This Memorial Day weekend, I hope you’ll join us at a special time, as the U.S. brings all its might and intelligence to bear against invading giant ants. Now that’s one hell of a picnic!
The Army, FBI, top scientists, and local law enforcement all coordinate to save our bacon without a single rumble of conspiracy. Furthermore, the citizenry accepts lockdown with a degree of maturity and responsibility inconceivable in 2021. Temporarily deferred freedoms are always most easily assimilated when the sewers are flooded with giant ants. For once, it’s all of us against “Them!” (1954).
Easily the best and most intelligent of the nascent Atomic Age giant bug movies, “Them!” manages to get everything right: a solid cast, good pacing, pitch perfect tone, and truly crawly animatronics. Keep a sharp eye out for walk-ons by fresh faces soon to become weekly regulars in living rooms across America, actors like Leonard Nimoy, Dick York, Richard Deacon, and William Schallert. Basically, anyone wearing an Army helmet is on the cusp of fame. Fess Parker makes the most memorable impression in a single scene that supposedly secured his casting as Davy Crockett.
Of the principals, Academy Award nominee James Whitmore bands together with James Arness (the extraterrestrial menace in “The Thing,” soon to embark on the gig of a lifetime as Marshal Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke”) and everyone’s favorite Kris Kringle, Academy Award winner Edmund Gwenn. Gwenn plays a somewhat absentminded, but wholly authoritative and respected myrmecologist. In the 1950s, apparently, people still believed in science. A film that could very easily have turned into “Santa Claus Conquers the Giant Ants” instead winds up being probably one of the top-five science fiction movies of the decade.
Furthermore, its influence can still be felt in everything from the “Alien” franchise to any number of CGI giant bug fests of the past 25 years. This is one movie that really has legs!
Nevermind those Brood X cicadas – there will be plenty of high-frequency, outsized shrieking, as we chat about “Them!” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Leave your songs and whistles in the comments section, as we livestream on Facebook, this Sunday evening at 7:00 EDT!