Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 11 - Them!

This is the Ur-Hamlet if you will of all the giant monsters and bugs that  populated our cinema screens since then.

I understand that this is supposed to have been filmed in color and maybe even 3d but the bosses pulled the plug on those ideas and we end up only the title in color and the rest in black an white.

Something very odd is happening in New Mexico –near Alamogordo – people are being killed or disappearing amidst scenes of massive destruction – buildings and mobile homes wrecked but as the hero cop, James Whitmore (who will get killed later – sorry you can see this coming a mile away) points out that everything is pulled out,  not broken into.

The only witness to the events is a little girl in shock played to creepy pitch perfect effect by Sandy Drescher. Her dead eyed stare really gives you the sense she has seen something nobody  was ever meant to see

A footprint is discovered, the FBI represented by James Harness before his long term stint as Marshall Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke sends said foot  print along to Washington where two scientists,  Edmund Gween as the older fellow who does a fairly good absentminded professor bit and his daughter,  played by Joan Weldon,  both of whom are experts on insects.  Which does seem weird  until the professor gets the little girl to come out of her shock by having her smell formic acid – and again the little kid nails this suddenly screeching like one of the damned Them! Them!!

It’s one well done spooky scene.

After that they find what them  is – them is giant ants 6-8 tall – done for this film by mechanical effects rather  than the shoot live grasshoppers against a picture done by Bert I Gordon – more on him later. Or less it depends. One of the things that works about these ants is that they are of a size to interact with the actors – Godzilla even Kong and the Beast from 20,000 fathoms are too large for interaction – Godzilla will kill you pretty much without even knowing it – the impersonal terror of the bomb made flesh – this is a bit more primal they are going to eat you Sandra!

The whole thing has been up till now really handled like a mystery movie who is doing the killing – one the answer is know – ants affected by the early atomic blast in new Mexico – remind me to stay away from that part of new Mexico – just in case. What happens now is a race against time where the scientists and the others operating in absolute secrecy in order to prevent panic (and driving up the budget) search for the nest – the want to get there in time – before well before something.

Well they don’t – yes they kill all the ants in the nest – cyanide gas  but two queens and the requisite males – worker ants are genetically female but have no reproductive organs – have escape and well, ants breed like rabbits.

Then all the new reports about thefts of sugar for example or flying saucers are sent to the HQ in Washington – again under the strictest security. Fess Parker in a bit part plays a pilot who sees the queen and the males in flight and gets locked in a Looney bin for his trouble kept there at the orders of the us government. I don’t know if they ever did d managed to let him out.

The clues point towards one of the queens having taken up residence in the sewers and water mains of los Angeles – the other queen it seems picked a freighter for its home but in the middle of the ocean that was sunk so there is only the one queen. Also two young boys are missing – their dad was killed in a manner that suggested the Ants – like mauled like hell. “the Ants take slaves of other species you know” the professor cheerfully adds.

The search is on for the ants under the streets of LA – Convenient for location shooting one has to add. Stock footage along with shots being reused give the impression of a massive ant hunt.

In the end hero guy finds the kid and is killed by an ant rescuing them.. I have to confess that when I first saw this film I don’t really know how many years ago- I was a bit young to understand the whole Idea of a movie – I thought this was an actually a TV broadcast which of course when the hero guy gets killed really put the spook into me.

At any rate they find the queen’s chamber in time this time – the queens have hatched but not finished drying their wings – they are then blown up real good. The menace is over for now but what of all those other atomic bomb blasts after the first one? What of those

With a da – da –da goes the music and the credits roll. We never had to fight giant ants again but there was giant everything else coming down the pipe.

Well paced not with a group of good if not great actors in this – it really set the bar pretty high for giant monster films – which most films cheerfully walked under – hey it’s only kids and it’s only monster movies.

I’d suggest enjoying this film with cocolate coverd ants but really – have a soda and some tacos – because this film is good and tacos are good.