Them!

(1954) dir. Gordon Douglas
viewed: 10/16/09

The first of the “big bug” monster movies, and apparently one of the first monster movies that stemmed the origin of the monster from nuclear radiation, Them! is a recognizable classic in 1950′s B-movie horror.  It’s funny, but growing up with a particular penchant for these films, I had my group of “favorites”, among which, Them! tended to stay.  None of the other “big bug” movies were quite up there, though I always kind of liked Tarantula (1955) but I don’t know if I ever saw The Deadly Mantis (1957).  As for other nuclear influenced monsters, 1954 was also the birth of Gojira (1954), the biggest and most popular of such creatures.

This was Friday Night Movie Night with the kids with this week’s installment being played out to all four kids of the household, both Felix and Clara and the girls from upstairs.  My internal marketing of the film (talking it up a tad to the kids during the week: giant ants, nuclear radiation, little girl screaming “Them!”) has apparently paid off.  And actually, despite what you might think, they all really liked the movie.  I think Samantha summed it up well in saying something akin to: “I like these movies because they are scary but not too scary.”

They were even asking for more.

I saw Them! some years back on one of the cable channels that plays horror films over the Halloween month of October, and I had recalled that it had continued to impress me many years later.  And as I watched it this time, I sort of recollected a thought that had struck me the time before, how not only was this movie a prototype of a kind in its time, but in many ways seems to lay out quite a lot of the template for much of James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), particularly when James Whitmore, James Arness, and Joan Weldon venture down with gas masks and blow torches into the hive of the ants (after having gassed them with poison).  They venture into a maze of dead beasts til they find the birthing place of the hive, with egg casings, and seeking the queen, and then they end up battling it out with a few of the workers that had survived.  This trope is played out again in the finale in the underground waterways of Los Angeles.  Obviously, the aliens carry a heavier art design and are more foreign, but it’s interesting that something from a B-movie 30 years before could find it’s way into a big film of that era.

Watching it with the kids has its downsides.  They ask lots of questions, some important, some frivolous, but so many that we had to stop the movie several times.  It’s part of the pleasure, certainly, talking about the film (though I prefer to do it after the film rather than during.)  And I kept having to tell them that if they stopped talking and listened, they would have most of their questions answered.

But, part of marketing the film to them puts some of the ideas into their heads, and while they are awaiting the appearance of the giant ants, the build-up of the “mystery” is challenging for them to fully appreciate, though this film offered a good example of why that structure works.  Because the film begins with some police cruising in the desert, looking for a reportedly lost and wandering little girl, who they find, catatonic, and then her trailer, torn to shreds, missing her parents and sibling.  This is followed by the finding of a convenience store, also torn asunder, with the dead body of the owner down in the basement.  I was having to explain that the police didn’t know that it was giant ants yet, they had a mystery on their hands.  And this part of the film intrigued Samantha the most.

It’s a great flick, very much of its era, and while the giant ants themselves are little in comparison with special effects since that time, they are strong enough to get a fair amout of screen time and the killings of a couple of characters is shown with moderately graphic intensity.  Of its type, Them! is a true classic of the period.  And it holds up pretty well.

Right now, we’re thinking The Fly (1958) for our next film, though I’m also considering The Wolf Man (1941).  Samantha was also asking for us to return to Buster Keaton.  After Halloween, I told her, after Halloween.