It Came from the Screen

Hello my horror fiends and welcome back to It Came From the Screen! I’m your host the Count! What am I the Count of? I am the count of shadows, the Count of the night! What’s that? No, I’m not the Count for Sesame Street, that’s another gentleman entirely. Well now that I’m the count of less readers, let’s talk about some classic horror!

Here at my home, Macabre Manor, I recently took in another classic sci-fi horror film, that being 1954’s Them! You know, the most horrifying of all the pronouns. If you’re unfamiliar it’s the one with the giant ants! And here I was, planning a lovely picnic on Haunted Hill…oh well. 

This black and white creature feature begins with two policemen, Sgt Ben Petersons and his partner, discovering a catatonic little girl wandering through the New Mexican Desert. Upon investigating, they come upon a destroyed trailer that they believe belonged to her parents. 

Not long after, they also discover that the local shopkeeper has been mysteriously killed! A lone footprint is found near the scene of the crime but they can’t tell what made the footprint. The print is sent to the FBI for identification. This attracts not only FBI agent Robert Graham, but also two scientists, Doctor Harold Medford and his daughter, Pat. 

It’s the two doctors who identify the print as belonging to atomically radiated ants! With the doctors’ help, the police, FBI, and army are able to locate the New Mexican nest of giant ants, said to be at least 9 feet. If that’s the size of the ants, just imagine how big the uncles are! Wow!

They defeat the ants with fire…hey, does that make them fire ants? I’ll table that for later.  However, some of the giant eggs have hatched and ultimately some of the ants get away and it’s up to this unit to track them down. 

The ants spread all over the west, making their way to Los Angeles. Hey, didn’t anyone tell them how expensive rent is out there? Now the ants must be stopped here before they can continue to spread and destroy the world as we know it! 

This movie is one of the first 1950s Nuclear Monster movies. It was, after all, only nine years after the dropping of the atomic bomb. It’s also credited as being the first big bug movie. Notice that they didn’t use any red fire ants in this movie. I guess they were afraid they’d be communists!

This movie has a lot of names attached to it! Firstly, it was directed by Gordon Douglas who has a lot of films under his belt because he directed movies for 5 decades! I can’t even concentrate for 5 minutes so my hat goes off to the man. Not literally though, the hat stays on. Always. The story was created by writer George Worthing Yates, who wrote many sci-features including 1962’s Godzilla vs. King Kong! The story was then developed into a screenplay by Ted Sherman who wrote for TV shows like Wagon Train and My Favorite Martian. And finally the screenplay was adapted by Russell Hughes. I guess you could say he was Mr. Write. Ha!

This movie had a lot of characters and cameos! We have James Whitmore as the lead, Police Sgt. Ben Petereson. Whitmore was in a lot of movies and TV in his time. These credits included Oklahoma, the Twilight Zone, and even playing Brooks Hatlen in the Shawshank Redemption! But Personally I couldn’t stop staring at his eyebrows, I don’t know there was just something sort of strange and hypnotic about them. 

This movie also features English actor Edmund Gwenn as Dr. Harold Medford, the doctor who helped identify the giant insects. He really seemed to know his ants in this movie, and I was just convinced he was a scholar. Though that might be in part to his charming accent. Gwenn also played in a ton of movies, way too many to list here, but he was in four Hitchcock Films! 

Gwenn’s daughter, Pat Medford, was played by Joan Weldon. She was a feisty leading lady who refused to be left on the sidelines. She got into the nest along with the boys. She also knew a lot about ants…say…I wonder if she was an aunt herself. Hey, tired of these aunt/ant jokes yet? I know I am! Weldon started out in musicals like the Music Man, and had a career in them, but never sang in her movies. I liked her character a lot because she insisted on being right in on the action. She wasn’t antsy about getting close to danger. Get it?! Antsy? 

And of course FBI agent Robert Graham is played by the one and only James Arness. Arness is no doubt most famous for playing Marshall Matt Dillon on TV’s long running Western Gunsmoke. In fact for a long time it was TV’s longest running scripted show, airing from 1955 to 1975, that is until a little known show called the Simpsons dethroned it. Arness was also in quite a few films, including a film I’ll be sure to talk about later, the Thing From Another World. This would of course go on to inspire a little flick by John Carpenter called the Thing. Ah, you’ve probably never heard of it. 

As I said, there’s a lot of people in this movie. Famous cameos include Fess Parker, who played Davey Crockett on TV, one Leonard Nimoy (before he got his pointy ears), and Dick York, who played on Bewitched. It also briefly featured Olin Howlin, the old man from the Blob. I thought that was a cool coincidence. Thankfully this time he wasn’t poking anything with a stick!

Interestingly, this movie was meant to be both in color and in 3D. You can see remnents of this idea in the color of the opening title, which is red and blue set against a black and white background. And several of the shots intended to be 3D, such as flamethrowers aimed directly into the camera, were left in the movie. But, wouldn’t you know it, equipment malfunctions lead to these ideas being scrapped. Personally the lack of 3D is more than ok with me, I don’t think I can emotionally afford another dimension in my cinema. 

I found this movie to be quite well done. Though it was a little slow in the beginning, it was building a mystery after all, I found the rest of the movie to have a pretty good pace. I thought the film had some pretty good effects too, the giant ants didn’t look too hokey, even decades later. Say, I’d hate to run into them at a picnic! 

It also seemed pretty well researched. I mean, I’m no authority on ants. Actually, I know nothing about them, but the movie had an air of official science. There’s even a scene where the doctors discuss the habits of ants, accompanied by by the kind of educational video a substitute teacher would play. So it seems to me like they did their research. And keep in mind, this was before Wikipedia, so they actually had to read and do research. That’s maybe the most horrifying aspect of this whole film! 

I think this movie and the genre it belongs to caught on for a few reasons. First of all, it was the beginning of the cold war, and the fear of the bomb was new and very real. This is the same fear and fascination, and sense of warning, that created Godzilla the same year. People were afraid of what radiation could do, of what would happen if the bombs were dropped. What new horrors would await in this new atomic age? They took something not usually dangerous to humanity, ants, and made it into a horrifying killing machine. This shows that under the right conditions, or perhaps the wrong ones, anything can be dangerous. 

The other aspect of this film is that of infestation. This plays on a fear that many people have: finding nests where they shouldn’t be. And in this case, the stakes are even higher because if this infestation spreads it’s over for humanity. There’s really something to be said for something that can spread like a virus, especially when it can bite your head off! I wonder if this can also be viewed through the lens of anti communism. Like everyone in the 50s I’m seeing commies everywhere! There was a real fear of the spread of Communism, of infestation that was perceived as the end of our way of life. So are the ants really…Russians? Hey let’s not get too crazy and lean into every theory that comes our  way. 

Now, if you’re into Rotten Tomatoes, this film has a 100% on the site. You really can’t get much better than that, can you? This puts the movie among other such famous flicks as 12 Angry Men and the Adventures of Robin Hood...along with a bunch of other movies I’ve never heard of! 

Anyway, be careful next time you go on a picnic, you might run into Them! That monstrous menace….and I don’t mean your ex!