Sometimes, there’s nothing like a good ol’ flick about giant
slightly unconvincing creepy crawlies mutated by the power of SCIENCE!,
isn’t there?
In this quick little review, we’ll go back to 1954, when the
giant radioactive monster craze was first kicking off—first in Japan with a little giant lizard film, and then in the US with this. The Japanese took their atomic
horrors very seriously, and as I looked in my retrospective, the end result was
very dark and morose. The American one is somewhat more bravado-laden, as you
may expect—the dangers of nuclear proliferation are touched on, but most of it
focuses on the heroes finding the best way to sock those bug-eyed tamales in
the face!
The film starts off somewhat deliberately, dealing with a
creepy murder mystery scenario in the desert. We all know what’s coming, but it’s
paced pretty well—the cop protagonists are constantly discovering new clues, driving
things forward and building up the tension as you sense the titular terror
coming closer and closer. Eventually, we do see the slightly goofy giant ants
in full view—yeah, you can chuckle, but next to such masterpieces of the fifties
like Robot Monster, or the literal live grasshoppers placed on city backdrops like
in Beginning of the End, the animatronics here aren’t half bad for the time.
For much of the rest of the film, a very British scientist
played by Edmund Gwenn and his daughter, Joan Weldon, spearhead the efforts to
root out this particularly annoying sugar-seeking infestation. Joan’s character,
surprisingly, takes little crap from the machismo of the men and even joins the
front lines at the climactic battle—for the fifties, this is a pretty damn
solid female character.
You have some of the usual clichés of the time, like the scientists
crowding around to look at a slideshow of the actual animals these freaks
mutated from, and the gung-ho army guys being mobilized to deal with it. The
climax involves flamethrower-armed troops doing battle beneath Los Angeles—you can
definitely see how this may have influenced Aliens, Starship Troopers, and other
arthropod-amplifying creature features of decades yet to come. It definitely makes
up for the somewhat slow middle act, which is mostly just the heroes figuring
out what to do.
Overall, Them!, while still having some of the typical fifties
monster flick traits, is still watchable sixty-five years later, and better
paced and written than the schlock that would spring up in its wake, like a
million radioactive replicas. You can enjoy it for what it is, or get a chuckle
out of the googly-eyed formic menace—either way, if you want a decent sample of
what the era produced, this is definitely one to go with.
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