Retro Review: Them! (1954)

Strangely enough, Warner Bros. didn't have very much confidence in this film--a prime example of the giant, radioactive monster craze of the 1950s that would go on to be their most successful picture of 1954. It would also become one of the classics of the so-called "silver age" of horror, and one of the most fun flicks a genre fan could possibly hope for.

It was supposed to be made in full color and 3-D--two of the very popular "gimmicks" used at the time with a lot of sci-fi and horror films. However, when the studio chickened out and cut the budget, it wound up in black and white and good ol' 2-D. You can still tell with many of the shots that the 3-D influence is there, and the title card of the movie is actually in color. But despite the short-sightedness of Warner's, who apparently didn't want to take a chance on a giant bug picture, Them! turned out to be just about as good as this subgenre got in the United States.

Warner's stalwart Gordon Douglas--a proficient thriller/western director who had cut his teeth with Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy at the Hal Roach Studio--here helms what may very well be his finest film. Genre favorite James Arness--a.k.a. the original Thing from another world--stars as government agent Robert Graham, on hand to investigate the strange goings on in the desert of New Mexico. But the most sympathetic performance of all comes from James Whitmore, a fine actor who made his one big mark on genre filmdom as doomed police sergeant Ben Peterson. And of course, we have Edmund Gwenn, best known as Kris Kringle in the original Miracle n 34th Street, as ant expert Dr. Harold Medford, the proverbial old scientist with the hot daughter, here played by Joan Weldon.

But let's be honest here--the real stars of Them! are the giant ants themselves. Long before the age of CGI, these massive monsters were created the old fashioned way, and the result is some of the finest creature work you're likely to see in this era. In fact, they might be the single most impressive mechanical monsters seen in American cinema prior to the rise of Stan Winston. And who could forget that unmistakable sound made by the giant ants as they approach--purportedly made using      
recordings of tree frogs? The ants in Them! are not only among the most impressive, but also the most downright frightening creations of the giant monster era of horror.

And that's certainly one of this movie's strong suits to be sure. Them! achieves what many 1950s creature features attempted to, but didn't always succeed at: it's actually very frightening. Perhaps this owes to the unique screenplay, which kicks off as a traditional police procedural whodunit and then verges off the road into the realm of horror. It doesn't fit the usual template, and although there's a fair share of light comedy and goofiness to be sure, it is also dead serious when it needs to be.

The world was preoccupied with the dangers of nuclear technology during this era, and it's no surprise that this film was released in America at the exact moment that Gojira was released in Japan. For whatever reason, someone got it into their heads that radiation would make things grow very large, and so we wound up with a rash of these giant-monster-on-the-loose epics. Think of it as Mother Nature getting her revenge against the arrogant human race for defiling her. It's a reckoning being visited on us by a natural order gone horribly awry. And what better emissaries for the natural world to send our way than cold, calculating, murderous, remorseless insects?

The fact that ants were chosen as the monsters in question certainly went a long way to making this a unique film of its kind--after all, this was at a time when the concept of giant radioactive creatures was still relatively new. The idea was originally brought to Warner Bros. in the form of a treatment by George Worthing Yates, who obviously had a great head for the genre, given that he had done the same for Sinbad the Sailor in 1947, and would later contribute stories and/or screenplays for the likes of It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, The Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs. The Spider and King Kong vs. Godzilla. After being filtered through TV writers Russell Hughes and Ted Sherdeman, Yates concept was polished into a jewel. 

Although later very often imitated, Them! was one of the seminal entries in its subgenre, and set a standard that many later films would try to emulate, with various degrees of success. It had the perfect balance of special effects spectacle and grim terror, telling a social parable while also not being too heavy or morose. After all, this was still 1950s America, lest we forget.

Warners may have been doubtful of the success of Them!, but there can be no question that in the end, that doubt was unfounded. The horror movie genre was sort of on the ropes coming out of World War II, but this film is one of several, including the likes of Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and House of Wax, that helped put it back on the map and create another memorable era for fans of cinematic terrors.

If you're a fan of Them!, or better yet, if you've never seen it before, I invite you to come down to The Bijou Theatre in Bridgeport, Connecticut this Thursday night, September 27, when I'll be hosting a screening of the film, alongside its Japanese counterpart Gojira, in a little teamup I'm calling "Nuclear Nightmares". It's all part of Bedlam at the Bijou, a three-month-long series celebrating the fifth anniversary of The Vault of Horror. Join me, won't you?

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Retro Review: It Came from Outer Space (1953)

The Second World War had been won. America seemed to be driving off into the proverbial sunset, leaving its Depression worries far behind and emerging as a shiny, happy world power. And yet, underneath that perfect Brill Cream surface, there was just as much turmoil as ever--only now it was buried down deep where no one could see. Eisenhower-era America was a very paranoid, nervous place, but to really understand and perceive that, you had to look in the place where the nation's zeitgeist so very often resided--the movies.

In particular, as they did in so many other periods in our history, genre films best epitomized the mood of the times. In the wake of World War II and the dawn of the Atomic Age, the public was inundated with a plethora of sci-fi based horror cinema. No longer were we being terrorized by fantastical and mythological figures out of folklore--rather, this time around, the dangers came from science, whether that meant man-made or from beyond the stars. The devastating powers of science unleashed were made known to us that fateful day in August 1945, when the city of Hiroshima, Japan was reduced to rubble in a flash.

Add to this the all-encompassing fears engendered in us by the burgeoning Cold War, with the whole nation caught up in a panic of potential Red infiltration, and you have a perfect storm of sorts, which would result in a golden age of science-fiction horror. Technology could not be trusted; the strange, the unknown, the outsider, could not be trusted. It was a time of rabid paranoia, and filmmakers were more than happy to step up and take advantage.

Filmmakers like New Haven's own Jack Arnold, who took his first step into the genre arena in 1953 with the 3-D groundbreaker It Came from Outer Space. At the vanguard of Universal Studios' horror renaissance of the early 1950s, Arnold would go on to direct both Creature from the Black Lagoon and its sequel, Revenge of the Creature, as well as the acclaimed 1957 adaptation of Richard Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man. But he set the tone with this, his initial foray into sci-fi horror, and one of the seminal pictures of its kind.

Arnold's screenwriter was Harry Essex, the same man who would deliver the script to Creature from the Black Lagoon to him the following year. Arnold also had as his star the earnest and intense Richard Carlson, who also starred in Creature, as well. And although that latter film gets all the press when it comes to Universal in the 1950s, it's entirely possible that this is the better film.

Playing on those inescapable Cold War fears, It Came from Outer Space tells the tale of an amateur stargazer (Carlson) who stumbles upon a crashed spacecraft in the Arizona desert and soon becomes the only one aware of the threat once the craft is totally covered in rubble. No one in his small town believes him, and it only gets worse when he begins to see his friends and neighbors being taken over by the inscrutable alien influence of which only he and his put-upon girlfriend (played by the doe-eyed Barbara Rush) are fully aware.

It's a classic formula, and one that delivers in spades. Part of the 3-D craze of the early 1950s that also gave us the likes of House of Wax (vying for audiences in the summer of 1953) and Creature the following summer, It Came from Outer Space is engagingly shot by Clifford Stine, who would go on to shoot such epics as Spartacus and Patton. Yes, the 3-D effects are often forced and contrived, as is so much of the 3-D of that era, but it's a testament to the forethought of both Arnold and Stine that the movie works just as well in 2-D.

Carlson and Rush give us performances typical of genre B-movies of this era, but it isn't for greating acting that audiences flocked to films such as this. We also get familiar character actors like Charles Warren as the incredulous sheriff, Joe Sawyer as a philosophical telephone technician and Russell Johnson, a.k.a. The Professor from Gilligan's Island, as his assistant and the first one to be co-opted by the aliens.

And speaking of aliens, my what a gruesome and glorious creature design we get here. The story goes that the original design for the aliens was rejected and would later be used for the Metaluna mutant of This Island Earth two years later. No matter, because the one-eyed, slime-caked, snail-like behemoths created by Milicent Patrick (designer of the the Gill-Man), are far more terrifying. These aliens would have to be among the most memorable of 1950s science fiction cinema, including the unique point-of-view photography that accompanied their scenes, executed by encasing the camera in a clear rubber bubble.

The plot, conceptualized by Ray Bradbury, is innovative for its time, portraying the aliens as misunderstood by a mistrusting and primitive human populace--it's the kind of progressive sci-fi thinking that would later give rise to the likes of Star Trek and other such thoughtful, hopeful, utopian sci-fi entertainment. The movie also has so much of what we've come to expect from genre pictures of the 1950s--an exasperated, dire protagonist; a constantly screaming leading lady; and of course, lots of lots of theremin, played by the legendary master of the instrument, Samuel Hoffman.

Captain Cruella and I recently had the pleasure of hosting this film as part of The Avon Theatre's Cult Classics series, and despite the poorly reproduced 3-D, it was an experience I very much enjoyed. It Came from Outer Space is something of a time capsule--a summation of a very paradoxical time in our history, mixing optimism and hysteria, delivering thrills and chills while also making us stop and think. Universal of the 1950s may have been a shadow of what it was in the 1930s, but this picture is still a whole lot of fun, and proves that the studio could still be counted on to deliver a rollicking good monster movie. Amongst the massive sci-fi horror movement that took the decade of Elvis and Lucy by storm, it is one of the best.

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TRAILER TRASH! '50s Sci-Fi Edition!

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The Tuesday Top 10: Favorite Horror Movies of the 1950s

In the spirit of previous lists in which I compiled my favorite horror films of the 1930s and the 1940s, this time out I'm switching my attention to the decade of Elvis and Eisenhower; to a simpler time when children sang along with Howdy Doody, and hid under their school desks to escape nuclear annihilation.

The 1950s was an amazing time for terror, filled with giant critters, 3-D nightmares, drive-in grotesqueries and the birth of sci-fi horror. There are so many to choose from, but if you held me down at gunpoint, these would probably be my ten favorite...

10. The Fly (1958)
I've really grown to appreciate the original version more and more over the years. As excellent as the Cronenberg remake is (and there's no doubt it's more terrifying), there's something about this classic that gets under my skin. I really love the mask, which was very effective, especially compared to later installments. And who could forget that ending... "Help meeeee!!"

9. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
The birth of the true Hammer horror tradition, this film took a Universal classic, melded it with the original Shelley source text, and created a gruesome hybrid that's a joy to behold. Peter Cushing is at the height of his powers, Chris Lee rocks the house in some serendipitously hideous Frank makeup, and then of course, the lovely and late Hazel Court ain't so hard on the eyes.

8. House of Wax (1953)
We must laud this film for doing two things: popularizing 3-D, and anointing Vincent Price as the crown prince of horror. This one scared the crap out of me as a kid, and made me swear off wax museums for years! The makeup is brilliant, the garish technicolor suitably sickening, and then of course there's Price himself. Do I really need to say that's he amazing? Well, I'll say it anyway: He's amazing.

7. Gojira (1954)
I didn't really understand that this was a true horror film until I saw the Japanese original. For anyone who's only ever seen the 1956 American re-edit with Raymond Burr, I can't stress strongly enough the need to check this out. The brooding cinematography, along with Akira Ifukube's powerful score, help make this tale of Tokyo's obliteration absolutely horrifying to behold.

6. The Thing from Another World (1951)
The remake may be superior--in this case even moreso than that of The Fly--but that's no reason to give short shrift to the original, as is often done. Luminaries such as Stephen King, John Carpenter and my dad have cited it as one of the most influential horror films of their youth, and with good reason. This gem almost single-handedly kicked off the sci-fi/horror craze of the '50s, and did it better than nearly any other flick in the subgenre.

5. Night of the Demon (1957)
Probably the least-known film on this list, this British entry directed by Jacques Tourneur (one of Val Lewton's proteges) is a broiling kettle of occult goodness. Based on a classic M.R. James short story, it also features a hideous creature that is seen very little throughout the picture, but leaves a lasting impression. This one will stay with you for sure.

4. Les Diaboliques (1955)
Is it just me, or are there a ton of foreign films on this list? Now it's time for the French to get their due, for this stellar motion picture that's one of the best ever made, horror or otherwise. The wife and mistress of a vicious headmaster manage to kill the guy, then somehow lose the body. Here's a film that clearly influenced Hitchcock's Psycho, as well as decades of tense thrillers that would follow. Bathtub scene=unforgettable.

3. Horror of Dracula (1958)
Many consider this the finest version of Dracula ever filmed. And although I'll always have a soft spot for Bela Lugosi, I must admit that Terence Fisher's vampire opus is a rich, atmospheric piece of horror candy, to be savored with relish. Christopher Lee is dripping with menace as the Count, plus for the first time in a major vampire movie, we get actual fangs and blood galore!

2. Them! (1954)
There's something about this movie that just seems to have gotten into our collective subconscious. Maybe it's the whole fear of bugs thing. Ask anyone who's ever seen it to name their favorite horror films, and it's more than likely that this title will come up. Much better than 99% of the giant-irradiated-creature flicks that filled 1950s cinemas, this one does what so many of them failed to: It's actually extremely scary.

1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Yes, it's an obvious allegory for America's fear of Communist infiltration, but this classic original is also a damn fine horror movie that gets everything right. From acting (Kevin McCarthy is amazing) to special effects, to music and beyond, it's an absolute opus of terror from beginning to end. There's something about the dreadful inevitability of it all that gets me every time--in a way, this flick is a precursor to Night of the Living Dead. Plus there's that image of the pitchfork going into the face of that one pod person... brutal. And what more can be said about that incredible, Twilight Zone-like ending? Remade several times, but the power of the original never gets old.

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