Sat 2 Jan 2010
A Sci-Fi Movie Review by Mike Tooney: THEM! (1954).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , SF & Fantasy films[10] Comments
THEM! Warner Brothers, 1954. James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness, Onslow Stevens, Sean McClory. Screenplay: Ted Sherdeman. Story: George Worthing Yates. Director: Gordon Douglas. 94 mins.
“Oh, yeah,” you’re probably thinking, “the one with the giant ants.”
After 55 years, I guess the bug’s out of the bag about who the “bad guys” are in Them! But what most viewers seem to miss is how closely this film hews to Jack Webb’s Dragnet formula. In fact, I think of Them! as a Dragnet episode with monsters.
Them! neatly divides into three parts: The crime, the discovery of the identity of the perpetrators, and the pursuit and “capture” of the baddies in the denouement.
The crime: In the sparsely populated New Mexico desert, people are disappearing — and some are dying. Based on the available evidence, the police believe it’s the work of a psycho. How else to explain a caved-in trailer and a country store whose owner is found hideously mangled with his .30-.30 rifle broken like a matchstick but no money stolen from the till?
This segment is played for mystery, shot in low light levels with darkly saturated areas often filling the screen — a very noir-ish look, if not in theme. Even though the first few scenes take place in bright desert sunlight, we’re soon moving with the investigating officers through the darkness of a dust storm to the discovery of the store owner’s bloody carcass.
The whole sequence is played for maximum mysterious effect: the wailing of the wind; a lamp swinging in circles, blown by the wind because the side of the store has been pulled OUT, not crushed IN; a disembodied voice in another room that turns out to be a radio left turned on (and it’s clear we are meant to infer that the store owner didn’t have time to turn it off while he was being attacked); and the man’s crushed corpse, briefly glimpsed in the light of the swinging lamp.
The discovery of the identity of the perpetrators:
The middle section of Them! has the investigators searching for the cause of these atrocities. In another dusty desert wind storm the perps are finally revealed.
The mystery is over; now it’s not a matter of whodunit but how do we catch ’em? After all, they’re from 9 to 15 feet long and couldn’t care less about arrest warrants. The lower level members of the gang are killed, but Mr. (really Mrs.) Big makes a getaway, and the chase is on.
The pursuit and “capture” of the baddies in the denouement: Catching Mrs. Big proves to be a major headache, since she has nearly unlimited mobility because she can fly. The authorities try to keep the pursuit a secret as long as feasible in order to avoid panic.
Finally, thanks to slogging, shoe leather grinding police work — tracking down every possible eyewitness report that might even be remotely related to their hunt — the investigators locate Mrs. Big in the sewers of Los Angeles (shades of The Third Man and also another film — see below).
Sixty tons of sugar are stolen from a railway car in the marshaling yards, and a little boy has gone missing, two events that are closely related. Fearing the worst, our tireless investigators go from one thin thread to another in trying to find the kid, even interrogating the normally unreliable inmates of a nearby asylum.
It’s a race against time now. Unless our heroes locate the perps’ hideout, it won’t simply be the life of one little boy that will be at stake but also — dare I say it? — the fate of the world.
Not only does Them! remind me of Dragnet but it also invites comparison with He Walked by Night (1948), a suspenseful hunt-the-man-down film noir.
Switch giant ants for Richard Basehart and you pretty much have Them! I regard He Walked by Night as the template which Jack Webb followed in his radio and TV series. In fact, Webb appeared in He Walked as, of all things, a crime lab technician.
So there you have it: a Dragnet episode blown up to giANT proportions. Only the names have been changed to protect the … producers.
January 2nd, 2010 at 7:27 pm
THEM! comes very close to the procedural noir school that was pioneered by films like HOUSE ON 92ND STREET and BOOMERANG, and then brilliantly used by Anthony Mann in T-MEN, BORDER INCIDENT, and HE WALKED BY NIGHT. John Sturges and Robert Wise took a note from this later in THE SATAN BUG and ANDROMEDA STRAIN.
Even the presence of Whitmore (ASPHALT JUNGLE) and Arness (THE PEOPLE VS O’HARA)relates back to the noir films of the era.
And it is no accident that the rather silly plot — giant mutated ants — is made plausible and suspenseful by the dry technical details of a police investigation. Still I have to wonder if it wasn’t also influenced by Boulting’s SEVEN DAYS TO NOON (1950), a similar procedural drama about a scientist with a suitcase nuclear device (which didn’t exist then and still doesn’t despite how popular it remains with fiction writers) hunted down as London is evacuated.
But Mike is dead on that the whole procedural noir genre that spawned DRAGNET influenced the style and structure of this one, which incidentally is one of the best sf films of the era. For another sf film that follows the procedural noir structure to some extent, Nigel Kneale’s THE CREEPING UNKNOWN (1956), the first of the Quatermass films also makes use of the same basic style, right down to the presence of Jack Warner, whose role on the series DIXON OF DOCK GREEN made him as iconic to British cop shows as Webb was here.
And of course noir in general influenced films like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. In fact, as with the western and the historical genre there is a whole sub-category of science fiction noir with films like these, THE 49TH MAN, THE POWER, and others.
January 2nd, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Enjoyed this review!
It is timely, because the prestigious Paris film museum, the Cinémathèque française, is about to start a retrospective of the films of director Gordon Douglas. The French film magazine POSITIF has commissioned a Douglas study from film historian Jean-Pierre Coursodon, the Cahiers is gearing up, and Douglas is about to be the toast of tout Paris!
I traced through some connections between Them! and semi-documentary film noir on my web site:
http://mikegrost.com/semigrid.htm
This is what people here are calling “procedural” film noir.
And have a brief article on Douglas:
http://mikegrost.com/douglas.htm
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Nice listing Mike. Might I also suggest the films WALK EAST ON BEACON STREET, WALK A CROOKED MILE, PICKUP ALLEY, or lesser efforts such as A BULLET FOR JOEY, COP HATER, and THE DIAMOND WIZARD. All of which use elements of procedural or documentary noir to some extent.
Re Gordon Douglas, an interesting director, still doing interesting films as late as RIO CONCHOS a decade after THEM!. Mike makes some good observations about themes and recurring elements in Douglas films.
January 4th, 2010 at 7:30 am
I like Mike.
Much of the success of THEM must be credited to Gordon Douglas, who could do anything with a straight face, including FIEND WHO WALKED THE WEST (Western remake of KISS OF DEATH, with music borrowed from DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and Robert Evans in the Widmark part) and SINCERELY YOURS, with Liberace.
Douglas’ signature bit in action movies was the character in a gun-battle returning fire as he’s visibly getting hit by his opponent’s bullets. He used it in FIEND, TONY ROME and wheever else he could, to great effect.
RIO CONCHOS is the perfect absurdist Western, with Whitman pursuing the rifles he lost before thr movie started, Richard Boone’s cabin in the middle of Monument Valley, Wende Wagner’s distaff Tonto and Edmond O’Brien’s Southern Mansion with curtains and furniture but no walls.
Perhaps Don Siegel got a lot of the attention Douglas should have received, eh?
January 4th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
The story goes that Fess Parker got the part of Davy Crockett when Disney spotted him in this. If I rememer rightly, doesn’t Leonard Nimoy turn up in a bit part?
January 5th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Ray — Nimoy plays an enlisted Army type in a communications center. He gets perhaps two lines, but he does deliver them with appropriate sarcasm.
January 5th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Fair or not Douglas had a reputation as a workhorse director, while Siegel seems to have been perceived as more of a cult director.
Still, a lot of films that are particular favorites on IMDb’s list of Douglas films, though the presence of all those films like VIVA KNIEVEL! probably doesn’t help his reputation in the long run. He was one of those solid directors like Joseph Lewis, George Sherman, or Victor Fleming who somehow never really got the recognition their best work deserved.
It’s only in recent years Fleming and Lewis have really started to be looked at with a critical eye — and considering Fleming’s films include GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ — that is ironic (the major book about Fleming was only published in 2009).
Nothing new though. Michael Curtiz still gets little credit as an auteur (and in truth he wasn’t one in the true sense), but look at that list of credits… CASABLANCA, MILDRED PIERCE, CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, THE SEA HAWK, DODGE CITY, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY …
Sort of shoots the hell out of the auteur theory of film, doesn’t it.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Well, Sarris said Curtiz had no style of his own, but the one film he produced and directed (THE UNSUSPECTED)is pure style. No one seeing it can fail to an auteur’s sure (and sometimes kinky) touch.
Gee, we’re getting kinda far off the topic of THEM, ain’t we?
January 6th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Dan
We always get far off target. It’s almost a tradition.
And I agree about THE UNSUSPECTED, pure style, and a great film — not a bad book either. Great performance by Claude Rains.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
[…] explore the notion that Forbidden Planet is a detective film, much like Them! (reviewed earlier here ), with Sherlockian […]