Gordon Douglas’ Them! (1954) is far more polished, slick, and straight-faced than its b-movie premise (and exclamation point!) would suggest.
The subplot involving a traumatized orphan is genuinely distressing to watch, James Whitmore gives a rather modern haunted performance, and some of the effects are surprisingly gruesome. From a giant monster crushing a human torso in its mandibles, to our heroes tiptoeing through a gooey clutch of insect eggs, you can draw a straight line to Dan O’Bannon, Ridley Scott, and H.R. Giger’s ideas for Alien.
I have faint memories of watching an edited-for-TV version as a child, so this rewatch was suffused with a little extra eeriness, as I occasionally recognized a scene or image. For some reason, the repeated references to “unexplained sugar theft” echoed in my memory, and I still can’t tell if it was intentional comedy. To modern audiences, the aggressive banter between Pam (Joan Weldon) and Graham (James Arness) is simultaneously toxic and hilarious.
It’s also interesting to note the very-1950s preoccupation on authority figures maintaining secrecy and public order. Were this to be made today, the cast of characters would be a ragtag band of misfit teenagers and/or science nerds, and the government/police/military would be absent or ineffective. There would probably also be a pair of single parents and/or divorcées in the mix.
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