmination of the movie “Them” first and best of the “Big Bug” black and white movies of the 1950. For me this film is the pinnacle of the black and white SF movie, with its serious and professional acting and taut writing. There are no spare scenes in this movie, no nonsense dialogue for all that a great deal of time is devoted to developing even the most transient of characters, from a surly railroad detective, to a hopeless but colorful drunk, to a police officer alone at a crime scene, turning out the light to move out to face an unknown horror.

The plot of this movie slowly unfurls as a combination of noir mystery and police procedural. In the high deserts of NM not far from the atomic proving grounds a small girl wanders in her pajamas in the desert. A police plane guides a patrol car to pick her up. The police officer, Peterson, played with a hard-boiled toughness over a tender heart by James Whitmore, finds the girl catatonic, obviously a tragedy has occurred nearby. A trail of missing persons and destroyed property leads the FBI in the person of Jim Arness to join the hunt. Then one of the officers disappears. Something unseen is in the desert, something not easily killed, something deadly.

Help appears in the unlikely form of Professors Medford, Edmund Gwyn in one of his most nuanced roles and his daughter Pat Medford played by with an almost modern sensibility by Joan Weldon. Both are professors in the science of myrmecology, the study of ants, responding to a 24 centimeter footprint that they recognize as being an ants. The professors face disbelief until a foray in the desert brings the team face-to-face with a giant ant. A hail of .45 slugs from a Thompson brings it down. The military is called in and the giant ant mound in discovered along with the picked bones of the disappeared. The nest is attacked with gas the deadly ants are held in by gunfire until the gas gets the mutants.

Note that I did not say monsters. Unlike the dinosaurs of Jurrassic Park (who seemed to have nothing better to do then chase humans) or the monsters of Alien and so many other movies, the ants are not monsters. They are larger carniverous ants. They do not hate us they don’t even hunt us if there is something else easier to hunt. In short they behave like animals and not like monsters.

In a scene way ahead of its time in showing respect for women, it is Pat Medford who must lead the team into the mound to tell if the attack has destroyed all the mutants.

In a scene as harrowing as any in Alien, Dr Medford, Peterson, and Graham must penetrate the gassed and partly collapsed Ant nest to determine if the Queens have been destroyed. This leads to one of the best exchanges in all of Science fiction, when Peterson is assured the gas must have saturated the next. “Boy if I can still lift an arm a few hours from now I’ll show you what saturated really means.”

They learn that several Queen ants have escaped the nest before it was attacked. The battle against the giant ants goes on in secret, with the ants taking over a freighter that is sunk by a cruiser until a nest is established in LA. The threat becomes public when the ants attack a father named Lodge and his two sons. The father fights to save his children who flee into the underground sewers of LA. The army must go in save the children and destroy the menace before any other queens hatch and seal the doom of humanity.

One can be dismissive of the science behind mutation and a giant ant (after all we have had only minor mutations from Bikini, a veritable atomic hell on Earth. It would however miss the point of these movies. It is less about the monster than about the reaction of humans to the monster. In that Them is a triumph. The greatest warrior in the fight is an elderly professor who can only get off his knees with assistance. While when battle is joined it is with flame-thrower and rifle grenade, SMG and M-1s wielded by young men, the campaign is run with the brains of the two Medfords.

There is a quality to the men in this movie that is refreshing and bracing even in these often anti-heroic times. They are not the alienated Dirty Harry or Neo. Nor are they the overblown and posturing Schwarzenegger of Commando, or the often cardboard heroes of the films of the 1930s. These are the men of WWII, quiet, determined, able to face the charging ants with the same controlled fear and resolution that they awaited a banzai charge or the grinding treads of Hitler’s panzers. In that, the real world service of Arness (purple heart and bronze star) and to a lesser extent Whitmore (Marine) may have leaked through.

These men seem different somehow, respectful of women, tough when they need to be tough, yet tender with Mrs. Lodge as she grieves for her dead husband and missing children and always treating other human beings as human beings. One gets the impression of the perseverance of film noir grittiness but without the soul-dead qualities that sometimes accompanied those characters. These men are resolute, staring cold-eyed at the threat. Whoever and whatever the enemy is, they will close with him, fix him in place and eliminate him. You would be proud to buy them a beer and humble to drink it in their company.

There really did not seem to be even a bit player or character actor who was not on his game in this film. Whitmore and Gwyn were already well-known. Jim Arness was just starting his promising career. The film features a performance by Fess parker (Davy Crockett) that helped launch him and Leonard Nimoy has a brief speaking part as well. Everyone seemed to relish their roles.

Okay the special effects are dated and simple but all good stories are about people and the people are the strength of Them, where the special effects exist only to support the plot not to replace it. I give this film my highest recommendation and it remains one of my favorites.