Them! (1954)

 

Them! (1954)

 

1945 was the birth of the Atomic Age, which saw the largest and bloodiest conflict in the whole of Human History ended by a Science-Fictional Super-Weapon, and it worked deep into our Darkest Fantasies. Atomic Power, Weapons, and the effects of Radiation, were poorly understood by the public because of a combination of Government Suppression of Scientific Information and a populous that wasn't educated enough to grapple with the concepts even when they weren’t lied to.

 

Another consequence of the War was the GI Bill, first passed in 1944, which encouraged more Americans to receive College Educations than would've been imaginable prior to USA entry into the War in 1941, and direct Defense Department investment in Math and Science Education on the Primary and Secondary School Levels (this would not begin in earnest until the passing of the National Defense Education Act in 1958, so after this film’s release), This was a Federal Program explicitly contradicting the goals of other Federal Departments’ Disinformation Campaigns. Better Education would eventually, largely, win the day, but a proper Education is not an over-night affair.

 

As far as serious Dramas went, Hollywood’s reaction to the Bomb/Nuclear Threat/Nuclear Power ranged from indifferent to embarrassing (the first drama on the subject, the risible “The Beginning or the End” (1947) concerning the Manhattan Project, is justly forgotten, though in fairness the second, “Above and Beyond” (1952) concerning the Enola Gay mission, also forgotten, was a vast improvement) leaving the burden on Genre films, like Spy Thrillers and SF, to do much of the heavy-lifting even though they were woefully not up to the task.

 

Ultimately, the SF, playing on our collective Ignorance, that had the most influence. Notably, Radiation became a new Alchemy and faced with what may, or may not, crawl out of the Witch’s Caldron, these films are notable that figures of Authority still commanded respect, in the Real-World, they’d recently saved the world from Fascism and were now the only defense we had against Communism, and in almost every film the Heroes are Government-employed “Capable Men” (a phrase employed to describe a stock character most associated with Robert Heinlein, the most Militaristic of that era’s Top-Shelf SF authors). Capable Men were Professional, Adaptable, Self-Sacrificing, and always fit perfectly into the Chain-of-Command. But there was another thing, always beneath the surface, though Virtue is expressed through collective Professional Identities, that collective has also become Faust, now scrambling to figure out how to deal with the consequence of our Deal with the Devil.

 

The very first of the Giant Atomic-Monster movies was “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” (1953) which featured great Stop-Motion FX work by the legendary Ray Harryhausen and established a remarkably imitate-able story structure, right down to what kind of Character was needed to fulfill what kind of Role to get things done in a certain specific order to keep the narrative pacing tight. Two years later came “Them,” which followed the model closely and proved superior and therefore more influential. Today it is understood that the template for 1950s SF films were set by three movies: “The Thing from Another World” (1951) gave us both Flying Saucers and a Base-Under-Siege; this film; and late comer “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) showed us how to exploit fears of Subversion and Loss of Identity. Notably is the Communist Threat is something one could taste in all, but a plot-point in none, unless one say “Invasion of the …” as a metaphor for Communism, and plenty saw it as a metaphor for the ideological polar opposite, McCarthyism.

 

Producer Ted Sherdeman commissioned this film’s original story from Writer George Worthing Yates, which was to concern giant ants nesting in the New York subway (that location would change). Sherdeman told Cinefantastique magazine, "the idea appealed to me very much because, aside from man, ants are the only creatures in the world who plan and wage war, and nobody trusted the atomic bomb at that time." Then Sherdeman and Writer Russell Hughes developed the script.

 

They chose to tell the first half far more as a Mystery story than “The Beast from …” a film where at least one person knows what’s going on from the very beginning. In “Them” two New Mexico State Troopers (the more important played by James Whitmore) discover a six-year-old girl (Sandy Descher) wandering around the desert in a state of shock. When she’s identified, it is established she had been with her parents on a vacation trip. Now the parents can’t be located and foul play is suspected. This is made more serious because her father was an FBI Agent.

 

We, the Audience, are given tantalizing hints that the other Characters take longer to notice (we, in the Audience, also saw the marque poster, which provided far more than a hint of what was coming). While lying in an ambulance, a peculiar, vibrating sound prompts the girl to sit up, transfixed, staring blankly into space. The sound ceases and she lies back down, unnoticed by the two men attending her. Then in the hospital, she is given a sniff of formic acid by the Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn), who would prove to be the Film’s Scientific Detective. This brings her out of her catatonia, but only to send her into Hysterics, as she starts screaming, “Them! Them!”

 

Actors Whitmore and Gwenn would provide the film’s two strongest performances. While most others were restrained by having to be button-down in all things, Whitmore is remarkably warm and appealing and Gwenn humanizes his Character’s brilliance with fussy eccentricity.

 

The mystery deepens when Trooper Whitmore investigates the disappearance of ‘Gramps’ Johnson and the strange vandalism to his general store. The store has been half-demolished by something seemingly stronger than a man, that seems to have burst from the inside-out, not the outside-in, and the cash register remains full. Oddly, the sugar containers have been ransacked. A beautiful touch is as the cops sift through the wreckage; the radio cackles away. Malaria, the Radio Announcer declares, is being eradicated in many parts of the globe. Another victory for Modern Science.

 

It had already been established these events proximity to the very real place of Alamogordo, which in turn is close to where the Manhattan Project exploded its first Atomic Bomb, nine years before.

 

It’s now a movie cliché that Local and Federal Law Enforcement are mutually hostile, which level of government is the more incompetent has become a short hand for establishing the Scriptwriter’s Ideological Agenda. But this film was made before those tensions were much milked in fiction, and when the FBI arrive, they work with the State Troopers hand in glove. The central FBI agent is played by James Arness, and this large role is a measure of how much is career had advanced in the three years when he was nearly invisible as the Monster in “The Thing from ...” Actor John Wayne was so impressed with Arness’ work that he recommended him for TV’s “Gunsmoke” (radio series first aired 1952, TV series first aired 1955, when Arness entered the Cast) which became the defining role of his career.

 

There something fascinating in this film’s attitude wherein we are okay if we put faith in the Government’s ability to solve Catastrophic Problems, even problems like the ones in this film that the Government, itself, created. If one arm of the Government does not succeed, then call in another. By the time this film is over, the amount of Local, State, and Federal Resources that are applied to eradicating the Menace is breathe-taking. But this is a Conservative, reflecting the USA of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the contrast in the attitudes of films then and now just goes to show how much both Conservative and Liberal ideology has shifted over the decades. Regarding the Conservative, it was increasing influence of Libertarians and Tax Protestors over the Republican Party, Eisenhower would today be called a “Socialist” by those who have completely forgotten the era’s triumphant Economic Expansion and extraordinary outlays for infrastructure development. The US has never had a Socialist President and what too many call Socialist now was the thinking of Liberal Democrat FDR and Republican Cold-Warrior Eisenhower. Sixty years later, when distrust of the Government is reflexive both on the Right and Left, a film today would have the Heroes bucking the Incompetence and Corruption of the System that unleashed the Threat. Moreover, the Government’s attempts at Secrecy wouldn’t be casually acquiesced to the way they are in this film but, instead, Self-Righteously Condemned.

 

The film is full of humorous lines, but they are kept low-key, protecting the film from de-evolving into Camp. The funniest, and it says a lot about when the film was made that this scenes’ humor had no sinister over tones, concerns a pilot from Texas who spotted a queen ant that escaped the USA Army. “All of a sudden, I seen these, these flying saucers—three of ‘em, one big one and two little ones . . . They were shaped like—well, like ants.” To protect National Security this wholly Innocent man who is telling the truth is locked up in the Psyche Ward by our Heroes. The Actor, who wasn’t listed in the credits, was Fess Parker. He completely steals the scene, and so impressed Disney that they reached out to him for the role of Real-Life frontiersman Davy Crockett, which proved to be their big hit the next year.

 

That’s late-ish in the film. In fact, Suspense and Expectation is finely held for fully twenty-eight minutes of the running time before the nature of the Threat is fully revealed. Finally, with our intrepid Investigators out in the desert and vulnerable to a sand storm, we hear the frightening cricket-like sounds, like what the girl heard in the ambulance, and see the Giant Ants. Not back projection of magnified natural beasts or Stop-Motion, the more typical approaches of the day, but full-size mechanicals, first revealed as one’s massive head comes probing over a sand dune and threatening the Brilliant Scientist’s Beautiful Daughter who is also the film’s nominal Love-Interest (Joan Weldon).

 

Does it look fake? Yes, but only by today’s far more advanced standards of technological illusion. But even flawed, even today, the Ants are spectacular. Their movements (albeit limited) are fluidly alive, and even in recognizing they are models, there is also the powerful realization that they are in fact there, sharing the reality with the Actors in a way that more adaptable Stop-Motion of Ray Harryhausen couldn’t.

 

Two main Ants were constructed, one fully, the other minus the hindquarters and mounted on a boom for mobility. Behind this, a whole crew, mounted manipulated the various knobs and levers that made the mechanical model come alive. Douglas laughed: "You would have a shot where an ant comes into the picture and if you glanced back behind the creature you would see about 20 guys, all sweating like hell!" A number of "extra" ants were also constructed for scenes where large numbers of the creatures appeared, but where mobility was not essential. These ant models were equipped only with heads and antenna that would be activated by the force from the wind-machines used to whip up the sand storms required on the desert locations.

 

One the film’s triumphs was the flawless composition of every frame, obvious even before this point, but with the ants now in frame, it was an absolute necessity. They are on screen and in the center of the action a surprising lot for a such a film, but Director Gordon Douglas and Cinematographer Sidney Hickox, never allow the Illusion to be threatened. Careful blocking and inference allow us in the audience to ultimately “see” more of the Ants then we are actually being shown.

 

Unlike Supernatural Thriller, or even an SF with more overt Gothic elements, dream-like irrationality would not serve this film’s ultimate purpose. An Illusion of Realism is the heart of its style of thrills, which may be one of the reasons that all the Heroes represent an Official-dom and few seem to have any identities outside their dedication to their jobs. Though the premise is Scientifically untenable (the film’s version of Radioactive Mutation is nothing more than Magic, the Ant’s became Super-Strong in a manner inconsistent with the Physics of their Gigantism, and most Impossible of all, the Queen couldn’t take flight and carry her massive bulk for hundreds of miles) but the film’s austere but vivid Documentary-style keeps any such Logical Questions at bay. Moreover, it is set in very real places, and at very real times. There’s a joke told about President Harry Truman and in the Real-World he would’ve been preparing his departure from the Office of the Presidency just as the film was just starting production. It is like a newsreel of events unfolding at the very moment that the audience sat in those darkened theaters in 1954.

 

This was a decently budgeted, “A” release. Though I have not found many tales of difficulties during the shooting, the project was repeatedly stymied in pre-production, and it was only through the tireless efforts of Producer Sherdeman that it got realized, and his Producer’s credit counted more than David Weisbart who was clearly more focused on the development of another film, “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955). The budget was cut repeatedly before filming began, and ironically, likely benefitted from it. It was initially supposed to have been shot in 3-D, a new, awkward, and unconvincing, process that had been introduced to mass-commercial audiences with “Man in the Dark” and “House of Wax” (both 1953) and also to be filmed in color, with the Ants having an unconvincing-sounding greenish glow. These Ants in the film have the rare distinction in 1950s monster cinema that they are more convincing on-screen in B&W than in the color movie poster.

 

Like most 50's Monster Fair, it’s full of Biblical allusions, but unlike most, it doesn’t over-play them. The realism buttresses these gestures, like Character Dr. Harold intoning, “We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true and there shall be destruction and darkness that come of the creation and the beasts shall reign over the Earth,” which sounded far more effective than his parallel Character from “The Beast from…” Professor Thomas Nesbitt (Paul Christians) intoning, "What the cumulative effects of all these atomic explosions and tests will be, only time will tell." And the final confrontation is in the underworld of Los Angelas, the City of Angels.

 

It is just before the climax that public is finally alerted to the dangers. The Monsters, having a few months to breed, face off Police and Army in LA’s storm drains. In the effectively creepy with smoky darkness and Marines with flamethrowers and machine guns hunting down the last surviving Queen and her secret egg chamber. The influence this had on the later film “Aliens” (1986) is obvious.

 

The film was nominated for an Oscar in 1955 for Best Special Effects. 

 

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2PLls02gOU