An archetype of “monster horror” in the atomic age, Gordon Douglas’ THEM! sensationalizes USA’s epidemic nuclear hysteria which in process of time has morphed into an idée fixe one feel blasé about.
Nearly a decade after the first atomic bomb test, a nest of irradiated giant killer ants is found in the desert of New Mexico, local police sergeant Ben Peterson (Whitmore), teamed with FBI special agent Robert Graham (Arness), gets the bottom of the mutation with a little help of a pair of father-daughter myrmecologists, Dr. Harold and Pat Medford (Gwenn and Weldon), who feed audience alike interesting facts of our itsy-bitsy friends, and make a heavy weather of their ferocious nature as if human race is entirely composed of crying pacifists.
Suspense has been adequately built one-third into the narrative thread, when our imagination is tickled to do all the tricks apropos of the unknown mystery, demarcated by the first advent of a foraging ant, materializing amid a vivid sand storm, then the mystique dissipates (not helped by the ponderous design of those very unwieldy monsters, cutting-edge at then, but ineluctably look ridiculous today), the story accelerates in a trite, dead-serious procedural routine of decimation, formicary adventure, interrogation of witnesses, and a widespread tension when the climax is pinpointed at the claustrophobic storm sewers of a martial law enforced Los Angeles, where a children-rescuing bravado actually heroically rubs out our hero, a move nowadays is quite at a premium due to the business-savvy franchise building and multi-projects contract of the lucky movie stars.
Elsewhere, a hale Edmund Gwenn makes the most of his expository-heavy task to impress us with his scientific prowess and phrase the central message among the humor-free cast, and taking account of its time, Douglas does a fine job in threading a far-fetched rigmarole into a compact whole, more than anything, Bronislau Kaper’s spine-tingling score has the drop on anything else to be appreciated by posterity in this black-and-white oldie.
referential entries: Don Siegel’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956, 7.3/10); Richard Fleischer’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954, 7.0/10).
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