THEM! [1954 / 2015] [Blu-ray] [USA Release] An Endless Terror! A Nameless Terror! The Amazing New Warner Bros. Sensation!
MAN has split the atom and ushered in a new era. But how could he know he would also create THEM? This landmark movie about giant radiation-mutated ants boasts remarkable, OSCAR® nominated special effects. THEM! Begins in New Mexico with a child wandering in shock, a ransacked general store and a battered corpse full of enough formic acid to kill 20 men. It ends with an epic struggle in the 700 miles of storm drains under Los Angeles, where the insect hordes are beaten, though they spawned a generation of films about radioactive creatures. Some approximate the terror, but few have equated the artistry of THEM!
FILM FACT No.1: Awards and Nominations: 1955 Academy Awards®: Nominated: Best Effects and Special Effects. 1955 Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA: Nominated: Win: Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing for a Feature Film.
FILM FACT No.2: Leonard Nimoy has a small, uncredited part as a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant in the communications room. Other actors who appear in small parts include John Beradino, Willis Bouchey, Booth Colman, Richard Deacon, Lawrence Dobkin, Ann Doran, William Schallert, Douglas Spencer, Dub Taylor and Harry Wilson. When THEM! began production in the fall of 1953, it was originally conceived to be in 3-D and Warner Color. During pre-production, tests were to be shot in colour and 3D. A few colour tests were shot of the large-scale ant models, 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 giant ants, painted a purplish-green colour, 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. This blunder has been obscured in the inferior DVD releases of the film. The film poster shows a gigantic ant with menacing human-like eyes rather than the normal compound eyes of an ant. The sounds the giant ants emit in the film were the calls of bird-voiced tree frogs mixed in with the calls of a wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker. It was recorded at Indian Island, Georgia, on the 11th April, 1947 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Cast: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness, Onslow Stevens, Sean McClory, Christian Drake, Sandy Descher, Mary Alan Hokanson, Don Shelton, Fess Parker, Olin Howland, Richard Bellis (uncredited), John Beradino (uncredited), Robert Berger (uncredited), Oscar Blank (uncredited), Willis Bouchey (uncredited), Richard Boyer (uncredited), Waldron Boyle (uncredited), Alexander Campbell (uncredited), James Cardwell (uncredited), Steve Carruthers (uncredited), Dick Cherney (uncredited), Roydon Clark (uncredited), John Close (uncredited), Booth Colman (uncredited), James Conaty (uncredited), Robert Scott Correll (uncredited), Walter Coy (uncredited), Lynn Craft (uncredited), Dean Cromer (uncredited), Richard Deacon (uncredited), Eddie Dew (uncredited), Lawrence Dobkin (uncredited), Ann Doran (uncredited), Wally Duffy (uncredited), Cliff Ferre (uncredited), Norman Field (uncredited), George Ford (uncredited), Joseph Forte (uncredited), Dean Fredericks (uncredited), Russell Gaige (uncredited), Otis Garth (uncredited), Dorothy Green (uncredited), Robert Haines (uncredited), Jack Henderson (uncredited), Mary Lou Holloway (uncredited), Gayle Kellogg (uncredited), Kenner G. Kemp (uncredited), Hubie Kerns (uncredited), Paul Kruger (uncredited), Carl M. Leviness (uncredited), Warren Mace (uncredited), Wayne Mallory (uncredited), Lou Marcelle [Trailer Narrator] (uncredited), John Maxwell (uncredited), Mathew McCue (uncredited), Charles Meredith (uncredited), Jan Merlin (uncredited), Forbes Murray (uncredited), Leonard Nimoy (uncredited), Jack Perrin (uncredited), Charles Perry (uncredited), Grandon Rhodes (uncredited), William Schallert (uncredited), Bernard Sell (uncredited), Fred Shellac (uncredited), Joel Smith (uncredited), K.L. Smith (uncredited), Janet Stewart (uncredited), Victor Sutherland (uncredited), Hal Taggart (uncredited), Dub Taylor (uncredited), Harry Tyler (uncredited), Dick Wessel (uncredited), Harry Wilson (uncredited) and Dick York (uncredited)
Director: Gordon Douglas
Producer: David Weisbart
Screenplay: Russell S. Hughes (adaptation), Ted Sherdeman (screenplay) and George Worthing Yates (Story)
Composer: Bronislau Kaper
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox, A.S.C. (director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p (Black-and-White)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audio: English: 1.0 DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Spanish [Castilian] 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono Audio
Spanish [Latin]: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono Audio
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish [Castilian] and Spanish [Latin]
Running Time: 92 minutes
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Warner Home Video
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: In the film ‘THEM!’ [1954] we get to view one of the most intriguing openings in science fiction cinema, where we find two New Mexico State Police troopers Sergeant Ben Peterson [James Whitmore] and Trooper Ed Blackburn [Chris Drake] discover a little girl in shock, wandering across the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico who were doing their highway patrol duty, who take little girl to safety. Nearby, they discover a trailer home that has been partially demolished by some unknown force and inside there is evidence of a bloody struggle. Later, when one of the police officers is gathering evidence at another site of destruction of a ransacked country store, we he hear lots of very strange, high pitched sound coming closer and closer until he's confronted with the horrifying source and the last thing he will ever see. Meanwhile, doctors try to jolt the little girl out of her catatonic state, finally succeeding with a formic acid sample, similar to traces found at the crime scene. The child becomes wildly agitated upon smelling the odour, screaming, "THEM! it is THEM!," hence the title of the film which means GIANT ANTS!
A precursor to all the giant insect horror films of the fifties, the film THEM! was released during the Cold War era and was also one of the first science fiction thrillers to issue a warning about the dangers of nuclear testing and radioactivity in the aftermath of the atomic bomb's creation. The film is truly unique in its conception and the first half is constructed like a detective thriller, the second half works as a fantasy adventure with the army and FBI agents invading the storm drains beneath Los Angeles where they hope to locate and destroy the queen ant's nest. THEM! also has a welcome sense of humour that sometimes emerges during unexpected but appropriate moments, such as the sequence with the airline pilot Alan Crotty [Fess Parker] who is being held for observation at a Brownsville, Texas, mental institution and no one believes his eyewitness account of the mutant ants. But if anyone deserves the screen credit for the film's success, it was Ted Sherdeman, a former staff producer at Warner Bros. who was instrumental in developing the project. First, he commissioned the original story from George Worthing Yates, which appeared as a diary account about giant ants nesting in the New York subway.
But at the start of the film, we find after several people in the New Mexico desert wind up missing or presumed dead, including an FBI agent and most of his family, police Sergeant Ben Peterson [James Whitmore] teams up with FBI Agent Robert Graham [James Arness] to find out what’s causing the strange occurrences. They find send a strange print found at one of the crime scenes and it is sent to the Department of Agriculture. Doctor Harold Medford [Edmund Gwenn] and his daughter Doctor Patricia Medford [Joan Weldon] arrive and ask to be taken to the scene of some of the disappearances. When they get there they are shocked to find gigantic ants, whose mutations were caused by the first atomic bomb explosion nine years earlier. They manage to destroy the nest of ants, but not before two winged queen ants and a couple of drones have hatched and escaped the nest. Now it is a race against time to find the two queen ants before they can establish more nests and hatch more queens.”
The best parts of the film are near the beginning and the mystery of unexplained deaths in the desert is well done, and a subplot involving a little girl terrified by the smell of formic acid is very vivid, and near the end and the famous sewer scenes, searching for the ant’s new nest. But there good moments throughout, especially the evidence given by a supposedly insane aircraft pilot Alan Crotty [Fess Parker] and a babbling Jensen [Olin Howland] the alcoholic, both of whom have seen the ants in action.
THEM! as I have already informed you that originally the film had been conceived as a 3D feature film in colour and the giant ants were given a purplish shade of green; their eyes were a soapy looking mixture of reds and blues that changed shades constantly and made them appear to be alive. Unfortunately, these effects were lost when Warner Brothers decided to release the film in black and white without the 3D effect to save costs. Nevertheless, the film still proved to be enormously successful when released, becoming one of the studio's top grossing films of the year and even receiving favourable reviews from critics who usually dismissed horror and sci-fi films. The New York Times review proclaimed THEM! "one ominous view of a terrifyingly new world" and that "it is definitely a chiller....fascinating to watch." Jack Warner remained unconvinced, however, and told his staff after a screening, "Anyone who wants to make any more ant pictures will go to Republic!" Obviously, the studio mogul was a poor judge of science fiction films for THEM! is among the best, a cautionary tale about the dangers of the atom bomb and a frightening view of nature run amok.
One of the reasons THEM! succeeds so well is the amount of suspense that is built up before the ants appear on screen, which isn't until a half hour into the film. If you watched the movie without seeing the poster or knowing anything about it first, it would definitely add to the mystery. We hear them a few times before we actually see them in their full glorious appearance and the high pitched, pulsating, echoing sounds they make are truly creepy. It's the perfect build up! By far I think the most impressive performance in this film is by the little Ellinson girl [Sandy Descher], although everyone else is just as good and there's an amusing scene involving Dr. Harold Medford [Edmund Gwenn] trying to communicate via radio headphones.
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Blu-ray Image Quality – Warner Home Video has at last brought out the classic sci-fi horror film THEM! that I originally had on the inferior DVD format. THEM! is a massive pleasant wonderful surprise and for the now for the first time it looks so beautifully clean in the Black-and-White 1080p encoded images and is a joy to view and is now brought to you in a brand new transfer. In the cinema it was brought out in the 1.75:1 Original Aspect Ratio, but now Warner Home Video has decided to release it in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio and despite the slight difference it still looks like a brilliant presentation. At at the start of the film it looks very grainy and I think that this was done on purpose, but as the film progresses the Black-and-White images get very clear and crisp. So all in all this is a brilliant presentation of one of my all-time favourite horror sci-fi films where creatures are out to destroy the world and also try and have world domination.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – Warner Home Video has given us the original produced RCA Sound System of 1.0 DTS-HD Master Audio Mono sound track, that audiences got to hear in 1954. The dialogue is very clear, as are when the giant ants gets very vocal with their high pitched, pulsating, echoing sounds that are truly creepy. What is equally impressive is the very atmospheric exciting music composed by Polish composer Bronislau Kaper who really brings lots of tension to the film to make you wonder what nasty things are going to happen to everyone looking out for the giant ants and also trying to fend them off, which to mind makes watching this Blu-ray even more exciting and also brings back so many wonderful happy memories when I first viewed this film in the cinema and you will not be at all disappointed and will keep you on the edge of your seat in not knowing what is going to happen next to the people who are out to destroy the giant ants.
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Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
Special Feature: Ants [2002] [1080p] [1.37:1] [3:04] Here we get to view Behind-The-Scenes archive footage montage on the Design and Operation of the Giant Ants. When you click on this “Ants” extra, you get to view this sort of mock up colourful magazine style cover with the title wording THEM! and informs you that “SELECT OUTTAKES! WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW COULD KILL YOU!” Plus you also informed that you should check out “EXTRA! See & Hear What They Have Kept From You About THEM!” as well as “You Can’t Afford To Miss THIS!!! Details Inside!” But then suddenly you get another similar mock up magazine page entitled “GRUESOME FOOTAGE” giving you loads of detail with very enticing in-depth information about what you are about to witness, especially what gruesome images you will get to view, but throughout the just over 3 minutes of footage, you get lots of sound effects of the giant ants and some weird atmospheric type of music in the background. But what you actually get to view is lots of test shots from the film THEM! But at the start of each separate test shots you get this single frame shot of a cassette tape, with different wording with each corresponding test shot you are about to view, and the first example has the wording Douglas # 805; SC No. 181; Take N and Hickox # 17 that I suppose was used to record the sound, and of course with each test shot the wording keeps changing on the cassette tape, anyway you will understand when you personally view this extra. But as you go through the different test shots, most of the time you see the giant ants in action and sometimes you get to see the hidden mechanical parts that made the giant ants work. But again while you watch all these test shots you get to hear the sound effects of the giant ants, but you also get the sound of the helicopter that appears in a couple of shots hovering over the giant ants nest. But in one of the test shots you actual see the guys behind-the-scenes who worked the giant ants. But despite this being a very short extra it was still interesting to view, but what a shame there was no recorded video interviews with anyone who was involved with the film.
Theatrical Trailer [1954] [1080p] [1.37:1] [3:18] This is the Original Theatrical Trailer for THEM! But for some unknown reason we get to view it in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio? But despite this, it is really great to see this included, especially showing us what audiences viewed in 1954 in giving us its full scale scary terrifying dramatic presentation we will witness in the actual film.
Finally, one of the reasons the sci-fi horror film THEM! succeeds so well and is because it has the right amount of suspense that slowly builds up before the giant ants appear on screen, which isn't until about half hour into the film. If you watched the film without seeing the poster or knowing anything about the film, it definitely add to the mystery. What I love also about this film is when we hear THEM! a few times before we actually get to witness THEM! especially with the high pitched, pulsating, echoing sounds they make are truly creepy and it's the perfect build up! But equally what I also love about this film is the little orphan girl wandering around in total shock, the inhospitable windy environment, the creepy dark passageways, the creatures that emit a deadly acid and not to mention the egg laying of the queen ants, as well as the scene where the crew finds hatched eggs in one of the giant ant farm chambers. Plus, there is something about seeing this sci-fi horror film in Black-and-White that really adds to the creepy atmospheric factor. The cinematography of the desert scenes is very impressive. However, for a creepy and crawly good time, you can't beat THEM! and those prophetic last words as spoken by Dr. Harold Medford in the film's final scene will haunt you long after the screen fades to black. So all in all I am so excited to have this in my ever increasing Sci-Fi Horror Films Blu-ray Collection and well worth purchasing, as I know you will have a totally enjoyable 92 minutes of sheer terror enjoyment. Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
