I grew up surrounded by Oklahoma’s wind, becoming used to hearing it at all hours. This upbringing left me unprepared for the stillness of the desert. Amid hard dirt and scrub brush, it was truly isolating to stand in a space and not hear the white noise you’ve lived with for most of your life. It is not a space hospitable to man, deterring all forms of settlement, which is why it was selected as the first nuclear test site. On July 16, 1945, at 5:29 in the morning, America successfully split the atom in the desert of New Mexico. Two months later and World War II was over in the wake of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world changed in the face of such destructive power, from political alliances to art, and a decade later Hollywood was awash in nuclear paranoia. While I never made it to Los Alamos or any of the testing sites during my travels, I thought a lot about those events and their influence and one film in particular came to mind. In 1954’s Them!, the audience hears the giant radioactive ants well before they’re seen — their chittering a monstrous atomic siren — and this noise followed me throughout my trip through the American Southwest desert.
The cinema of the 1950’s is littered with radioactive creatures — mutated hordes emerging from the depths of the earth to devour civilization. As part of the crest of the nuclear monster wave that emerged after The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Them! arrived mere months before Godzilla appeared in Japanese theaters. The 1950’s are synonymous with the desecration of the atom and it has long been ingrained within pop culture, from the pastiche of the Fallout game series to even the return of Twin Peaks. I was raised on nuclear horror pop culture, Godzilla in particular a constant companion. The living room television was decorated with stacks of VHS tapes containing a myriad of mutated monsters, all warped by man fumbling as a nuclear Prometheus. Over the years, Them! has come to stand out being one of the few American genre films of that time to genuinely grapple with the weight of the nuclear option.
The premise of giant ants is of course silly in the light of day and against the tastes of modern audiences but the film has fared well against the test of time. Compared to most of its peers, it has not only a high production value but also treats its central threat with straight-faced sincerity. Shot in stark black and white, the stakes are established from the start as children, the nuclear family’s hope for the future, are put at risk. Opening on a lost girl wandering the desert in a state of shock, she is the sole survivor of her family after an ant attack, a striking parallel to real-world orphans of nuclear destruction. Later on, the climax of the film is a race-against-time to save two young boys. “We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true. ‘And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation. And the Beasts shall reign over the earth’,” Edmond Gwenn’s Dr. Harold Medford intones at the discovery of the giant ants. It calls to mind an angry deity venting his wrath upon the children of non-believers and turning what could have been a campy monster movie into a rumination on how future generations bear the debt of past decisions.
The older I get the more this aspect of Them! hits home. I’ve worked with students for almost a decade now, at the college level for more than half of that. Most of my students are freshmen, the kind still riding that high school senior high. Living in the Great Plains Bible Belt means a lot are already thinking about starting a family despite the fact that some can’t even fill out a beard or have yet to work their first job. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a growing sense of anxiety and dread in the classroom, with global warming becoming one of the most popular essay topics. We may no longer be living in the shadow of the Cold War, but armageddon anxiety is not picky about the cause of its worry. These students may not always be able to articulate it, but they are aware of the forces hollowing out the world that they are supposed to inherit. The two young boys are rescued at the end of Them!, but not before they have been forced to hide in the pitch-black recesses of the Los Angeles sewer system, surrounded by creatures beyond their comprehension. They live, but are still the victims at the end of a chain of decisions that allowed the world to change in such a violent fashion.
Them! is about the fear of order collapse at the micro and macro levels. Nature, economics, society — all these systems become at risk of buckling under the new dominant species. In this age of staring down the barrel of ecological disaster, there has been a surge of interest in knowing what’s required of a healthy ecosystem. As someone who has set up internet alerts in regards to the northern giant hornet (unaffectionately better known as “murder hornets”), I am all too anxiously aware of the ecological impact of insects, which likely stems from childhood repeat viewings of giant insect movies. When this invasive species was discovered in the North American Pacific Northwest it felt like Them! in the waking world with its clock-ticking scenario to find where the insects had nested. The arrival of the northern giant hornet is a byproduct of globalization, which all too often has allowed the wrong animals to be introduced to vulnerable ecosystems. This system is also what drives nuclear proliferation, the metaphor at the heart of the movie. America cracked the atom and all the world’s major players followed in fashion. Them! presents an America forced to reckon with this as it’s discovered early in the film that other nests may be taking root. Later on some of the mutant ants hitch a ride on a cargo ship bound for South America before it is sunk by naval cannon fire.
The hunt for the ants is as methodical as any film where Mark Ruffalo shouts “They knew!” during an investigation. As the initial band of investigators realize the scope of the threat, they take their case to Washington D.C. Them! present a government filled with officials who defer their opinions to scientists. Halfway through the movie, a room full of military leaders listen intently to an informative presentation about ants. There’s a concern here for the future, albeit only once humans have been pushed up against the extinction deadline. Even when it’s a woman presenting the information (Dr. Patricia Medford, played by Joan Weldon), she is always referred to as “Doctor” and what she says is accepted without anyone scoffing. It’s hard not to feel jealous of the fantasy where those in power listen to facts and reason in order to secure a better future. In the movie, the government — and by extension the military — are forced to reckon with their actions, of a path chosen with long term ramifications. It begs the question of whether the price of power was worth such a shortcut to victory.
Even when used in a non-violent capacity, the power of splitting the atom comes with great risk. As part of the research course that I teach, I have students look at the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Reactor crisis and how the situation was handled at the public, government, and international levels. When the example is given that a reactor meltdown in the middle of Oklahoma would leave all but the furthest corners uninhabitable, with fallout reaching beyond state borders, it’s a stunning revelation for many students. Them! never forgets the scale of this nuclear dawn with the climax taking place in Los Angeles, two states away from where the ants were first found. Often portrayed as the shining city of the future, this setting feels personal in that Los Angeles was a haven for many Oklahomans fleeing ecological collapse during the Dust Bowl. The nuclear pests have taken root beneath the city, integrating themselves into the fabric of the landscape. It’s then up to the military to slog their way into the nest and not without significant casualties. It’s an apt metaphor for the difficulty of removing the nuclear option from society, whether it be armaments or the power grid.
With composer and director Michael Giacchino having recently been announced to lead a remake, it will be interesting to see if the original tone of Them! carries over or if the emphasis will be on camp. What’s so striking about revisiting the original is how serious it treats its premise, elevated by its performances, craft, and bleak tone. Because of this, the film has proven surprisingly timeless as the threat of nuclear disaster has never left and especially now with greater cultural awareness of man-made environmental collapse. The reality of giant nuclear ants would be a threat to the world and the film treats them as such. While Them! does end with the good guys winning, the errant ant nest burning beneath the streets of Los Angeles, the mood is anything but triumphant. “When man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we’ll eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict,” the elder Dr. Meford intones, the soundtrack an ominous swell behind his words. This is not an announcement of a golden age but rather an observation of a world that now exists in the shadow of monsters.
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