Them! (Snapcase Packaging)
by Gordon Douglas
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DVD details
Actor: Edmund Gwenn, James Arness, James Whitmore, Joan Weldon, Onslow StevensDirector: Gordon Douglas
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Sidney Hickox
Editor: Thomas Reilly
Producer: David Weisbart
Writer: George Worthing Yates
Writer: Russell S. Hughes
Writer: Ted Sherdeman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-08-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Them! (Snapcase Packaging)
DVD Review: With a great script you can do anything. . .
Summary: 4 Stars
The menacing insects in this fine sci-fi from 1954 can't hold a candle to what they would look like with the benefit of today's sophisiticated special effects. But with a script this tight (thanks to Ted Sherdeman and Russell Hughes), sharp, no-nonsense direction by Gordon Douglas, plenty of atmosphere, and characters this engaging, the old-fashioned look of the terrorizing mutants doesn't matter.
THEM! was based on a story by George Worthing Yates, and made in the apocalyptic mode of the atomic post-war era, when the memory of Hiroshima and the birth of the atomic age was very much to the fore. THEM! is the best of a group of films made during this period, in which humanity is warned, through the rise of mutant species resulting from atomic radiation, of the dangers lurking behind the door that science has just opened.
THEM! opens in the deserts of New Mexico (not too far from White Sands, where the first atomic test bombs were exploded), as Sergeant Ben Peterson, a state trooper (James Whitmore, in an affecting portrayal of what could have been a stock character) picks up a little girl wandering through the scrub in shock, clutching a doll with a broken head. She is unable to speak and tell Ben and his partner, Ed Blackburn, who she is or where she came from, but they quickly come upon a trailer where they find the other piece of the doll's head on the floor. The trailer has been badly damaged and there is no sign of the child's family. They also find an unidentifiable print in the sand not far from the trailer, and make a cast of it. When Ben and Ed visit the nearby store of a local old-timer, Gramps Johnson, to find out if he has seen anything unusual, they find the store pulled apart in the same way as the trailer, and Gramps dead at the bottom of his cellar. Ben leaves Ed at the store to explore further - but when he returns, Ed has also disappeared.
As it turns out, the trailer belongs to an FBI agent on vacation with his family, and, assuming that his and his family's disappearance is a violent crime, the FBI sends agent Bob Graham (James Arness, in the second of his classic sci-fi appearances, only this time he's recognizable) to investigate. Ben is distraught, as he feels responsible for leaving Ed alone in Gramps's store. As he and Bob are introduced, the coroner comes in with the report on Gramps's body, and tells them that there was "enough formic acid in him to kill twenty men." Nonplussed and with no leads, Bob sends the cast of the strange print off to his FBI office in Washington, in case anyone there can identify it.
Someone does: Dr. Medford, a specialist in myrmicology (the study of ants, the term taken, for the classically-minded out there, from the Greek "myrmidos": in Homer's "Iliad", Achilles's troops were called the "Myrmidons" because out on the field they looked like a swarm of black ants). Unable to believe their eyes, Dr. Medford and his daughter, Pat, who has followed her father into his scientific specialty, catch the first plane out to New Mexico to find out whether the print is real or a hoax.
Of course, it's not a hoax, as the doctors Medford, Bob, and Ben quickly find out. As the four search the desert the same day for more prints, in a rising sandstorm, they meet their first specimen of the new breed of giant ant that has evolved in the desert in the aftermath of the atomic tests. The team barely escapes from the encounter, and as they do so, the two myrmicologists remind Ben and Bob that ants live in colonies, and that their problems are just beginning.
From then on, the film follows the team as it tries to locate the nests of the giant ants, and discover whether queen ants have hatched from these, flown away, and established new nests in other locations. The government and the military are brought in, and, with the four main characters spearheading the search and destroy mission, this first-class sci-fi races to its finish in the underground sewer tunnels of Los Angeles.
The crisp pace of the film is due to a terrific script that moves forward with locomotive speed, and that provides its characters with snappy, adult, engaging dialogue. The scenes inside the ants' nests, where the characters must go in order to find out whether queen ants have hatched and left, are genuinely frightening. There are also some touching human moments, as the haggard mother of two children trapped inside the tunnels waits outside, her husband already killed by the ants, as Ben battles inside to save the children's lives.
The actors give colorful yet believable performances, not least Edmund Gwenn (Mr. Claus from "Miracle on 34th Street") as the eccentric senior Dr. Medford, James Arness as the stalwart Agent Graham, James Whitmore as the gruff yet tender-hearted Sgt. Ben Peterson, and stage actress Joan Weldon as the junior Dr. Medford. The attractive Weldon was not happy in Hollywood and returned to the stage after this film. Her height, unusual for the era, makes her a nice match for the rangy, 6'6" Arness, and they both do a creditable job navigating some 1950s moments surrounding the unusual scenario of a brainy career woman as the romantic interest of a not-that-brainy hero. Arness to Weldon soon after they meet: "Look, Miss, um, Dr., er . . ."; Weldon to Arness: "Well, if the "doctor" bothers you, why don't you just call me Pat?". In a similar echt-1950s moment, Weldon gets off the plane in southern New Mexico, in the 110-degree heat, in a wool suit, hat, gloves, and high heels - the same outfit she wears later to visit the desert in a sandstorm. A small cameo by Fess Parker as a Texas pilot who encounters the ants while airborne, and gets sent to a mental institution when he reports it, won Parker the role of Davy Crockett after Walt Disney saw the movie. Also, viewers of a certain age should see if they can identify the actor playing a junior naval officer who appears onscreen only for a few seconds, as he hands a "top secret report" to a typist. This was Arness's second foray into this genre - his first was as the giant blood-drinking vegetable/man in Howard Hawks's original (and far superior to John Carpenter's overblown remake), "The Thing". The future Marshal Matt Dillon is to be congratulated on wandering into not one, but two of the best early science fiction films ever made.
Mention must also go to Bronislau Kapers' eerie, tingly score, with its now famous whistling signature sound for the ants, and the excellent black and white production. Note the overlay of color, though, faintly visible on the opening titles, the only remnant of the initial efforts to shoot the film in color. Looking at it today, it is hard to imagine that the clean, black and white look of the film could have been improved upon.
THEM! shows its age in a couple of places, but for the most part holds up wonderfully, and deserves its high rank in the canons of this particular science-fiction genre.
Description of Them! (Snapcase Packaging)
ATOMIC BLAST FALLOUT SPAWNS HIDEOUS HORDES OF COLOSSAL ANTS WHO THREATEN TO ESCAPE THE NEW MEXICO DESERT AND OVERRUN THENATION.Bestsellers in DVD
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