Them!

For the 2006 film of the same name, see Them (2006 film).

Them!
Original film poster
Directed by	Gordon Douglas
Produced by	David Weisbart
Written by	Ted Sherdeman Russell Hughes George Worthing Yates (story)
Starring	James Whitmore Edmund Gwenn Joan Weldon James Arness
Music by	Bronislau Kaper
Cinematography	Sidney Hickox
Editing by	Thomas Reilly
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	June 19, 1954
Running time	94 min.
Country	United States
Language	English

Them! is a 1954 American black and white science fiction film about man's encounter with a nest of gigantic irradiated ants. It is based on an original story treatment by George Worthing Yates. It was developed into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman and Russell Hughes for Warner Bros. Pictures Inc., and was produced by David Weisbart and directed by Gordon Douglas. It starred James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon and James Arness.

One of the first of the "nuclear monster" movies, and the first "big bug" film, Them! was nominated for an Oscar for Special Effects and won a Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing. The film starts off as a simple suspense story, with police investigating mysterious disappearances and unexplainable deaths. The giant ants are not even seen until almost a third of the way into the film.

Plot

The film begins with New Mexico State Police Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) and his patrol partner Ed Blackburn (Chris Drake) discovering a little girl wandering the desert near Alamogordo, mute and in a state of shock. They track her back to a trailer owned by an FBI agent named Ellinson, who was on vacation in the area with his wife and two children. The side of the trailer is found to have been ripped open from the outside, a sugar bowl is spilled inside and the parents are missing and presumed dead. The girl briefly responds when strange sounds echo out of the desert wind, but the troopers miss this moment.

More mysterious deaths and disappearances occur in the area. A general store owner named Gramps Johnson is found dead in his store, which had been literally torn apart. All the money is left in the register, but a barrel of sugar had been smashed open. Gramps' empty rifle has been bent in half. Peterson leaves to check on the status of the little girl, leaving Blackburn to guard Gramps' store. Not long afterward he hears a strange noise outside, pulls his weapon and goes out to investigate. Soon there is the sound of several gunshots, the strange sound gets louder and Blackburn is heard screamaing in agony; he has been killed by an unknown assailant.

The police think there is a maniac killer on the loose--but, as Peterson's boss points out, Gramps' .30-.30 "got off 4 shots" and "Ed Blackburn was a crack shot. He could hit anything he could see. So unless your killer is armored like a battleship, there's no maniac in this case." It's up to the coroner to deliver the verdict that "Gramps Johnson could have died in any one of five ways: his neck and back were broken, his chest was crushed, his skull was fractured and here's one for Sherlock Holmes: there was enough formic acid in him to kill 20 men."

The FBI sends in local agent Robert Graham (James Arness) to assist. A single strange track bigger than a mountain lion's is found in the desert near the trailer and a plaster cast of it is made and sent to Washington, DC. When the FBI is unable to identify the footprint, it attracts the attention of Harold (Edmund Gwenn) and Pat Medford (Joan Weldon), a father/daughter team of entomologists from the Department of Agriculture.

The elder Dr. Medford arrives on the scene with a theory, but will not disclose it until he tries an experiment on the Ellinson girl, having her smell the contents of a vial of formic acid, which frees her from her state of near-catatonic withdrawal, and she begins screaming "Them! Them!" Returning to the destroyed trailer with Peterson, Graham, and his daughter, Medford has his theory dramatically validated when the group encounters a giant foraging ant, mutated by atomic radiation to the size of an automobile. The ants produce loud, distinctive stridulating calls that become the iconic signature of the beasts. The lawmen empty their revolvers at the creatures, to little effect. They grab a Thompson submachine gun from the patrol car's trunk and fire it at the monster. They finally kill it by shooting off the creature's antennae, on Medford's advice that ants are helpless without them.

A U.S. Air Force unit is brought in, led by Gen. O'Brien (Onslow Stevens), which locates the ants' nest and exterminates the inhabitants with poison gas. The younger Dr. Medford, who accompanies Peterson and Graham into the nest, finds evidence that two young queens have hatched and flown away to establish new colonies. Trying to avoid a general panic, the government covertly monitors and investigates any reports of unusual activities or sightings of "flying saucers". One of the queens ends up in the hold of an ocean-going freighter loaded with sugar, which is then overrun by the ants, who slaughter the crew. The vessel is subsequently sunk by a U.S. Navy cruiser. From the rantings of an alcoholic in a hospital "drunk tank" who said that he saw giant ants flying around outside his window, and an investigation into the death of a father who was found mangled with his arm ripped off in his crashed car but without his two young sons with him--it turns out that his injuries were received protecting his sons from the attack of a giant ant--the other queen is finally tracked to the Los Angeles storm drain system, forcing the U.S. Army to openly declare martial law and launch a major assault.

During the assault, Peterson finds the two missing boys, Mike and Jerry, alive but trapped near the entrance to the ants' nest. He calls in for backup, but instead of waiting for it, he bravely goes in alone. He heroically rescues the two boys and kills several threatening ants with his flamethrower. Peterson then leads the two boys back to the pipe through which he came, intending that they all crawl back through it to safety. After hoisting up Jerry, however, another ant appears from behind. Peterson saves the second boy, Mike, lifting him into the pipe. Unfortunately, Peterson is left without time to save himself, and as he tries to climb up at the last minute, the ant grabs Peterson in its mandibles, and crushes him.

Graham arrives at the scene with the reinforcements, and kills the ant attacking Peterson. As the other troops fight off the swarming ants, Graham rushes over to Peterson's side. Peterson, dying and in excruciating pain, is only able to utter a few last words to Graham, confirming that the boys made it to safety, before he dies of his wounds. Graham returns to the battle, nearly getting killed himself when a cave-in temporarily cuts him off from the rest of the men as they march towards the egg chamber; several ants charge him, but he is able to hold them off long enough for the other troops to tunnel through the debris and come to his rescue. The nest's queen and egg chamber are then destroyed with flamethrowers after a short but fierce battle, but the senior Dr. Medford issues a grim warning that "the atomic genie has been let out of the bottle", and further horrors may await mankind. He solemnly intones, "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."

Cast

• James Whitmore as Sgt. Ben Peterson
• Edmund Gwenn as Dr. Harold Medford
• Joan Weldon as Dr. Pat Medford
• James Arness as FBI Agent Robert Graham
• Onslow Stevens as Gen. O'Brien
• Sean McClory as Maj. Kibbee
• Chris Drake as Trooper Ed Blackburn
• Sandy Descher as Ellinson girl
• Mary Ann Hokanson as Mrs. Lodge
• Don Shelton as Trooper Capt. Fred Edwards
• Fess Parker as Alan Crotty
• Olin Howlin as Jensen, alcoholic in drunk tank who sees flying ants
• Leonard Nimoy as Air Force sergeant in Communications Room|uncredited

Other actors who appear in small parts include John Beradino, Willis Bouchey, Booth Colman, Richard Deacon, Lawrence Dobkin, Ann Doran, Leonard Nimoy, William Schallert, Douglas Spencer, Dub Taylor and Harry Wilson.

When casting his planned Davy Crockett episode of the Disneyland television show, Walt Disney viewed the film to see James Arness, who had been recommended for the role. However, Disney was impressed by a brief scene of Fess Parker, detained in the mental ward of Mercy Hospital in Brownsville, Texas, and insisting that giant flying ants had caused him to crash his plane. Disney realized he had found his Crockett. Arness, however, did well for himself. John Wayne had seen this movie and, impressed with his performance, coupled with his familiarity with Arness as part of his Batjac Productions company of players, recommended Arness for the role of Marshal Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke, a role that lasted from 1955 to 1975. Wayne himself had turned down the part, but did appear in the pilot episode to introduce Arness.

Production

Opening color title from Them!, with the background in black and white and the title in color.

When Them! began production in the fall of 1953, it was originally conceived to be in 3-D and WarnerColor. During pre-production, tests were to be shot in color and 3-D. A few color tests were shot of the large-scale ant models, but when it was time to shoot the 3-D test, WB's "All Media" 3-D camera rig malfunctioned and no footage could be filmed. The next day, a memo was sent out that the color and 3-D aspects of the film were to be scrapped, and that black and white and wide-screen would be the preferred format, trying to emulate the "effective shock treatment" of Warners' The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Ultimately the film was not shot in wide-screen. Because of the preparation of certain shots, however, many of the camera set-ups for 3-D still remain, such as the opening titles and flame-throwers that are shot at the camera.

Although WB was dissatisfied with the color results, the opening titles were printed in color against a black and white background to give the opening of the film a "punch". This effect was achieved by an EastmanColor section spliced into each print.^{[citation needed]} The VHS release in 1985, the subsequent laserdisc, and the current DVD release have retained this effect.

The entrance to the ants' final nest was along the concrete spillways of the Los Angeles River between the First and Seventh Street Bridges, east of downtown. The depiction of the Chihuahua Desert of southern New Mexico is actually the Mojave Desert near Palmdale, California. Mercy Hospital was a real institution and is now Brownsville Medical Center. The geography of South Texas is unusually accurate for Hollywood.

Because of the height difference between actors Whitmore and Arness, Whitmore wore "lifts" on his shoes to compensate for it. It has also been noted that Whitmore employed bits of "business" (i.e., hand gestures and motions) during scenes in which he appeared to draw attention to his character when not speaking. The Wilhelm scream, created three years earlier for the film Distant Drums, is used multiple times during the action sequences, i.e., when a wooden beam falls on top of a soldier in the storm-drain sequence.

The giant ants were constructed and operated by unseen technicians supervised by Ralph Ayers, and were actually purpleish-green in color. However, during the climactic battle sequence in the Los Angeles sewers, there is a brief shot of one ant moving in the foreground with its side removed, revealing its mechanical interior. This "glitch" has been obscured in recent DVD releases of the film.

Response

Them! was released in June 1954 and by the end of that year had accrued US $2,000,000 in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals, making it the year's 51st biggest earner.

The New York Times review noted " . . . from the moment James Whitmore, playing a New Mexico state trooper, discovers a six-year-old moppet wandering around the desert in a state of shock, to the time when the cause of that mental trauma is traced and destroyed, Them! is taut science-fiction." "Brog" in Variety opined it was a "top-notch science fiction shocker. It has a well-plotted story, expertly directed and acted in a matter-of-fact style to rate a chiller payoff and thoroughly satisfy the fans of hackle-raising melodrama."

Since its original release, Them! has become generally regarded as one of the very best science-fiction films of the 1950s. Bill Warren described the film as “… tight, fast-paced and credible…[T]he picture is suspenseful." Phil Hardy’s The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction noted, "Directed by [Gordon] Douglas in semi-documentary fashion, Them! is one of the best American science-fiction films of the fifties." Danny Peary believed the film "Ranks with The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as the best of the countless fifties science fiction films." Of the 24 reviewers included in a Rotten Tomatoes survey of critics regarding the title, 100% reflect a positive reaction.

The film is rated  M  in Australia and  M  in New Zealand.

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Science Fiction Film

In popular culture

Film and Television

• Joe Dante's 1993 comedy Matinee depicts a film about a man who mutates into a giant ant and wreaks havoc.
• Both the Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch and Eight Legged Freaks films have scenes where Them! is shown being played.
• An unfinished episode of Invader Zim concerning giant ants was entitled "Those!" in reference to this film.

Music

• The Van Morrison-led band Them was named after this film.
• New Jersey punk band the Misfits have a song entitled Them! which has lyrics directly inspired by the film, on their 1999 release Famous Monsters.

Video Games

• The award winning video game series "It Came From the Desert" was inspired by Them!.
• The bonus Command & Conquer: Red Alert mission "It Came from Red Alert" is based on this film.
• The Game of the Year (2008-2009) Fallout 3, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic and irradiated wasteland, has a side-quest involving giant mutated fire ants titled "Those!" in homage to the film.

External links

• Them! at the Internet Movie Database
• Them! at Rotten Tomatoes
• Them! at AllRovi
• Them! at the TCM Movie Database

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