Them! (1954) on Netflix
State troopers find a girl wandering in shock near her family's wrecked trailer. Sergeant Ben Peterson and FBI agent Robert Graham learn that giant ants are behind the destruction.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.2/1027,206 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sergeant Ben Peterson and his partner, Ed Blackburn, find a girl wandering in the desert in catatonia and the wrecked trailer she came from. Nothing was stolen, and the general store down the road is wrecked the same way, its owner, Gramps Johnson, dead in the cellar. A cast of a strange print goes to Washington, and the Department of Agriculture sends the myrmecologists Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter Pat. The scent of formic acid makes the girl scream "Them! Them!" At the trailer site, a giant ant rushes the searchers. Harold ties the insects to radiation from the first atomic test and to a desert diet that turned them to meat.
Cast
- Mary Alan Hokansonas Mrs. Lodge
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Them! (1954)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Them! began production in fall 1953 planned as a 3D Warnercolor film, but when Warner Bros.' "All Media" 3D camera rig malfunctioned during the test and no footage could be shot, a memo the next day scrapped both the color and 3D plans.
- Walt Disney watched Them! to check out James Arness for his planned Davy Crockett episode, but was more impressed by Fess Parker as a mental-ward inmate and cast Parker as Davy Crockett instead.
- The giant ants' stridulation sounds were made by mixing recordings of bird-voiced tree frogs with calls of a wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker, recorded at Indian Island, Georgia, on April 11, 1947, by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
- John Wayne saw Them! and, impressed by James Arness's performance, recommended him for the role of Marshal Matt Dillon in the new Gunsmoke TV series, which Arness played from 1955 to 1975.
- The film's title was printed in vivid red and blue against a black-and-white background to give the opening a dramatic punch, achieved by splicing an Eastmancolor section into every release print.
- Them! heavily inspired the 1956 Japanese kaiju film Rodan, and Van Morrison's band Them was named after the film, a suggestion that came from keyboardist Eric Wrixon rather than Morrison himself.
- Them! is one of the first 1950s "nuclear monster" movies and the first of them to make big bugs the threat.
