Soul of the Future: Them! or Us

The first atomic bomb exploded in the New Mexico desert in 1945.  For the next few years US explosive tests were conducted mainly in the Pacific, but they resumed in the American southwest in 1951, principally in Nevada, where the testing site area was larger than the state of Rhode Island.

In the next decade or so, at least 100 nuclear explosions were detonated above ground, with some 800 underground.  The mushroom cloud from the atmospheric explosions was typically visible for a hundred miles around the site, including from Las Vegas high rise hotels.

In 1953, a nuclear explosion in Nevada was covered by hundreds of reporters and filmed for television and newsreels.  Houses were built on the site, complete with fully equipped kitchens, though inhabited only by manikins.  Reporters called it Doom Town.

 High-speed film images of buildings being blown apart by blast and sundered by suction were widely shown for years.  Cameras showing the aftermath focused on crushed appliances and mangled manikins (though this was supposed to be a Civil Defense demonstration of survivability.)  A survey at the time found that three quarters of the American population saw the test on television or at least heard about it.

News of effects of the tests themselves was more sporadic, but left a cumulative impression.  Increases in cancers as far away as Utah were noted, beginning in the mid 1950s.  A seven year old boy 70 miles from Ground Zero in Nevada who died of leukemia "became possibly the first baby boom casualty of the atomic age," according to Landon Jones, author of Great Expectations. Radiation from a 1951 Nevada test was detected in the snow that fell on Rochester, New York.

There had been at least 20 nuclear explosions in the Southwest by the time that the nuclear-themed monster movie Them! first hit theaters in the summer of 1954.  So the film's spooky opening shots of the empty desert and the spiky Joshua trees on the roadside, was appropriately portentous (the Joshua trees were the tip off however that the movie wasn't filmed in the New Mexico of the story, because they don't grow there. These scenes were filmed in the California desert.)

Fess Parker and James Arness in Them!

Them! was a consequence of the surprise popularity of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in 1953.  Though Warner Brothers scaled back its original plan for a 3-D color extravaganza, the decision to use secondary stars and unknowns accidentally gave it a place in Hollywood lore as an audition tape for early television stars.

The unknown James Arness was a principal character, an FBI investigator named Robert Graham.  His performance led to his iconic role as Marshal Dillon on the long-running western Gunsmoke.  Interested in animatronic figures for his theme park, Walt Disney went to see the mechanical giant ants. Instead he saw an unknown actor in a small part named Fess Parker, who he recruited to play another ground-breaking icon of 1950s television, Davy Crockett.

Leonard Nimoy in Them!

To a lesser degree, James Whitmore's performance as the heroic police officer Sgt. Ben Peterson preceded steady work on television and his own TV series, The Law and Mr. Jones.  And though it was more than a decade before Star Trek, fans of Leonard Nimoy note his small part as an army technician.

But Them! survives principally because it is an unexpectedly good movie, with taut storytelling, deft cinematography and highly watchable performances.  It is probably the best of the American atomic monster movies, as well as an early icon of the genre.

James Whitmore

The movie begins with New Mexico police officers searching by plane and car for a child reported to be wandering alone in the desert.  The car with Sgt. Ben Peterson (Whitmore) and trooper Ed Blackburn find her, and then investigate the plane spotter's report of abandoned camper nearby.  The camper was destroyed by an unknown force.  They learn the camper belonged to an FBI man on vacation with his wife and two children.  It turns out the girl is the only survivor.

The first sign of a monstrous presence is an eerie sound.  Later, when trooper Blackburn is killed off-camera, we hear the sound again, along with his screams. These scenes begin the tradition of the monster's slow reveal, copied by later monster movies but with less skill and effect.

For awhile, Them! is a taut police procedural, with scattered clues that don't yet add up, suffused with mystery and menace.  Because the camper belonged to one of their own, the FBI sends agent Robert Graham (Arness) to help investigate.  He sends the cast of an unidentified animal print found in the sand back to Washington. He as well as the New Mexico police are flummoxed when they are told to meet two scientists flying in from Washington--from the Department of Agriculture.

Arness and Weldon

The scientists are Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter, Dr. Pat Medford (Joan Weldon.)  Weldon reportedly chafed at being directed to play the scientist more intently than the James Arness love interest.

Gwenn is a slightly more upscale version of Cecil Kellaway in
 The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Though, like Kellaway, the roles he played included Santa Claus (in his case, in the classic 1947 Miracle on 34th Street) and numerous priests, bishops, doctors, grandfathers and absent-minded professors as well as Elizabeth Bennet's father, Gwenn had more gravitas, and could do drama convincingly.  Despite one typical comic scene, in this role he made his distraction more a product of dread of the possible consequences of what he discovered.

Without sharing their suspicions, the Drs. Medford lead the others to their first encounter with the creatures (and the obligatory scene of the damsel scientist in distress.)  The elder Dr. Medford tells them what they're confronting: giant ants—“a fantastic mutation probably caused by lingering radiation from the first atomic bomb.”

Ants can become carnivorous, the scientists note, and they kill by injecting their prey with formic acid. Ants also breed quickly and in great numbers. They must find the rest of these monsters before the queens fly off to build other nests, and it’s too late.

They can hear their eerie sounds as the wind whips up the sand and the elder scientist says, “We may be witnesses to a biblical prophesy come true—and there will be destruction and darkness come over creation, and the beasts shall reign over the Earth.”

This is the second variation of atomic monsters: not a creature from the deep past awakened by the Bomb (like The Beast...) or even awakened and altered by radiation (Gojira/Godzilla), but present-day creatures whose evolution is deformed by nuclear bomb radiation.  By this time in the mid 1950s, it was widely known that radiation could cause mutations in future generations, though the secrecy and denial of evidence fueled runaway speculation.

The choice of ants was inspired, not only on the spectrum of creepiness.  Ants are among the most successful species on the planet, relying on communication and a social structure.

 Whether the filmmakers knew of it or not, the evolved ants of Them! were preceded by the evolved ants of H.G. Wells in his short story "The Empire of the Ants."  In what appears to be Wells' version of his friend Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness," ants in a remote jungle have evolved a deadly poison and the strategic intelligence to challenge human civilization, as they slowly spread into the more populated continents.

This story is an illustration of Wells' warning that the human species should not assume that its place of power is permanent, for evolution continues. "In the case of every other predominant animal the world has ever seen," Wells wrote in an 1894 essay, "the hour of its complete ascendancy has been the eve of its entire overthrow."  In Them! the Wellsian warning against human arrogance was amplified by atomic power.

The giant ants themselves, seen in mostly brief glimpses, are clearly inhuman. This is another difference in the monster genre, for animators and model-makers tended to emphasize characteristics shared with humans when depicting monsters like King Kong, Godzilla and the Beast.

Once the scientists ascertain that a queen ant has landed in Los Angeles, the government calls a press conference and informs the public of the danger.  (The official conducting the conference was played by Charles Meredith, who usually depicted authority figures like bankers and military officers, as well as Secretary Drake of the United Worlds Space Rangers in the 1950s TV series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. He also did the voiceover for a technical film on the results of an atomic test.)

Meanwhile the montage of citizens watching and listening to the broadcast merges with military teams in jeeps driving through the dry riverbed into the storm drains and into the seven hundred miles of tunnels under Los Angeles, where the last nest was located. It’s a literal descent into the underworld, with the confines of tunnels adding to the suspense and sense of dread.

The climactic battle involves heroism and self-sacrifice, teamwork and violence. The technology of civilization has overcome the threat of nature, deformed by the result of human technology.

With almost no pause, as the surviving principals peer down into the pit, the film ends with this grim dialogue: "If these monsters got started as a result of the first atomic bomb tests in 1945, what about all the others that have been exploded since then?" asks Graham. "I don't know," says Dr. Patricia Medford. "Nobody knows," says her father, the elder scientist. "When man entered the atomic age, he opened the door into a new world. What we eventually find in that new world nobody can predict."

"Nobody can predict" is a statement about the future that these films make, contradicting the official line supported by everyone’s conscious behavior that nuclear weapons were keeping America safe, and ensuring a brighter future. Atomic anxiety—and atomic apocalypse—was finding its way into the open.

As directed by Gordon Douglas, with a final script by Ted Sherdeman, Them! was an exemplary film.  It was also a major box office hit--easily one of Warners top grossing releases of the year, with a long life ahead.

I vividly remember seeing this movie at the theatre when I was a child, either during its first run or shortly afterwards when it hit the Saturday matinees (and quite possibly, both, because I recall seeing it more than once.)

The audience for this movie was largely if not primarily young—the children and preteens born during World War II or afterward. That is worth remembering when examining its classic structure of monster tales—the slaying of the dragon. So while the monster being slain by figures representing those who created it—namely scientists and the military—this ideological outcome, while playing into official US imagery, was the only possible one for a Hollywood movie appealing to children. The ending had to be reassuring. Children needed to believe they will be taken care of, and that people in authority—acting nobly and efficiently—were equal to the task.

It so happens that the adult characters in Them! are notably exemplary. As the anonymous author of the blog and you call yourself a scientist writes:

“One of the most striking things about this film that in any given situation, whoever is best qualified to deal with it is always in charge—which sometimes gives us the military taking orders from the scientists. It is taken for granted that teamwork and cooperation are the best way of dealing with the crisis, with each person’s expertise coming to the fore in turn, and everyone pitching in wherever he or she is needed. (When [FBI officer] Graham is trapped by the collapsing tunnel, General O’Brien rushes to help with the digging). Conversely, almost startling by their absence are the power-plays, head-buttings and tantrums usually associated with this sort of subplot, as a way of creating (artificial) drama.”

Whatever the filmmaker’s intentions, the movie they came up with specifically spoke to the young watching in the dark. The film begins with a child wandering in the desert, clutching her doll, in such profound cataleptic shock that she doesn’t respond to others around her. It is a frightening image, guaranteed to focus our attention, and the gentle care by all the adults she encounters is reassuring. She has survived her encounter with the monsters, though her parents and sibling did not. But it places a child in danger, and in need of protection.

(The unforgettable performance of the little girl was by Sandy Descher, whose unusual and mesmerizing features showed up in another 1950s atomic classic, The Space Children. As a child she specialized in portraying terror, on television and in movies. She went on to a substantial career lasting into the mid 1960s, including a role in the 1955 remake of The Miracle on 34th Street. )

The final showdown with a new colony of giant ants nesting in the Los Angeles sewers occurs because two young boys are missing—boys around my age, and the age of my friends sitting next to me in the huge darkened hollow of the movie palace. Once again, we are placed in the action as potential victims. The James Whitmore character—the policeman who first comforted the little girl-- saves the two boys, at the cost of his own life.

Yes, we were fully aware that this was a monster movie, but the warning of the dark mysteries of the atomic age at the end were not lost on us. How could they be—especially in the coming months and years, when nearly every monster on every Saturday had the same dire origin? We understood that even when the present monster was defeated, the danger persists.

While English language poster emphasized the
innate horror of giant ants, this foreign language
poster names them the Atomic Demons

As that anonymous blog author notes, "Them! is the first American film to really place the possible consequences of “the bomb” front and centre. .. it deals explicitly with the genie out of the bottle, arguing that what started at White Sands did not simply stop at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; that such forces, once unleashed, have a tendency to take on a dangerous momentum of their own; including, perhaps, rebounding against those who set them in motion in the first place.”

Though matinees would feature seemingly innumerable giant insects and other mutant creatures over the next few years, diluting the effect, these first films (Gojira and Them! especially) remain as artful expressions of unconscious anxieties.  For the word "monster," after all, come from the Latin "monere," to warn.  The original English meaning of monster (according to the OED) is "a divine portent or warning."

Though the fashion for them comes and goes, the monster tale is ancient and persistent.  In distilling all stories to seven basic plots, scholar Christopher Booker names the first plot "overcoming the monster."  If the monster is the Bomb itself, these stories suggest that no one can yet figured out how to overcome it.  They concentrate instead on overcoming the more comprehensible monster that the atomic bomb monster created.

The Bomb hovered over our Saturdays even apart from the Bug-Eyed Monsters created by radiation. In fact there was hardly a science fiction movie of the mid to late 1950s that did not refer to nuclear bombs or atomic apocalypse in some way. These variations are also instructive on the power and range of nuclear fear, as will be explored next time.