Rated: NR
Run Time: 94 minutes
Director: Gordon Douglas
Starring: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon
THEM!’s entertainment value as a horror film
is intrinsically noteworthy in itself without any examination of its
significance in post-WWII American culture as a metaphor for its citizens’ fear
of atomic power in an ever more dangerous geopolitical world. Yet it was also just that: a very contextually
relevant movie relative to the era within which it was made. I have never been shy in voicing my
admiration for Stephen King, both regarding his work as an author and his
critical commentary on the genre within which he works: bottom line, Stephen
King is a passionate horror aficionado who has what I consider to be a keen
understanding of how horror works, in either film or print. That we must explore the impact of horror film
and literature through the prism of its sociological import is perhaps not
wholly original, but King’s articulation of the theory in Danse Macabre
is a comprehensive refinement of the notion. At its very core, horror is a genre replete
with cautionary tales; its monsters and ghosts are metaphors and symbols used
to explore our fears across a largely allegorical landscape (except for
exploitation fare like the slasher subgenre; that’s just all about tits and
gore). There is no greater validation of
this theory to be found than in the horror/sci-fi of the 1950s, in America and
elsewhere.
Released three years after the Hawks/Nyby, The Thing, and within the same year as Gojira/Godzilla (itself, we must
remember, Tojo Studios’ answer to The
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms), THEM!
was one of the first (not the first)
movies to address the potentially disastrous consequences facing humanity in
the very new nuclear world if we did not treat “Oppenheimer’s deadly toy” with
care. Pandora’s Box had been
breached. While the consequences of
those fateful discoveries are still being played out in the post-modern world,
that’s not what we’re concerned with today.
I do believe THEM! has
the distinction of being the first giant insect movie, although I suppose Wells
in part got there first in literature, as he so often did, with Food of the
Gods.
THEM!’s opening immediately immerses us in
the action that propels the story (there’s not a lot of fat on the movie’s
bones): A New Mexico State Police
cruiser and airplane are liaisoning ground to air to confirm the report of a
civilian aircraft pilot who said he saw a little girl walking, apparently
aimlessly, through the desert. Just
before they turn in for the day, the pilot spots the girl. He wheels around and turns back to where he
saw movement and at this point, the plane is very much the focal point of the
camera. Then the camera draws back and
downward, showing us the desert-scape. A
little girl with pigtails who is holding a doll walks right into the frame and
the camera begins to follow her advance.
This is a neat idea; I’m not sure why, but I’ve never seen anything quite
like it.
The girl appears catatonic and is
displaying one serious-ass thousand yard stare.
The sergeant of the cruiser, Ben Peterson (a young James
Whitmore), brings the girl back to the car.
The pilot announces he’s found a trailer/mobile home. When Ben and his partner respond to this
scene, they observe several bizarre things:
an unusual impression in the ground (a sort of print), a ransacked
interior whose metal façade has been ripped or shredded outward, the presence of sugar cubes within and without the mobile
home, bloody clothing, other torn fabric, money intact (not a robbery) and a
small revolver. Ben does the old (and much-maligned
among forensic scientists) “pick up the gun by sticking a fucking pen in the
barrel, thus possibly altering the interior of the barrel such that a later
identification cannot be made using unique rifling characteristics .”
Forensic firearms analysis in 1954 was almost certainly not
as advanced at that point, but, even if
the sub-discipline were technologically capable of such examinations, because,
as it turn out, it doesn’t really matter anyway because our suspects are
(***SPOILER ALERT***) giant-ass ants who couldn’t hold a tiny gun
like that in their little claw hands anyway. Ben also finds a piece of the little girl’s
missing doll (a portion of the pre-fabricated head). This is explained without a word of dialogue
as Ben silently demonstrates to his partner how both the small swatch of fabric
and the piece of the doll’s head fit together like pieces of a puzzle; a
wordless and intelligent example of “show, don’t tell” cinematic technique. Now we know where the little girl came from.
Ben’s partner tells us that we have ourselves a 914 (exactly
what I
was thinking). The police
request the assistance of crime scene investigators and an ambulance for the
girl. When she is safely loaded, we hear
for the first time a creepy and exceedingly high-pitched screeching noise. The girl bolts upright and wide-eyed in her
stretcher, until the noise stops. I
appreciate the interesting ways the film builds tension by showing us step by
step that we need to be afraid of
something, because the little girl sure as hell is, even before we know
what it is we should be afraid of.
Ben and his partner next visit the local gas station/feed
supply/convenience store called “Johnson’s” owned and run by Gramps (I thought
they called him Cramps, at first), where they find present many of the same
phenomena as at the trailer site: wooden siding ripped outward, the place
ransacked but nothing missing from the cash register, a shotgun with its barrel
bent crooked, and sugar spilled from a barrel that is crawling with hundreds of
tiny ants (Ben casually runs his fingers through the sugar and ants; it’s a smart
visual and a bit of clever foreshadowing simultaneously). Gramps is there, too, but he’s deader than the
proverbial door nail, lying there in the cellar wide-eyed and bespattered with
blood. Ladies and gentlemen, it looks
like another damned 914.
Ben and partner split up as darkness descends and we hear that
awful, eerie, high-pitched screeching sound.
The deputy (whose name I don’t remember, but let’s call him Barnie for convenience’s
sake because he’s about to die anyway), revolver drawn, goes to investigate. This, as it turns out, is a rather regrettable
decision.
The next day, the New Mexico police authorities (which is
pretty much just Ben at this point, what with Barnie being dead and all) learn
the little girl is the only survivor of a family whose dad was an F.B.I. agent. The family was apparently vacationing in,
that’s right, the fucking desert. Why the
G-man would bring his whole family out into nowhere is beyond me; literally, the
trailer’s in the middle of the goddamned New Mexico desert. Anyway, because of the newly-discovered federal
nexus, the F.B.I. sends out one of their own, another special agent, to assist
in the investigation. The agent’s name
is Robert Graham and he’s played with a sort of breezy authority by James Arness,
who really was one tall motherfucker. He
was, of course, the original “The Thing” itself, and it was his towering
stature that lent that film whatever frightening aura it possesses (I happen to
think it possesses quite a lot).
The group gathered learn from the pathologist who performed
the autopsy that Gramps could have died of several different injuries or
afflictions: neck and back broken, chest crushed, skull fractured, and enough
formic acid in him to kill twenty men. How
exactly he would know what a lethal
dose of formic acid was is a mystery?
Perhaps Mengele experimented with it at Auschwitz (those Germans and
their meticulous documentation). Ladies
and gentlemen, we’re closing in on WTF time.
Then the New Mexico captain goes off and says this asinine thing, like
they have “…lots of evidence loaded with clues.” What? It
reminded me of Churchill’s famous statement about the inscrutability of the Soviet
Union, except when Churchill said it, it made sense.
So now it’s time to call in the experts, and who do they
choose? Entomologists, that’s who. Why?
Well, that‘s a damned good question.
Sure, we know from the poster
that giant ants are at the bottom of this crisis, but they certainly have no reason to believe so at this juncture. The entomologists are the Drs. Medford,
father and daughter. The two quickly (and
rather cryptically) make a connection between the White Sands, New Mexico, site
of the explosion of the first atomic bomb, and the strange phenomena they are made
privy to and which they presently witness.
Do they share any of this with the authorities? No, no they don’t. They just keep on with the cryptic innuendo
without really saying much of anything we or the authorities can make sense of. Perhaps, we should not be too surprised. Medford the Elder is, after all, the world’s
foremost myrmecologist (which I figured was an expert on mythical aquatic
half-women, half-fish creatures). Father
and daughter toss out words like “Formicidae.”
Cryptically…
Anyway, taking the presence of formic acid into
consideration, the senior Dr. Medford waves a small jar of the stuff under the
silent little girl’s nose as an experiment of sorts. Of course, we all know where this is going:
she flips her shit. Her heretofore
frozen, unblinking eyes begin to rapidly rise and fall and she screams. She jumps out of her chair and runs to the
closest thing to a corner, shouting, “Them! Them!” Interestingly, this won’t be the last time
they (the ants, that is) are referred to as such. There next step, as night falls, is to take
another trip to the desert. Before they
do so, Graham tells the older man, “It’s getting late out there, doctor,” to
which Medford Senior replies, “Later than you think.” Cryptically…
In the desert, the doctors, still maintaining silence about
their working theory, discuss the possibility that whatever is responsible for
the recent disappearances has turned carnivorous because its natural diet has
become sparse. I’m no scientist, but I
don’t think it works that way. Besides,
aren’t ants carnivorous anyway? No
matter… The junior doctor, Pat,
separates from the men to investigate something just below a crest or ridge of
sand when that screeching noise returns.
Pat obliviously looks downward when the head of a gigantic ant with
enormous mandibles ascends the crest and provides us our first look at the film’s
villains. We’re off…
The remainder of the film is a thrilling and suspenseful race
against the clock to destroy the ants before THEY overrun and destroy us. As Mr. Dr. Medford says, they are a “A
fantastic mutation probably caused by lingering radiation from the first atomic
bomb.” Directed by Gordon Douglas, THEM! is a tautly paced thriller as the authorities and scientists, on the same page in this one
in terms of knowing the ants must be destroyed, first eradicate a nest only to
find two breeders who can fly have escaped.
Speaking of that, hell, it’s even got Fess Parker in a bit part right
before the launch of “Davy Crocket.” The
effort to both locate the ants and find a way to destroy them assumes the
remainder of the movie’s running time, leading to the justly famous climax
within the storm drains of the City of Angels.
So, here we have our first Man vs. Nature, sub-category: Giant
Insect Movie, with the horrible causative factor being radioactive nuclear
fallout; this, together with alien invaders (those fucking communists), would
be the well from which 50s fantastic cinema would draw again and again, but perhaps
never so successfully or as intelligently as here. (Save for Godzilla, of course, which uses its monster-as-metaphor for nuclear
annihilation with a different twist). “THEM!” is a deserved classic, a
well-crafted movie with sympathetic characters and believable special effects. The resolution in the L. A. storm drains is creepy
and a lastingly iconic image of fantastic cinema & horror/sci-fi (often
copied and later parodied lovingly by Larry Cohen’s “It’s Alive!”). If the film were made today, the denouement
after Dr. Medford’s final cautious remarks about what the future might hold
would almost certainly contain a final scene showing a nest of giant ant eggs
beginning to hatch in some remote and unknown location.
DISPARATE THOUGHTS
Wonderful imagery:
The aerial and then ground view of the ant at the apex of the
desert nest with a human rib cage in its mandibles; the ant drops the detritus
and it rolls down the hill past skulls and other bleached human bones (and the missing
officer’s Sam Brown belt).
The first glimpse of the very heart of the first colony’s
nest: You can see motion within the yet
hatched eggs, all mist and glistening sacs; I would be surprised if Ridley
Scott did not copy this image as a jumping point for the visuals of the facehugger/queen’s
eggs in Alien.
The last view from above (camera vantage, that is) of the
latest winged queens, heads swaying and mandibles clenching and unclenching…justly
famous.
Beautiful New Mexico desert setting, all large cacti and
sagebrush, winds and sands…and big fucking ants.
First of the oversized
animal that otherwise appears naturally in the world and wreaks terrible
destruction movies (Jaws, Grizzly,
Claws, The Swarm, Squirm, Snowbeast (hey, I believe in Yetis), etc.)
– the first age feared nuclear fallout, the next alienation and distrust of
government in the wake of Vietnam (Night
of the Living Dead, The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have
Eyes) the next age toxic waste (Toxic
Avenger, C.H.U.D, Return of the Living Dead, Prophesy,)…what next, I wonder?
About that earlier comment that slasher flicks are just for
horny teenage boys: It would seem that even slasher horror has sociological
merit (however dubious). Carol J.
Glover, whom I would identify, rightly or wrongly, as a Freudian feminist (in
just that order), has quite a bit to say about the subtext of these otherwise
disposable films. I’m looking for a copy
of her Men, Women, & Chainsaws,
but if you, like me, have a difficult time finding that one, check out her
essay in Screening Violence, itself
a tremendously informative look at the historical, aesthetic, and social
aspects of violence in cinema.
The Horror Inkwell Rating: 8/10
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