Year: 1954
Director: Gordon Douglas
Country: US
Language: English
The atomic end of World War Two, combined with the beginning of the Cold War with the USSR, meant that Cinema was ripe for giant monsters to overrun the screen. The Cinema of the 50's was home to The Blob (1958), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and Godzilla (1954) among many other science fiction classics. Them! (1954) would be a perfect picture during this odd climate.
The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization.
The ants have mutated to more than 9 feet tall and this, according to leading ant expert Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn), is an apocalyptic state of affairs for the human race. Yet again, Mankind has toyed with forces it cannot control, and produced results it cannot abide. Like in King Kong (1933), destruction is the child of unfocused ambition, ignorance and over-confidence.
A mid-century monster movie, Them! doesn't hold up as well as many of the science fiction films at the time. Filming in black and white, director Gordon Douglas uses every trick in the book to ensure that the creatures are not too obviously faked, but unfortunately the seems are quite noticeable in 2016. The acting by our key performers (James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn) is appropriately cheesy.
Them! is unique in its ability of not judging scientific progress. The moral of the story is fairly ambiguous; science brought man into the ant mess & science brought man out of it. The picture is quite fun to watch, even if its slightly dated.
No comments:
Post a Comment