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| Title: THEM! Year: 1954 Rating: **** |
Director Gordon Douglas's THEM could have had three different lead perspectives: the investigation of FBI agent James Arness, not used to working in the scorching desert; scientist father and daughter in extremely quirky Edmund Gwenn and pretty yet resolute Joan Weldon; and workaday, everyman local desert cop James Whitmore investigating random deaths, including his own partner, wherein the story begins...
Almost like a film noir (with many stylistic-auteur touches by the underrated Douglas)... then adding layers with the aforementioned characters developed from their occupation: Arness and Whitman acquire a government-agent-to-local-lawmen bond as Edmund Gwenn spouts the kind of scientific expository information that only he and his daughter (with a semi-attraction to Arness) understand, and that the law (and military) eventually have to defeat...
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| James Whitmore and James Arness in THEM! |
That being gigantic ants derived from post-war nuclear weapon tests... resulting in a suspenseful search into spooky caverns that might have influenced ALIEN/ALIENS into what's eventually an epic battle like a mainstream war/search-and-rescue action-packed thriller...
But the best sequences occur along the way... during the kind of progressive buildup, piecing clues together even after the culprit's discovered (from the desert into city sewers and Washington DC): enveloped in a non-campy science-fiction b-movie with so many layers that (despite some of the dated creature-effects) the audience is forced to take things as seriously as these very serious characters take their own impending situation.
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| Open Color titles of THEM! |
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| James Whitmore and Sandy Descher in THEM! |
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| James Arness, James Whitmore and Edmund Gwenn THEM! |
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James Whitmore and Sandy Descher in THEM! with Edmund Gwenn
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| Booth Colman in THEM! |
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| Leonard Nimoy in THEM! |
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| Fess Parker in THEM! |
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| Joan Weldon in THEM! |
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| James Whitmore and James Arness in THEM! |
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| Leonard Nimoy in THEM! |
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| James Arness and Sean McClory in THEM! |
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| James Arness and Sean McClory in THEM! |
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| James Arness and Edmund Gwenn with James Whitmore in THEM! |
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| James Arness and Edmund Gwenn with Joan Weldon in THEM! |
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| James Arness and Edmund Gwenn with Joan Weldon in THEM! |
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| Poster for THEM |
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| James Whitmore and James Arness in THEM! |
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| James Whitmore and William Schallart in THEM! |
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| James Whitmore and Christian Drake in THEM! |
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| James Whitmore and Christian Drake in THEM! |
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| Sandy Descher in THEM! |
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| James Arness in THEM! |
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