Gordon Douglas is not a director one usually associates with the word masterpiece. Most of his movies are mediocre at best, and only a handful are even good, much less outstanding. Them!, however, is splendid. The premise is ludicrous, concerning mutant ants in the southwestern desert who somehow grow to a frightening proportions due to their exposure to radiation from the atomic bomb. A good deal of the credit must go to Ted Sherdeman’s script, which is crisp, to the point, and often quite funny. The acting is excellent. James Whitmore is the edgy but compassionate hero; James Arness is straightforward and winning as an FBI man. Edmund Gwenn all but steals the picture as the crusty old scientist who knows more than he says, and only speaks his mind when he’s absolutely certain. Joan Weldon is attractive and believable as Gwenn’s daughter, whom Arness romances along the way. A nice quartet of lead players. No one gets to hog the limelight for too long. As soon as Whitmore’s grim determination gets to be a bit much, we get a report of a big ant attack, and it’s off to the races. Then Gwenn does something fey, and everyone laughs. Everything flows smoothly in Them!: there’s a bit of horror, a touch of romance, followed by a science lecture.
The movie begins like a murder mystery, in the New Mexico desert, as we see a young girl wandering about in a state of shock, soon to be picked up by state troopers. They come across a trailer where the girl’s parents were apparently living, only its walls are caved in and the furniture and fixtures are smashed up and in disarray. When the officers go to a general store to talk to a local shopkeeper they discover his body on the basement stairs, and the store in a condition similar to that of the trailer. One of the officers stays behind, the other goes to get help. We see the officer outside, through the window, as a shadowy figure approaches. He fires his gun, then screams. An investigation ensures. A footprint taken from one of the crime scenes is sent to Washington, and soon a pair of scientists from the department of agriculture arrive.
This first part of the movie is matter of fact, done in the style of Dragnet, but with more urgency and less police procedural stuff. It kicks into high gear when a giant ant appears over the top of the hill. The ant models are none too convincing, but the film works so well one can almost forget about this and focus on the human story, which is always emphasized over the horror. The last leg of the journey is in Los Angeles, where Whitmore and Arness interview a drunk in a hospital who tells them a story about some flying ants he sees from his window. Olin Howlin’s performance and dialogue in this role have become classic (“make me a sergeant, charge the booze!”), as it’s the one wholly comic interlude in the film, and yet it’s hardly a diversion, since it furthers the story. Again, a nice balance in the script here.
The movie ends in the storm drains beneath Los Angeles, as Whitmore, Arness and what looks like half the United States Army search for the nest of the queen ant, and also for two little boys who were last seen playing with their father nearby. Director Douglas ties things up neatly here, building tension melodramatically but effectively, with a minimum of fifties-style flag waving corn. Them! is sci-fi with a heart. There’s very little “tech talk” in the movie, and when science is dragged into a conversation it’s discussed intelligently (once one gets over the initial premise, that is), and people behave as one would expect (and hope) they would under such circumstances. That the movie was produced by a major studio no doubt helps a good deal. For a while, it appeared that sci-fi might emerge as a serious A-level genre in the fifties, but this never happened. When MGM, Paramount and Warners produced sci-fi they did so for the most part seriously, and they were often successful in their efforts. But the cheap movies came to dominate, and before long there were giant everythings (spiders, lizards, grasshoppers, crabs), as sci-fi devolved into drive-in fare. Them! is a good example of the genre at its A peak, before Roger Corman and others came along and turned it into beatnick camp.
