“THEM!”

This is not the first time I’ve shown Them! Ten years ago I played an original 16mm print of it at the old LaSalle Bank revival theatre in Chicago during my “Atomic Cinema” series. It was a program that dealt with the atom bomb in the movies. Them! was screened as part of a double feature with The Magnetic Monster. Tonight’s film will certainly make you glow in the dark—not from radioactivity, but from the sheer enjoyment in watching it. It’s one of the best films of 1954, which was a great year for science fiction. Audiences saw films like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Godzilla, and Creature From the Black Lagoon, although Creature is considered more a product of the horror genre. The irony of Them!’s success is that Jack Warner, the head of the studio, hated it and slashed the budget. Plans to shoot the film in Warnercolor and in 3-D were abandoned. Despite this sabotage, Them! became the studio’s highest grossing film at the box office in 1954.

Them! followed the lead of 1953’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in that both exploited our fears of living in the atomic age. But Them! is more than just a great giant bug movie. It’s simply a great movie with solid story construction and atmospheric direction. It was made by Gordon Douglas, a journeyman director whose credits ranged from “Our Gang” shorts in the 1930s to crime thrillers like Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in 1950. He worked in all genres but was never mistaken for an auteur, especially in the wake of 1955’s Sincerely Yours—the notoriously bad Liberace movie. But something just clicked with Douglas behind the camera on Them! The film holds you in suspense right from the beginning when we see a little girl in shock wandering the desert. Them! unfolds like a mystery. It’s also a police procedural.

First page of Them!’s final draft…

The original story was written by George Worthing Yates and then later turned into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman and Russell Hughes. The original treatment had the giant ants infesting the New York subway system. Early story drafts included some pretty fascinating ideas, like a queen ant fighting a giant bear. It’s easy to imagine Ray Harryhausen animating such a sequence. But as the story evolved it became clear that this was going to be something intended for 3-D, which necessitated large-scale insect parts that could reach out into the audience. That would not have been possible if the film had been shot using stop-motion miniatures.

In Bill Warren’s Keep Watching the Skies, which is the only book you need on ‘50s science fiction, he writes, “The huge ant models built by studio technician Dick Smith—not the later makeup artist—were designed to be filmed in color. According to Steve Rubin in Cinefantastique… two full-sized ants were constructed which could be operated from behind by levers and pulleys. They were painted a purplish green, and their bulging eyes seethed with red and blue, all of which is lost in black and white. A couple of other ant heads and forequarters were built, but those seen at the end were simply loose puppets whose heads were tossed around by wind machines.”

We can only imagine what the effect would’ve looked like seeing those large props three-dimensionally had the budget not been cut. Nevertheless, there are shots in Them! that are clearly staged for 3-D. We see ants breaking through walls and flamethrowers bursting into the camera. The depth of focus in these sequences would’ve looked pretty spectacular to moviegoers wearing their colored glasses, especially the descent into the underground ant nest.

However, the downgrading helped the production in other ways. The black and white photography actually compliments the “Dragnet”-like tone of the film. Of Them!’s lack of color, Warren writes, “The picture probably also benefitted from being in black and white. Warnercolor at this time tended to be rather garish, and the use of the monochrome distinctly helped the documentary aspects of the picture. It’s doubtful the spooky scenes in the gas-filled ant nest, or the sequences of jeeps, roaring around in the storm drains, would have been as effective in color as they are in black and white. It’s contradictory to logic, but black and white made films seem more real, and since realism is striven for throughout Them!, the picture becomes more convincing because it is not in color.”

Beyond its story and special effects the film benefits from a solid cast. James Whitmore plays Sergeant Ben Peterson who is the emotional heart of the movie. Whitmore was a native of New York who would later serve in the United States Marines. He was a member of the famed Actors Studio in New York and had an extensive theatre career that included Broadway. His first major film was 1949’s Battleground for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s he appeared on several classic television shows including “The Twilight Zone.” In later years he was seen in 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption. And in the world of television commercials he was instantly recognizable to gardeners around the world as the spokesman for “Miracle-Gro.”

Edmund Gwenn plays Professor Medford in this film, bringing humor and more importantly a sense of authority to his character, who formulates a theory about the strange occurrences in the desert. Gwenn is best known to audiences as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34^th Street. He was an English-born actor whose stage career began in 1895. He appeared in many plays by George Bernard Shaw before serving in World War I. When he settled in Hollywood he became a character actor in dozens of films. After Them! he made only two more films before his death—one of which was Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry.

Joan Weldon plays Medford’s daughter, Pat. Weldon was a singer from San Francisco. She would later have a short career in television before resuming her singing career. But she found her immortality as the woman in the desert who screams at the first sighting of the ant. Nothing she appeared in after this matched the impact of Them!, although by her appearance in this film she might’ve made an excellent Lois Lane on television! She’s been retired since 1980. Of her experience on the film, Joan told author Tom Weaver, “Even Gordon Douglas didn’t take it seriously when he was first assigned to it. He said at one point that they should get Martin and Lewis to star in the thing! He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing—nobody really knew! I had no problems with Gordon Douglas, but he related better, I think, to the men… Edmund Gwenn was a doll. An absolutely lovely man. Very private—and he was in great pain. He was riddled with arthritis. But when they said, ‘Camera! Action!’, you’d never know that there was a thing wrong with him. And the moment they said, ‘Cut!’, he’d just crumble. His manservant Ernest would come on the set and help him off.”

James Arness is FBI agent Robert Graham. Of course, Arness is most famous as Marshal Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke”—a role he played for 20 years. He was the younger brother of Peter Graves. Arness was born in Minnesota and like Whitmore , he served in World War II. He earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart among his decorations. Though he is most famous for appearing in Westerns—some with his friend John Wayne– sci-fi fans will know him as the Thing in 1951’s The Thing From Another World.

Also in the cast is Fess Parker as the Texas patient in the mental ward with a story about flying ants. Reportedly, when Walt Disney saw this film he immediately offered the role of television’s Davy Crockett to Parker. William Schallert, who was a mainstay in many ‘50s science fiction films, appears early as an ambulance attendant– and look fast for Leonard Nimoy in an early role as an Air Force sergeant.

And finally, I’d like to make a special mention of an actor who is our only connection to next week’s film, The Blob. The actor who plays the old alcoholic in the LA hospital ward, Olin Howland, is also the first character to discover the meteorite in The Blob. Howland, who was born in Colorado in 1886, had an amazing career that went back to the early 20^th century when he appeared on the Broadway stage. From 1918 to 1958 he appeared in 200 films including small roles in films like Gone With the Wind.

Along with The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Them! is considered one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s. It spawned many take-offs and variations such as Tarantula (1955), The Deadly Mantis (1957), and The Black Scorpion (1959). It would become a major influence on latter-day science fiction films, most notably Aliens in 1986. And as we’ve already seen, it’s become a huge influence on movie fans like us—including artists and model makers like the Library’s own Paul Pandocchi.

Of course, if they remade Them! today every action sequence would go on for about 30 minutes. That’s because modern Hollywood gets caught up in the concepts and the visual excesses and they lose sight of the execution—how to tell a story simply and intelligently. Them! is an exercise in storytelling economy. As for its effects, yes, maybe the ants do not move the way real ants do, but it doesn’t stop you from getting caught up in the drama that Them! delivers. It was made in an era when things seemed simpler, and kids could be frightened by giant atomic ants. In this postmodern generation of ours, kids have become desensitized by violence with whole cities blowing up on movie screens. But when one of the main characters dies in Them!, you feel something emotionally. You care about these characters, and that’s what separates Them! from those imitations.

Model by Paul Pandocchi, creator of “Cinema Terrors” at the Library!