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Them!
[Warner Brothers]
1954; color
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Starring: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness & Onslow Stevens
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While watching his buffet selection for this week, Phase IV, the Kommandant brought up Them!, the OG of antsploitation flicks. A film I thought I had seen at some point but quickly decided I must not have, since I couldn't immediately conjure up an image of what the giant ants looked like. My theory being, if you don't remember what the giant mutant ants look like in a giant mutant ant movie then you really haven't seen it. So, off to his euphemistic library of dusty ol VHS tapes he went. (For the record, he did wait until his movie was over to go through the hollowed out table where his video tapes live to find it. Then we waited until the next night to watch it.) Anywhoo, even if you've never seen a science fiction movie, or a movie about a giant mutant animals, the plotline of these type of films are pretty formulaic. They kind of have to be because there are only so many ways to get from normal day to day life to nature gone wild and back. I won't go into the specifics but suffice it to say over the 90 or so minutes people will die in mysterious ways; police and / or FBI will investigate; researchers will be called in to help the investigation and they will speak scientific mumbo jumbo; more people will die in mysterious ways; one of the female researchers will have romantic innuendo with one of the policemen or feds; and yes, eventually giant mutant creatures will be witnessed and eventually they will be eradicated. One thing I thought was unique about Them! is they don't make you wait until the end to get a fuzzy brief glimpse of the poorly made costumed creature, or in this case creatures, which a lot of movies of this era do. (And, truthfully, all things considered the costumes weren't that poorly made. I've certainly seen worse by people who had resources to do better.) And I have to admit, as much as I enjoy watching a nice clean DVD release appropriate nice clean print - and I do - watching this movie in the scratchy ol' VHS format added a little extra somethin' somethin' to the experience. (But don't worry if your spouse doesn't have a box full of old videotapes, it's available on DVD.
—Bunny
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