Them!

New Mexico State Police Sgt. Ben Peterson and Trooper Ed Blackburn discover a little girl in a catatonic state wandering the desert near Alamogordo. They take her to a nearby vacation trailer, located by a police spotter plane, and find evidence that she was there when the trailer was attacked and nearly destroyed. The trailer was owned by FBI Special Agent Ellinson, on vacation with his wife, son, and daughter; the other members of the girl's family remain missing. In an ambulance, she reacts to a pulsating high-pitched sound coming from the desert by sitting upright, eyes open, but no one else notices her reaction, and she lies back down when the noise stops.

At a general store owned by "Gramps" Johnson, the officers find his dead body and a wall partially torn out. Peterson leaves Blackburn behind to secure the crime scene. Blackburn later goes outside to investigate a strange, pulsating sound. Gunshots are heard, the sound becomes faster and louder, and Blackburn goes missing. Peterson's captain later points out that both Johnson and Blackburn fired at their attacker. A huge amount of formic acid is found in his body.

Meanwhile, the FBI sends Special Agent Robert Graham to investigate. After a strange impression is found in the sand near the Ellisons' trailer, the Department of Agriculture sends myrmecologists Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter, Dr. Pat, to assist with the investigation. Harold exposes the Ellinson girl to formic acid fumes, which releases her from her catatonic state; she screams in panic and yells "Them!". Harold's suspicions of Camponotus vicinus are validated by her reaction, but he will not reveal his theory prematurely.

At the Ellinson campsite, Pat encounters a giant foraging ant. Following instructions from Harold, Peterson and Graham shoot off the ant's antennae, blinding it, and kill it with a submachine gun. Medford reveals his theory: a colony of giant ants, mutated by radiation from the first atomic bomb test near Alamogordo, is responsible for the area's deaths. General O'Brien orders a helicopter search, and the giant ants' nest is found. Cyanide gas bombs are tossed inside before Graham, Peterson, and Pat check for survivors. Inside, Pat finds evidence that two queens have hatched and escaped to establish new colonies.

Peterson, Graham, and the Medfords join a government task force that begins to investigate reports of unusual activity. In one, a civilian pilot has been committed to a Texas mental hospital after claiming that he was forced down by UFOs shaped like giant ants. Next, the Coast Guard receives a report of a giant queen hatching her brood in the hold of a freighter at sea in the Pacific; giant ants attack the ship's crew, and there are few survivors. The freighter is later sunk by gunfire from a U.S. Navy cruiser.

A third report of a large sugar theft at an ATSF rail yard leads Peterson, Graham, and Major Kibbee to Los Angeles. An alcoholic in a hospital "drunk tank" claims he has seen giant ants outside his window. The mutilated body of a father is recovered, but his two young sons are missing. Peterson, Graham, and Kibbee find evidence that they were flying a model airplane in the Los Angeles River drainage channel near the hospital. Martial law is declared in Los Angeles. California Army National Guard troops and U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton are assigned to find the ants in the storm drain system under the city and wipe them out.

Peterson finds the two boys alive, trapped by the ants near their nest. He calls for reinforcements and lifts the boys to safety, just before being attacked and grabbed by a giant ant in its mandibles. Graham arrives with reinforcements and kills the ant, but Peterson dies from his injuries as the ants swarm to protect the nest. Graham and the soldiers fight them off, but a tunnel collapse traps Graham. Several ants charge, but he holds them off with his submachine gun just long enough for the troops to break through and save him. The queen and her hatchlings are discovered and dispatched with flamethrowers.

• James Whitmore as Sgt. Ben Peterson
• Edmund Gwenn as Dr. Harold Medford
• Joan Weldon as Dr. Pat Medford
• James Arness as FBI Agent Robert Graham
• Onslow Stevens as General O'Brien
• Sean McClory as Major Kibbee
• Chris Drake as Trooper Ed Blackburn
• Sandy Descher as Ellinson girl
• Mary Alan Hokanson as Mrs. Lodge (credited Mary Ann Hokanson)
• Don Shelton as Captain Fred Edwards
• Fess Parker as Alan Crotty
• Olin Howland as Jensen, the "alcoholic patient" (credited Olin Howlin)

Opening title card with the background in black and white and Them! in red and blue

When Them! began production in the fall of 1953, it was originally conceived to be in 3D and Warner Color. During pre-production, test shots in color and 3D were made. A few color tests of the large-scale ant models were also made, but when it was time to shoot the 3D test, Warner Bros.' "All Media" 3D camera rig malfunctioned and no footage could be filmed. The next day a memo was sent out that the color and 3D aspects of the production were to be scrapped; widescreen black-and-white would now be the film's presentation format. Warner Bros. hoped to emulate the "effective shock treatment" effect of its previous science fiction thriller The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms; ultimately, however, the film was never made in widescreen. Because of the preparation of certain scenes, many of the camera set-ups for 3D remain in the film, like the opening titles and the flamethrowers shots aimed directly at the camera.[6]

Although Warner Bros. was dissatisfied with the color results, the film's titles were printed in vivid red and blue against a black-and-white background to give the film's opening a dramatic "punch". This effect was achieved by an Eastman Color section spliced into each release print.[4] The 1985 VHS tape release, the subsequent LaserDisc and later DVD release have retained this black-and-white-with-two-color title effect.

The entrance to the ants' final nest was filmed along the concrete spillways of the Los Angeles River, between the First and Seventh Street Bridges, east of downtown. The depiction of the Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico is actually the Mojave Desert near Palmdale, California. Mercy Hospital was a real institution and is now Brownsville Medical Center.[4]

James Whitmore wore "lifts" in his shoes to compensate for the height difference between himself and James Arness. Whitmore also employed bits of "business" (hand gestures and motions) during scenes in which he appeared to draw more attention to his character when not speaking.[4]

The Wilhelm scream, created three years earlier for the film Distant Drums, is used during the action sequences: when a sailor aboard the freighter is grabbed by an ant, when James Whitmore's character is caught in an ant's mandibles, and when an overhead wooden beam falls on a soldier in the Los Angeles storm drain sequence.[4]

The giant ants, painted a purplish-green color, were constructed and operated by unseen technicians supervised by Ralph Ayers. During the climactic battle sequence in the Los Angeles sewers, there is a brief shot of one ant moving in the foreground with its side removed, revealing its mechanical interior.[4] This filming error was obscured on the DVD and Blu-ray releases of the film.

The film poster shows a gigantic ant with menacing cat-like eyes rather than the normal compound eyes of an ant.

The sounds the giant ants emit on the soundtrack were the calls of bird-voiced tree frogs mixed together with the calls of a wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker. These were recorded at Indian Island, Georgia, on April 11, 1947, by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.[7]

Drive-in advertisement from 1954.

Them! was released in June 1954,[4] and by the end of that year had accrued $2 million (US) in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals, making it the year's 51st biggest earner.[8][Note 1] According to an article in Slate, this was Warner Bros. highest-grossing film that year.[9] However, 1954 In Film lists two other films from Warner Bros. that earned more in gross.

From contemporary reviews, the Monthly Film Bulletin stated that despite the science fiction film genre being new it had developed several sub-divisions including "the other-worldly, the primeval-monstrous, the neo-monstrous, the planetary-visitant, etc." and that "Them! is a "well-built example of the neo-monstrous", "less absurdly sensational than most"[10] Discussing the ant monsters in the film, the review referred to them as "reasonably horrible--they do not entirely avoid the impression of mock-up that is almost inevitable when over-lifesize creatures have to be constructed and moved" while noting that they were "considerably more conceivable than those prehistoric remnants that have recently been emerging from bog and iceberg".[10] The review commented on the cast as "like most science-fiction, [the film] is on the whole serviceably rather than excitingly cast" and the crew was noted, stating the direction was "smoothly machined" and the film has "decent writing" though "more short cuts might have been [taken]", finding that the start of the film was too slow.[10] A. H. Weiler's review in The New York Times noted "... from the moment James Whitmore, playing a New Mexico state trooper, discovers a six-year-old moppet wandering around the desert in a state of shock, to the time when the cause of that mental trauma is traced and destroyed, Them! is taut science fiction".[11] The reviewer in Variety opined it was a "top-notch science fiction shocker. It has a well-plotted story, expertly directed and acted in a matter-of-fact style to rate a chiller payoff and thoroughly satisfy the fans of hackle-raising melodrama".[12][13] John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote, "If you're willing to let your imagination off its leash, you may have a fairly good time at 'Them!'"[14]

Since its original release, Them! has become generally regarded as one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s. Bill Warren described it as " ... tight, fast-paced and credible ... [T]he picture is suspenseful".[4] Phil Hardy's The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction noted, "Directed by [Gordon] Douglas in semi-documentary fashion, Them! is one of the best American science fiction films of the fifties".[15] Danny Peary believed the film "Ranks with The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers as the best of the countless '50s science fiction films".[16] In the Time Out Film Guide, David Pirie wrote, "By far the best of the 50s cycle of 'creature features' ... retains a good part of its power today".[17] The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 93% approval rating with an average rating of 7.6/10, based on 57 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "One of the best creature features of the early atomic age, Them! features effectively menacing special effects and avoids the self-parody that would taint later monster movies".[18]

Them! was nominated for an Oscar for its special effects[19] (but the award went to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and won a Golden Reel Award for best sound editing.

• Them! heavily inspired the 1956 Japanese kaiju film Rodan.[20]
• Van Morrison's band Them was named after this film[21] though the band member that came up with the name was not Van Morrison but Eric Wrixon.[22]

• The video game series It Came from the Desert was inspired by Them![23]
• Fallout 3, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic irradiated wasteland, has a side-quest involving giant mutated fire ants titled "Those!" in homage to the film.[24]
• The scene where Pat is attacked by the foraging ant appears as a replay in the 2018 Marvel film Ant-Man and the Wasp.[25]

On January 4, 2023, it was revealed that Academy Award winning film composer Michael Giacchino would make his feature directorial debut with a remake of Them! for Warner Bros. Pictures.[26]

• It Came From the Desert (film) - a film of the Amiga game

Wikiquote has quotations related to Them!.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Them! (1954 film).

• Them! at IMDb
• Them! at the TCM Movie Database
• Them! at AllMovie
• Them! at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Rerecording of Them! soundtrack