I began this blog by writing about worms, but today I switch to a more terrifying insect, the ant! or a film about them at least.
Them! is the 1954 classic black and white horror film about ginormous mutated ants who begin killing people in the New Mexico desert.
I describe and recommend it today as a cold war film- a movie to be enjoyed and understood in the long complex context of the 20th century global battle for nuclear supremacy and control.
I knew that I would like this movie when Dr. Harold Medford (played by Edmund Gwenn aka the santa claus in the original Miracle on 34th Street) upon finding the giant colony with his daughter-scientist Pat and local police, looked off-camera into the distant desert range and said, "We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true- 'And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation and the beast shall reign over the earth'"
Writing out this quote eliminates some of the abiguity that it creates in the film. Does the doctor refer to the beast, the one and only devil/antichrist/etc or the beasts- the animals that already roam this planet? When certain species grow giant after exposure to man-made nuclear chemicals and radiation, our self-drawn conclusion of humans as the dominant most developed species is called into question.
This movie is truly scary! Dr. Medford's presentation on the nature of ants-- they are war-like, super strong, industrious, organized killers-- is taken in with the understanding that these characteristics apply ten-fold to the twenty foot monsters burrowing underneath American soil. If you were scared watching The Hills Have Eyes, consider viewing this throw-back film where special effects are not the driving force of fear. These ant puppets hearken back to the (definitely frightening) robot puppets on stage at Chuck E. Cheese, but it is the movie's set up, concept and the implied consequences of an army of giant vicious mutant ants that left me holding my breath, squirming in my seat, praying for the safety of the city of Los Angeles.
The discomforting last lines of the film are as follows:
Robert Graham: Pat, if these monsters got started as a result of the first atomic bomb in 1945, what about all the others that have been exploded since then?
Dr. Pat Medford: I don't know.
Dr. Harold Medford: Nobody knows, Robert. When Man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What will he eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.
Even with American victory at the end of the movie, the message of the piece is shaming, ominous and clear: humans, with their nuclear weapons, are messing with the natural order of life and death, disturbing so greatly the world's ecosystem that all sort of choas is probable. By creating a means for global destruction, humans are setting themselves up for a destruction of the status quo- their sense of power and control based off of a constructed world order.
My message is see the film, see Them! This little girl did:
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