Them! Review

        The 50s I feel is what I’ll quote the dark age of horror. With the second World War over, another was in the minds of most people between the US and the Soviet Union. Just the idea of hearing the destructive power of the atomic bomb was always in the mind of everyday people. That’s why you mostly see a variety of B-Movies that have some animal or insect get mutated with radiation. For Them!, it’s considered a classic among the atomic age of horror. 

1. Giant Enemy Ants

        In it’s simplest forms, the film is very easy to follow. Irradiated Ants spring up from the New Mexico desert and soon cause destruction. Now I understand if this isn’t as deep as one would expect from a movie that has giant ants, I mean it sounds about as dumb as Cat People as before. But what those two have in common is that with the ridiculous plot that they have, the characters save the film. 

        Again, I must stress that this isn’t a bad movie, far from it. Character-wise the film is chalk full of great ones. For something like this, one would think that they would be fleshed out or just tokened seeing how the movie isn’t that long. No, we mostly follow State Trooper Ben and his partner investigate scenes of possible robbery. Unbeknownst to them that the areas were attacked by ants. 

        The interesting part involving the characters is how they try to stop the ants. For these kinds of movies there’s a scientist character that knows how ants operate. Right down to showing military personnel a presentation of how ants are in their habitat. That’s also one of the key things for the movie to succeed. Everything is played completely straight without a sense of irony or cheeky delivery. Tone is basically the film’s ultimate strength since we see just how much damage the giant ants can cause. 

        Since we’re speaking about the bugs, they look nothing like what the poster portrays them. The ants look like well, ants but bigger. No, they don’t have the menacing feline like eyes that are advertised, but we see just how much of a threat they are. They do get some kills, albeit with what the old Standard Codes were at the time. What makes them formidable is that we hardly see them. This is something like Jaws would do years later, which is to sparingly use them to give the idea that they can just pop out of anywhere. 

2. Legacy

        The film had no shot of being successful according to Warner Bros. Reading on what the film was going to be practically made it seem that they wanted to sell the idea to other studios but decided not to given the strength of the script. It was originally supposed to be shot in color and use 3-D but all that was scrapped. Surprisingly this was one of the highest grossing films Warner released during that time. More so that it was even nominated for an Oscar but losing out to Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 

3. Overall

        Them! is a product of the time, and enjoyable to know just how the danger of atomic age can affect anything especially insects.