June Bugs :: Adjust Your Antennae for the Greatest Big Bug Movie of All Time! A Horror Horde of Crawl 'n' Crush Giants in Gordon Douglas' THEM! (1954)

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"Well, Old Man Johnson could've died in any one of five ways: His neck and back were broken; his chest was crushed; his skull was fractured ... And here's one for Sherlock Holmes -- there was enough formic acid in him to kill twenty men."

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Today's film is a thrilling police procedural mystery with a stylish noir flair. It also has solid action, a fine sense of comedic timing, and rousing combat sequences. And when you combine all of that with a great cast, outstanding special-effects, and some startling imagery, you got yourself a very entertaining film -- a very entertaining film that also just happens to be about giant ants.

 
It begins when a little girl is found wandering around the New Mexico desert alone, dazed and dirty, locked in a silent state of shock. The local Highway Patrol, led by Sgt. Ben Peterson (Whitmore), retrace her steps back to a destroyed campsite but find no sign of her parents in the wreckage. And as more and more people turn up missing or dead under violent circumstances, with the only linking clue being an odd animal footprint, the FBI is brought in in the form of Special Agent Robert Graham (Arness) to help jump-start the stalled investigation.

Since the locals can't identify the mystery print, Graham forwards it on to Washington for further analysis, and is a little baffled when his bosses answer by dispatching two experts on insects. Confusion reigns as the Doctors Medford, a father-daughter outfit (Weldon and the irascible Gwenn), won't elaborate on their findings and stubbornly refuse to comment further until they find some collaborating evidence. First stop is a visit to the local hospital to check up on the little girl (Descher). And when the elder Medford waves a glass of formic acid in front of the nearly catatonic waif, the fumes trigger one of the greatest and most effective screams in B-Movie history that rockets right up your spine and rattles your brain as it resoundingly resonates and puckers your rear end in anticipation for what's to follow.




As tension continues to mount, the Medfords continue to play it close to the vest and refuse to explain the girl's violent reaction and, instead, fearing it may already be too late, insist on a trip to the area where the girl was initially found, near the atomic testing sites at White Sands -- he typed ominously.

So into the desert they go, and though a nasty sandstorm is brewing and threatening to break wide-open, they manage to find another print. Splitting up to hopefully find more, and perhaps a trail, the younger Medford wanders off by herself, and as she tries to make out a strange, piercing screech over the howling wind, a 15-foot piece of six-legged concrete proof lumbers over a nearby sand dune, confirming their worst nightmare...

While THEM! was in pre-production, the studio execs at Warner Bros. kept the whole thing under wraps and only those directly involved knew what it was about. Hoping to combine and cash-in on the successful elements of House of Wax and The Beast from 20000 Fathoms, two of their biggest money-makers from 1953, the studio had big plans, high ambitions, and elaborate F/X budgeted for the production that was slated to be shot in Warnercolor and in 3-D. But at some point, and for some undisclosed reason, the studio lost all faith in the film, resulting in a slashed budget, black and white film stock, and a return to two-dimensions. And then there's the apocryphal story where the finished, stream-lined film was screened for Jack Warner, who was apparently not amused by what he saw and offered that anybody else wanting to make asinine giant bug movies would be banished to Republic Pictures.

With that, and without much fanfare, THEM! was quietly released in June of 1954 and proceeded to stick its ejaculatory duct into Jack Warner's ear, trailing only the likes of A Star is Born and The High and the Mighty in box-office receipts -- and for good reasons, too.

What makes this movie work in spite of it's inherently wonky premise is that everyone involved took it very seriously. Starting with the cast, Whitmore and Arness have good chemistry (-- though Whitmore had to wear four-inch lifts to better sync up with his co-star, who was a full foot taller), while Weldon does well as the feisty, no-nonsense heroine, helped by a script that leaves the idiotic romantic subplot on the back-burner until the film's very last scene. But it's Gwenn who steals the show as the fuddy, radio-impaired crackpot. Seriously, you don't want any of these people to become ant-kibble, which is why -- Spoilers Ahoy! -- Whitmore's Wilhelm-fueled heroic death at the end has such an impact.

Combine all that with another solid effort from journeyman director, Gordon Douglas, whose been rightfully gaining some traction lately for an overlooked career that's finally getting its due, and an intelligent and believable script that doesn't get bogged down in the usual sci-babble or stock-footage abuse and stays focused on a methodical mystery that doesn't cheat the audience, is it any wonder why THEM! has earned such a stellar reputation? For even after the discovery and confirmation of the giant ants existence in the opening act, things are just getting warmed up as we switch gears from an investigative effort to an all out search and destroy mission.

See, after dispatching the scout ant before it can turn anybody into a snack, a strict, need-to-know security blanket is thrown over the entire investigation as the army is called in to help find and neutralize the atomically-mutated ant colony. And despite some radio protocol gaffes, find the nest they do; the entrance littered with the bones of all those missing persons. But once more Dr. Medford blocks any attempt to blow the nest to smithereens, and is very coy as to the reasons why until the elderly scientist explains they must be certain that the nest is an isolated anomaly. And to do that, they must first make their way into the queen ant's egg chamber to make sure no other queens have hatched out and vacated to start even more colonies. For if they have, Medford warns, and those colonies breed even more colonies, mankind's reign as the dominant species on Earth will be over within a year.

Using phosphorous shells to drive the ants deeper into the nest, followed by a barrage of poisonous gas grenades, once the network of tunnels is thoroughly saturated, Peterson, Graham and the younger Medford descend into the darkness. And after a few surreal and suspenseful turns, navigating through all the carcasses and a few stray live ones, the group finds the egg chamber but they were too late; two queens have managed to hatch out and escape. With that, Medford orders the men to burn all the remaining, and still percolating, larva.

Next, our film switches gears again to a race against the clock as a wide dragnet is thrown out for any reports of strange sightings or phenomenon to try and track down the missing queens. They hit upon some luck when one of them is found aboard a cargo ship at sea -- lucky for everyone except for the poor sailors who are quickly overwhelmed and devoured. And when it is determined that a rescue operation is untenable, the freighter is sunk by Naval gunfire, which leaves only one queen still unaccounted for until a few more clues -- including a large sugar theft, and a bizarre, dismemberment death -- leads them to the sewers beneath Los Angeles. (Originally, it was to be the subways in New York, but was moved to save more money.)

But once again, Medford wants to find the egg chamber. Only this time, they can't use any gas because the dismembered man's two sons are believed to be hiding somewhere in the 700 miles of storm drains underneath the city. And as the media black-out is lifted, the army mobilizes and starts a grid search. Against all hope, Peterson manages to find the boys, alive, and the nest, and though he lifts the survivors to safety, the ants swarm to protect the queen and kill him before he can get away. ((WILHELM!!!))

Arriving too late to save his friend, Graham leads the charge as the ants are beaten back and obliterated in a hail of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. Surrounding the nest, they spy three empty shells, but the queens who came out of them are all present and accounted for. With that, the order is given and the ants are showered with napalm, ending the current threat. But who knows what other horrors are currently gestating out in the irradiated desert. For as Dr. Medford laments, "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." 

One of the few things to survive THEM!'s budget purge were the F/X. Here, the giant ants were realized with several life-sized mock-ups that were manipulated with hidden wires and rods that are most effective -- effectively gruesome, when the ants are burned alive. And that's one thing I really, really like about this movie is that the giant ants aren't indestructible and can be taken down with some effort. And though I could have sworn the ant's screech was provided by a loose alternator belt on an old Packard, in truth, it was a chorus of amplified tree frogs.(A couple of years ago while touring the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, I heard their siren call and traced it to a display about the tropical frogs and the button that triggered it, and then spent the next five minutes simulating a giant ant swarm. I'd probably still be there, but there were also otters.) 

Often imitated but never bettered, I think THEM! works, and has withstood the test of time, because of the opening mystery that really hooks you in, and then challenges you to hang on for the resulting chase, and then cheer during the rousing climax -- a good old-fashioned giant bug butt-kicking.

Other Points of Interest:

The poster campaign for THEM! at the Archive.

The newspaper ads for THEM! at the Morgue.

This re-post is part of June Bugs, a whole month long bucket of creepy-crawly reviews courtesy of The Celluloid Zeroes. Be sure to click on over to Cinemasochist Apocalypse, Checkpoint: Telstar, and The Terrible Claw Reviews for more insecticide insanity. Also, be sure to scuttle back here next week as I swing my shoe at another killer-bug flick.

THEM! (1954) Warner Bros. / P: David Weisbart / D: Gordon Douglas / W: Ted Sherdeman, Russell S. Hughes, George Worthing Yates (story) / C: Sid Hickox / E: Thomas Reilly / M: Bronislau Kaper / S: James Arness, James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, Onslow Stevens, Sean McClory, Sandy Descher

Cult Movie Project #12 (of 200) :: Attention: Something's Wrong on Altair-4 and It Doesn't Quite Compute in Fred Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956).

From concept to execution, I freely admit Forbidden Planet (1956) was a little over my head when first encountered on VHS tape back in junior high (-- though it might've been on one of those LP-sized laser discs, if faulty memory serves). I hadn't been introduced to Shakespeare yet, and was just as unfamiliar with the theories of Sigmund Freud. Still, the robot was cool -- hell, it even belched!, the electronica soundtrack all kinds of eerie, and the monster (and the mystery around it) was super-creepy and its brutal assault on the crew of the C-57D left a lasting favorable impression; even though 11-year old me felt it was a little corny and the film squandered too much time on all that "mush" between Commander Adams (Neilson) and Alta (Francis); and, man, that Dr. Morbius (Pidgeon) sure liked to hear himself regurgitate a metric-ton of sci-babble, didn't he?

Yeah. I was/am/and ever shall be a huge fan of sci-fi flicks from the 1950s but usually gravitated more toward the high-octane and hair-brained and cheaper product churned out by American International and Allied Artists or other independents rather than this seemingly stodgy and sanitized first shot at genre legitimacy, courtesy of a grandaddy studio like MGM.

The film began as a treatment by Irving Block and Allen Adler called Fatal Planet, a re-imagining of The Tempest with a healthy sprinkling of psycho-analysis to give it some pep, which begins in the far flung future of 1976, when an expeditionary force is sent to Mercury to retrieve a scientist and his daughter, who have been marooned there for over two decades, currently being stalked by an invisible monster. When Allied Artists rejected it, Block took a shot and pitched it to Dore Schary at MGM (-- which hadn't produced a this kind of F/X-laden film since The Wizard of Oz (1939)), who, serendipitously enough, was looking for a sci-fi property in his efforts to reinvent and reinvigorate the moribund studio.

It should be noted that even though Schary liked the highbrow concept enough to give it a green-light, it was originally budgeted as a B-picture. However, during the pre-production phase the project picked up some much needed steam when art directors Arthur Lonegran and Cedric Gibbons and head F/X-man Arnold Gillespie basically said, screw it, and designed the film how they thought it should be done, budget be damned. Liking what he saw on paper and, perhaps to also answer rival Universal International own mega-budgeted out-of-this-world blowout, This Island Earth (1955), Schary doubled-down on the rechristened Forbidden Planet, raising the budget to over one million dollars, which eventually doubled again before the production was completed.

As we all know a good chunk of that money was spent on one prop, nearly one-quarter of the original budget, but Robby the Robot proved worth it. Designed by Robert Kinoshita and voiced by Marvin Millar, the man-in-the-suit machinations were a closely guarded secret, hoping to sell it as an actual automaton. To realize the deadly Id Monster, the F/X had to be farmed out since MGM's own fabled animation department had been dismantled by 1955. Thus, Schary arranged the loan of Joshua Meador from Walt Disney, who also animated in all the laser beams, landing rays, and other energy discharges (like whenever Robby throws a rod).

Schary also made another fateful decision for Forbidden Planet after he attended the performance of two "avant-garde electronic musicians" at a nightclub in Greenwich Village, and was so mesmerized by the ethereal and eerie sounds produced by Louis and Bebe Barron that he hired them on the spot to re-score the film, trashing all of David Rose's original music except for the main title theme. Receiving a work-print of the film, the Barrons spent nearly three months in their home studio, creating all the "tonalities" for the film, including the Id Monster's signature roar.

As the release date loomed, an incomplete rough cut of the film was previewed and the audience reaction was so favorable Schary, feeling the heat from the studio brass, spent no more money and ordered the film to be released as is. Alas, audiences back in 1956 agreed with my initial assessment. And while the film didn't exactly tank at the box-office it failed to make back its production costs, making it another in a long string of flops for MGM, which, according to most sources, also cost Schary his job, who was ousted from the studio shortly after. Released the year before, This Island Earth also failed to meet box-office expectations, thus, these two massive swings and misses essentially relegated this kind of genre picture back to the B-unit minor leagues, where it languished until Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddysey (1968) showed its viability as a big-ticket item, launching a decade long surge that culminated in 1977 with the blockbuster release of Star Wars and things have never been the same since.

I saw Star Wars (and The Empire Strikes Back (1980)) before I saw Forbidden Planet, which also might explain my initial cool reaction to it. However, as I've gotten older, I've aged into this flick considerably and appreciate it as a true classic of the era. What I used to find wasteful I now find endearing. And the Shakespearean nod on the plot and the Freudian twist on the monster are kinda trippy. The film still has some glaring faults, though; namely the ending, when Alta chooses Adams over her father, which felt a little trite and truncated; and the ultimate climax really needed to show the Id monster and Morbius finally coming to (fatal) terms with each other. Also, when you have the world's coolest cinematic robot, why waste him as the odious comedy relief? And you spent all that money realizing Altair-4, how come we only get to see so very little of it?

Perhaps Schary's biggest mistake was that even though Forbidden Planet has the sheen of an A-picture, it was still shot and executed like a B. Perhaps some of that expanded budget should've been leeched away from the production design and F/X and spread around on an upgrade behind the camera (director Fred Wilcox biggest films to date were two Lassie sequels) and aim a little higher on the cast, who are all perfunctory enough, to inject some more life into it. (Aside from Walter Pidgeon, the cast was filled out from the lower end of the MGM stable. And, holy Krell crap, does Francis look smashing in those myriad outfits, too bad her role is strictly eye-candy.)

Think how good the film is during the (all too few) action set-pieces, or the exploration of the mammoth underground Krell laboratory and reactor and power plant, and how much it drags everywhere else.

Still, the film does look fantastic -- especially on BluRay and a TV big enough to appreciate the true impact of the Eastman Color and CinemaScope and the work that was put in behind the scenes to make this flick click and stick. And as this cinematic equation reaches a solution, the pluses are just enough to negate the minuses. Add it all up and you got a flawed film I used to like but now legitimately love and champion. 

Other Points of Interest:

Poster campaign for Forbidden Planet at the Archive.

Newspaper ads for Forbidden Planet at the Morgue.  
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"While there are marvelous things about Forbidden Planet -- the electronic music, special effects (including the Id Monster and Robby the Robot), and scenic design -- they are all of a cosmetic nature ... In my opinion, there are numerous science fiction films that are more intelligent, clever, suspenseful, economical, witty ... you name it. But while I consider Forbidden Planet to be grossly overrated, I do not underestimate the film's importance to its genre. A seminal work, the only [sci-fi] movie of the fifties to succeed in giving the [sci-fi] genre a long-denied tag of respectability."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXX-- Danny Peary  

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The Fine Print: Forbidden Planet was watched via Warner Home Video's Special Edition BluRay. Screened as a sci-fi/fantasy double-feature with Jason and the Argonauts (1963). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's twelve down, with 188 to go.

Forbidden Planet (1956) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / P: Nicholas Nayfack / D: Fred M. Wilcox / W: Cyril Hume, Irving Block, Allen Adler, William Shakespeare (play) / C: George J. Folsey / E: Ferris Webster / M: Bebe Barron, Louis Barron / S: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly, Earl Holliman, Robby the Robot

On the Big Screen :: A Trio of Recent Fright Flicks that I Saw and Finally Got Around to Writing Up.

 
I saw Poltergeist (2015) in a near empty theater with four different knots of teenage girls who were primed and ready to scream. So it was a small but a good, lively crowd; too bad there was nothing really to scream at.  

Still, this remake wasn't that terrible. And despite the fresh angle of a family in a terminal financial crisis relocating to a new house due to the Great Recession, it felt really by the numbers, plot-wise, as you could almost hear someone scratching a check-mark for each nod and rehash of the original that was quickly airbrushed over by a tweak that, alas, worked more not than often; and it seemed the faster they could check things off the better. In fact, the whole film felt like it was in a hurry for no appreciable reason. It was also plagued by a ton of sloppy edits that weren't helping the cause. Also, SQUIRREL!

And as my friend Tim Gerlomi so rightfully pointed out, static shocks aside, the film was sorely missing the establishing scenes of the family playing with the strangeness in Spielbergian wonder before Hooper brings the hammer of annihilation down on them. The cast almost elevates things up a notch, but I think it would've been better to focus on the ghost-hunting team of Jarred Harris and Jane Adams instead of the family -- the elder sister needed about three more rewrites, and Sam Rockwell appears to be sleepwalking through the whole thing, which was a huge disappointment. 

One of the smartest things the original Poltergeist (1982) did was shuttle off the kids once the ectoplasm hits the fan. That is not the case here, as the telegraphed climax is about the scaredy-cat brother finally getting over the bump-in-the-night hump. Also of note, I'm not sure if filmmakers are finally learning how to use 3-D properly or the local theater finally has the projector in focus but that was two topographical films in a row (this and Fury Road) that worked the process really well. The F/X were top-notch, but they were doled out very frugally, as if they were waiting for something big that never really came.

So, yeah, not that great, not that terrible, and totally unwarranted; and so, a hearty I'd wait for rental to all my fellow ghostbreakers out there. Next up...

On the one year anniversary of Laura Barns' (Heather Sossaman) very public suicide -- a very public suicide that will live forever thanks to a smart-phone video, six of her friends log-in for a Skype chat, which quickly devolves into mayhem and mass murder when an anonymous user hacks into their conversation.

Thus, the stage is set for Unfriended (2014), which is less of a found footage, after the fact reconstruction, but a real-time exercise in suspense. The entire film is told through the laptop screen of Blair Lilly (Shelley Hennig), the late Laura's best friend. And as the terrorizing hacker slowly but surely winds everyone up, revealing (not so) hidden online secrets, turning all the participants against one another, its revealed that Laura committed suicide after a brutal smear and shaming campaign after someone posted an anonymous video of her completely wasted at a party -- and so intoxicated on alcohol and Rohypnol, she passes out in a pool of her own vomit, soiling herself in the process. And for the killing to stop, all the ever-dwindling knot of cybernauts must do is reveal who shot and posted the "Leaky Laura" viral video.

Originally, the killer was supposed to be someone seeking vengeance for Laura but I think the filmmakers made the right decision to go the supernatural route and make it a vengeful spirit, solving several logistical and logical problems -- like simply logging off. (Though the borderline parasitic relationship we have with our tech makes one wonder if it really would be that simple. I mean, Click to find out what happens next, amIright?) 

This film wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be, judging by the trailer. I'd even almost tag it as pretty good. Almost, but not quite. I find it odd that they went for an R-rating (which is unjustified), as this subject matter and approach seems tailor made for a PG-13 crowd. 

Kudos to Leo Gabriadze for pulling off the online gimmick. (And how the hell they ever cleared the use of Facebook, Skype, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube is beyond me.) The execution is quite brilliant, I just wish all the effort wasn't wasted on a rote plot of horrible people doing despicable things to each other -- well, in this case, themselves, thanks to the buffer of online anonymity. (Our 'final girl' isn't what we expected, nor the original victim.) 

Thus, the true horror of Unfriended is not the bloodshed but the behavior of these selfish, amoral and desensitized turd-nuggets, which earns them a harsh lesson on the consequences of one's own actions. And then...

I had to drive 160 miles, round-trip, to catch this. And what this all boils down to, kids, is David Robert Mitchell's loving tribute to John Carpenter (especially the industrial synthesizer soundtrack), Dean Cundey, and a vintage STD hygiene film. Moody and highly atmospheric, I'll give them that, but It Follows (2014) kinda forgot to be scary. And yet...

It didn't really need to be. At least the kind of scary you're thinking of. No. This film was aiming for something a little higher than that. The trailer already gave away the plot, but, to sum up, basically, our heroine has sex with some jerk and now a malignant supernatural chameleon is out to get her and everyone in the chain who transmitted whatever the hell that thing is from one sex partner to the other, starting with the latest casualty (Maika Monroe), and then working its way back to patient zero. And when I say 'get', I mean turn them into a bloody pretzel.

There is no apparent cure for this. You can't reason with it. You can run but you can't hide or get away from it. And it can look like anyone. All you can do to keep from dying is to spread the 'curse' even further, and hope whoever you gave it to spreads it around even more, to give yourself some breathing room.

From there, a knot of friends do their best to help delay the inevitable by staying one step ahead of the relentless entity that only those who are infected can see. I really liked how we're not sure when this is happening -- with the vintage clothes and furnishings, a mix of new and older cars, no cell phones (except for the first victim), and that funky kindle, like we're devolving -- or slouching back to the 1980s. Suburban decay is also huge motif in this flick, as well -- the city is already dead, the rest is witheringly on its way, leaving a demilitarized husk to wander through.

The film that plays out in these surroundings is very deliberate, patient, and requires you to pay attention, ratcheting the tension up several notches if you, like the protagonist, keep your eyes open. (That set-up for the attack on the beach was ah-mazing.) And as it progresses the film raises more questions than offering any answers -- though I found the lack of finding a convenient 'expert' to explain it all away and how to stop the entity kinda refreshing. The nominal hero has seen one too many 1950s era creature features and just wings it from there.

A couple of twists and turns are kind of ambiguous as to what really happened and how far our heroine will go, and went, putting other people in jeopardy, to save herself, making It Follows kinda frustrating as it played out and then ends rather abruptly.   

But having an 80 mile drive to stew on what happened and what Mitchell probably intended with that ending (eventually) put this one in the win column for me. To say why would spoil too much. I liked this enough initially -- but It Follows keeps getting better and better the more I think about it.