Them!

Gordon Douglas
1954

Man may mastered the atom but can he handle the consequences? This momentous and irrevocable change in world history can only lead to one thing: giant carnivorous ants! This freak of the nuclear age becomes a worldwide crises that can only be overcome by the cooperation of the scientific community and the army....maybe.

'Them!' is one of those great cold war anxiety sci-fi films of the fifties that goes to great lengths to glorify the military while not so subtly denouncing the A-bomb. Talk about your noble white guys! The studios put their hunkiest actors in uniform and create a blonde, gleaming grinned G. I. joe archetype. Almost everything about this picture seems like it was made specifically for adolescent boys. The fetishistic use of flamethrowers and bazookas is so awesome that it makes you want to go into the backyard and torch your toys with a can of hairspray and a bic like you used to.

The giant ants themselves get a good amount of screentime after an appropriate build-up and work pretty spectacularly as visuals. The ultra-apocalyptic fuddy duddy scientist cryptically references the Bible constantly, and there's a great scene where the nation's top brass are assembled to sit in for a lecture on ant behavior.

This is a great picture and any classic science-fiction fan should definitely check it out.

Review by Brett A. Scieszka