James Arness in Them! (1954)

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Director Gordan Douglas and Warner Bros. delivered Them! to movie theaters in the spring of 1954. James Whitmore and James Arness play rugged lawmen, with Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon as a pair of intrepid scientists.

George Worthing Yates’ Them! Story

Them! is based on a story by George Worthing Yates. As originally written, Them! was set in the subways of New York City, where giant mutant ants run amok in the Big Apple. New York, however, was an expensive locale in which to film, so producers opted for Los Angeles and its extensive network of storm drains.

Ted Sherdeman and Russell S. Hughes wrote the screenplay with Gordan Douglas in the director’s chair. Douglas’ previous film credits included The Falcon in Hollywood (1944), Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946) and I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951).

Cast Features Young James Arness

James Whitmore (Sgt. Ben Peterson), Edmund Gwenn (Dr. Harold Medford), Joan Weldon (Dr. Patricia Medford) and a young, 28-year-old James Arness (Robert Graham) head the cast. Other players include Onslow Stevens (Gen. Robert O’Brien), Sean McClory (Maj. Kibbee), Chris Drake (Trooper Ed Blackburn), Sandy Descher (Ellinson Girl), Mary Alan Hokanson (Mrs. Lodge), Don Shelton (Capt. Fred Edwards), Fess Parker (Alan Crotty), Olin Howland (Jensen), John Beradino (Patrolman Ryan), William Schallert (Ambulance Attendant), Ann Doran (Child Psychiatrist), Richard Deacon (Reporter) and Leonard Nimoy (Air Force Sergeant).

Them! Giant Ant Props

As originally conceived, Them! was to be filmed in both color and 3D. Budget concerns and equipment failure, however, put an end to that idea, with Them! being shot in standard black and white from September to November 1953.

Giant mutant ants comprised the movie’s principal special effects. Dick Smith constructed two large ant props, one full figure and one featuring a front section only that was used for closeups.

Them! was filmed on location in Los Angeles, with the railroad yard at Union Station, the 6th Street Viaduct Tunnel and the Los Angeles River Basin being put to scenic use. The Blaney Ranch in Palmdale, California, served as the sinister locale for the nesting mutant ants. Most of Them!’s interior shots were completed at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.

Producers acquired flamethrowers on loan from the U.S. Army. Hired to man these fearsome weapons were actual World War II combat veterans.

Them! Science Fiction Movie

New Mexico state troopers Ben Peterson and Ed Blackburn respond to a call in the desert where they find a traumatized six-year-old girl wandering through the brush. Down the road at Gramps Johnson’s place, the two lawmen discover the owner’s corpse, which is resting among the scattered remains of his small shack.

Trooper Peterson departs the scene with the little girl, leaving his partner behind. Trooper Blackburn is then attacked by some unseen horror, squeezing off several rounds from his service revolver until he too succumbs to the beastly terror.

FBI Special Agent Robert Graham later arrives on the scene, along with the father/daughter scientific team of Drs. Harold and Patricia Medford. A plaster cast is made of a huge footprint left at the crime scene while an autopsy reveals that old Gramps Johnson’s body was flushed with enough formic acid to kill twenty men.

The Medfords determine that giant mutant ants – the deadly byproduct of years of atomic testing in the New Mexico desert – are on the loose. With Trooper Peterson and Agent Graham in the lead, the ants’ nesting grounds are located in the desert, where bazookas and flamethrowers are used to destroy the mutant creatures.

Flying queen ants, however, have escaped destruction, with the deadly beasts spreading their tentacles around the globe. One of their targets is the S.S. Viking, whose frantic SOS call relates a horrible scene where the crew is being systematically slaughtered.

Peterson, Graham and company track a colony of ants to the Los Angeles storm drains. Drain 267 becomes the target area, with Army troops descending into the tunnels in a bid to wipe out the creatures and their nests.

Them! Release, Reviews

Them! premiered at New York City’s Paramount Theater on June 16, 1954.

“The awesome fact is that the Warner Brothers have planted ants on our planet – giant nine to twelve-footers, with mandibles like the tusks on a mammoth, and keening like all the banshees in a fevered imagination. There’s no point in making for the hills, though. It’s fascinating to watch,” observed A.H. Weiler of The New York Times (6/17/54).

Film Analysis

Them! is a stellar entry from the Golden Age of science fiction movies. Steeped in 1950s paranoia and the radioactive climate of the Cold War, Them! delivers the sci-fi goods, with humans waging war against a mutant enemy that sprang from their own atomic experiments in 1945.

James Whitmore and James Arness – the latter of whom would go on to star as Marshal Matt Dillon on CBS-TV’s Gunsmoke (1955-75) – deliver superb performances as the dedicated law enforcement officers. Also good are Joan Weldon, Edmund Gwenn and Fess Parker, with the latter playing a private pilot whose encounter with a trio of UFOs “shaped like ants” lands him in a mental ward in Brownsville, Texas.

Look for noted character actor Olin Howland, who plays an alcoholic named Jensen. Interviewed from his hospital bed, Howland registers one of the more pathos moments in the film, repeatedly calling out to an Air Force general: “Make me a sergeant and in charge of the booze!”

For those sci-fi movie fans who desire action, Them! will not disappoint. One of the best scenes takes place in the desert, where the Army bombards a nest of ants with cyanide gas and phosphorous fired from bazookas. Whitmore, Arness and tough girl Weldon then descend into the depths with air tanks, finishing the job with flamethrowers.

Them! on DVD, Oscar Nomination 

• Them! – Warner Bros’. highest-grossing film of 1954 – is available on DVD (Warner, 2002).
• Them! earned an Oscar nomination for Best Special Effects, but lost out to Walt Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

“When man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict,” Edmund Gwenn pronounces at the end of the film.

Far out…