Them! is a 1954 black-and-white science fiction giant monster film starring James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, and James Arness. Produced by David Weisbart, the film was directed by Gordon Douglas, based on an original story by George Worthing Yates that was developed into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman, with adaptation by Russell Hughes. The film is one of the first of the 1950s "nuclear monster" movies, and the first with big bugs as the threat. A nest of gigantic irradiated ants is discovered in the New Mexico desert, and they quickly become a national threat when it is found that two young queens and their consorts have escaped to establish new colonies. The national search that follows culminates in a battle with the last surviving colony in the concrete spillways and storm drain system of Los Angeles. Critical reception was largely positive at the time of release, and Them! came to be regarded as one of the best American science fiction films of the 1950s. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the special effects category.
Plot In 1954, New Mexico State Police Sergeant Ben Peterson and his partner, Ed Blackburn, discover a little girl wandering the desert in a catatonic state near Alamogordo, and the ravaged and abandoned travel trailer she came from a few miles away. The officers summon an ambulance for the girl, and, while the scene is processed, go to a nearby rural general store. They find it destroyed in the same way as the trailer, and the owner's dead, mutilated body in the cellar. No money was taken at either crime scene. Peterson leaves Blackburn alone to wait for backup, and Blackburn hears a strange, pulsating sound outside. He investigates, and disappears after shooting his gun at something and screaming in agony. The owner of the trailer is found to be an FBI agent, so Agent Robert Graham is called in from the local FBI office to help Peterson. He sends a cast of a print found near the trailer to Washington, D.C., for analysis, and is surprised when he receives word that Drs. Harold and Pat Medford, father and daughter myrmecologists, are being sent by the Department of Agriculture. On an educated hunch, Harold exposes the little girl to the scent of formic acid. The odor releases her from her catatonia, leaving her shrieking in panic, "Them! Them!" Peterson and Graham take the Medfords to where the trailer was found. While searching the area, Pat is accosted by a giant foraging ant, and Harold directs Peterson and Graham to shoot off the ant's antennae to blind it, before Peterson kills it with a submachine gun. Harold theorizes that the ants were mutated by radiation from the first atomic bomb test near Alamogordo, and have turned carnivorous from lack of a suitable food supply in the desert. A helicopter search of the desert discovers a giant ant nest, surrounded by human remains. Cyanide gas bombs are tossed inside, and Graham, Peterson, and Pat enter to explore. At the lowest level, Pat finds evidence that two queens have hatched and flown away. Harold declares that, if the queens are allowed to establish new colonies and the ants continue to spread, mankind may cease to be Earth's dominant species within a year. The search area is widened, though the reason for the operation is kept top secret to avoid mass panic. Graham and Pat travel to Brownsville, Texas, to interrogate a ranch foreman committed to a mental hospital after claiming he was forced down in his plane by UFOs shaped like giant ants. One ant queen is discovered to have boarded a freighter in Acapulco, Mexico, when, out in the Pacific Ocean, its offspring emerge and attack the crew. The United States Navy cruiser that responds to the distress call finds only two surviving sailors in the water, and the freighter is sunk by naval gunfire. A report about a shipment of stolen sugar leads the investigators to a Los Angeles hospital, where a chronic alcoholic claims he has seen giant ants in the city's storm drain system. When they also trace the movements of a man whose mutilated body was found in the area back to the drains and discover another giant ant print, they are convinced that both the final missing queen and the man's two missing young sons are somewhere in the over 700 miles of tunnels under the city. Martial law is declared in Los Angeles, and a curfew imposed. Peterson, Graham, and the Medfords help the armed forces search the drain network, and Peterson finds the boys trapped by some ants. He calls for reinforcements and is just able to lift the boys to safety before being attacked and killed. Graham arrives with backup, and the queen and her hatchlings are located. The Medfords confirm that no new queens have gotten away and sanction the destruction of the nest. Graham wonders what havoc might ensue from all of the other nuclear explosions in the past decade, and Harold responds that mankind has entered a new world, and no one can predict what we will find.
Cast
Cast notes Leonard Nimoy has a small, uncredited part as a U.S. Army staff sergeant in the communications room. Other actors who appear in small, uncredited parts include Booth Colman, Walter Coy, Richard Deacon, Dorothy Green, Jan Merlin, Douglas Spencer, Harry Tyler, and Harry Wilson. When casting his planned Davy Crockett episode of the Disneyland television series, Walt Disney viewed the film to see James Arness, who had been recommended for the title role. Disney, however, was more impressed by a scene with Fess Parker as an inmate in the mental ward of the Texas hospital. Watching Parker's performance, Disney realized he had found his Davy Crockett. John Wayne saw the film and, impressed with Arness' performance, recommended him for the role of Marshal Matt Dillon in the new Gunsmoke TV series, a role that Arness would play from 1955 to 1975.
Production
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