Them!


Release date(s) June 19, 1954

Running time 	94 min.

Distributed by 	Warner Bros.

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

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.

This is the movie that started the giant bug sub-genre within sci-fi. Sure, cheap B-grade sci- fi would later become typified by radiation-spawned giant tarantulas, grasshoppers, praying mantises, wasps, etc. But when Warner Brothers released Them!, it was the first time audiences had faced giant carnivorous insects. Others would repeat the premise, but never matched the power of Them! and the giant ants. It pays to be first.

Them! is in black and white, but not because it was done by one of the usual B-grade studios. Warner Brothers, an "A" studio" got cold feet just prior to shooting and scaled back the budget. Plans to shoot color were scrapped. In many ways, this not only didn't hurt Them!, but actually helped. Them! was Warner Bros. top grossing movie of 1954, which included Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, a variant of the Edgar Allan Poe story, Phantom of the Rue Morgue, and a Doris Day / Frank Sinatra romance, Young at Heart. Given the context, Them! was more of a solid successful A film than B-cheapy.

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, New Mexico, 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 where soon after he is 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 twenty men."

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

The elder Doctor 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, screaming "Them! Them!" Returning to the destroyed trailer with Peterson, Graham, and his daughter, Medford has his theory dramatically given its final proof when the group encounters a 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 kill the creature with a Thompson submachine gun after finding that their revolvers have little effect. They aimed for the antennae on Medford's advice that they were helpless without them.

A U.S. Air Force unit is brought in, led by General O'Brien (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 as 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 and subsequently sunk by a U.S. Navy cruiser. From the rantings of an alcoholic, and an investigation into the death of a father protecting his two young, now missing, sons from an apparent ant attack, 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, named Mike and Jerry, alive, trapped near the entrance to the nest. Peterson 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 the first boy, Jerry, however, another ant appears from behind. Peterson saves the second boy, Mike, lifting him into the pipe. However, 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 his abdomen.

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, in excruciating pain, is only able to utter his 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 seals him off from the rest of the men as they march towards the egg chamber; several ants charge him, but Graham 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