FAQ

Yes, but only the females. However, not knowing what gender the attacking ants are in this film, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that due to the radioactive fallout that created them male ants were mutated to have stingers.

Them! is based on a story by American screenwriter George Worthing Yates. The story was made into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman and Russell Hughes. Them! is credited with being one of the first "nuclear monster" films and the first "big bug" film, spawning a host of movies in the 1950s about bugs, spiders, and other creepy crawlers, most often the result of radiation from atomic testing.

Yes, Alamogordo is a city in south-central New Mexico, about 60 to 65 miles north of the Mexican border. However, the film was shot in California as evidenced by the abundance of Joshua trees in the area. Joshua trees do not grow in the New Mexico desert.

Yes. A very young Leonard Nimoy (Spock from the original Star Trek (1966)) appears as a soldier who picks up a teletype message around the 57-minute mark.

As mentioned in the film, White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), just southwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico, was the testing ground for the world's first atomic bomb (the A-bomb), codenamed Trinity, on 16 July, 1945.

The military invades the drain system, killing ants along the way. Mike (Richard Bellis) and Jerry (Robert Scott Correll) Lodge crawl to safety after being lifted into a small tunnel by Police Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore). Unfortunately, Peterson is caught in an ant's mandibles and squeezed to death. Dr Medford Sr (Edmund Gwenn) refuses to let the military destroy the tunnels until they have found the egg chamber and learned whether or not more queens have hatched. In the final scene, they reach the egg chamber and discover that several new queens have indeed hatched. However, Dr Medford is certain that none have escaped and orders the military to burn them. As the soldiers wave around their flamethrowers, Dr Pat (Joan Weldon) asks whether all the atomic tests conducted since Trinity may have spawned new mutants. "I don't know", Medford answers. "When man entered the atomic age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict."

1950s "giant bug" fans recommend the following, starting with 1953's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). In 1954, The Naked Jungle (1954) (army ants) was released, followed by Tarantula (1955) and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (octopus) in 1955. 1957 saw the release of more giant bug movies, including The Deadly Mantis (1957), Beginning of the End (1957) (grasshoppers), The Giant Claw (1957), and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). In 1958, there was Monster from Green Hell (1957) (wasps), The Spider (1958), The Strange World of Planet X (1958) (1958), and The Fly (1958). In 1959, The The Giant Gila Monster (1959), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), and The Killer Shrews (1959) tried to ravage the earth.