70 years of Them!, the giant-ant invasion movie that anticipated the summer blockbuster era

Seen for the first time by their domestic audiences in 1954, both Creature from the Black Lagoon and Godzilla turn 70 this year. Their anniversaries have been widely celebrated (with plenty more to come for the King of the Monsters), and rightfully so – these were two humble creature features that introduced enduring titans of popular culture. 

But among all the celebrations for the Gillman and what is (both figuratively and literally) the biggest monster to ever emerge from the movies, it’s important not to forget another classic science-fiction film that first crawled into cinemas seven decades ago: Them!, one of the defining cultural artefacts of the atomic age. Premiered in New York on 16 June 1954, this was the original ‘giant bug’ movie, in which huge irradiated ants emerge from the New Mexico desert and threaten to conquer the world.

The giant ants at the centre of Them! might not have spawned a long-running franchise or innumerable action figures – but, ironically, the film in which they appear was originally intended to be a far more lavish production than either Godzilla or Creature from the Black Lagoon. Warner Brothers put the film into production to capitalise on the box-office success of its own The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Paramount’s The War of the Worlds – both of which had been released the previous year – and no expense was to be spared. Directed by studio regular Gordon Douglas from a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman (itself based on a story treatment by George Worthing Yates), it was originally intended to be shot in both colour and 3D. Sadly, studio head Jack Warner slashed the budget and those plans were scrapped, though evidence of them can still be seen in the film’s eye-popping title card.

Even without gimmicks and a prestige-picture budget, though, Them! feels like a prototype for the summer blockbuster. Its fantastical premise, attention-grabbing title, innovative special effects, June release date and lurid marketing campaign (which promised a “horror horde of crawl-and-crush giants”) all presaged the era of high-concept blockbusters that would arrive 20 years later with the likes of Jaws (1975). The film’s success is largely attributable to its insectoid creatures, which featured prominently in marketing materials despite Warner’s desire to keep the plot under wraps to ensure maximum shock value. Realised using enormous puppets built by studio technician Dick Smith, they were operated with a complex lever and pulley system. Unsurprisingly, the film’s special effects were nominated for an Academy Award, but lost out to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

Them! raked in $2.2 million in rentals by the end of its theatrical run. It was one of Warner’s highest-grossing films of the year and appeared on Variety’s list of “box-office champs” in its round-up of 1954. In many ways, then, it is an important film in Hollywood’s industrial history – but it is also enormously culturally significant. Like many other science-fiction films of the 1950s, it is first and foremost a grim warning against the consequences of nuclear power. Its ants, mutated by the fallout left behind in the aftermath of the Trinity atom bomb test, represent the potentially disastrous consequences of nuclear technology. As myrmecologist Dr Medford (Edmund Gwenn) puts it: “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.”

But Them! is also an early example of the natural horror film – and today, in the age of climate crisis, perhaps feels more relevant as an ecological parable than an anti-nuclear movie. After all, its ‘monsters’ are entirely the result of human folly, unleashed upon the earth by an event with devastating consequences for the natural world. Ted Sherdeman’s script shows great sympathy for the creatures; Medford speaks of the ants with wondrous admiration when he explains their behaviour and ecology, and even when he suggests that they “may be the end of us,” there is a sense that if that were to happen then it would be entirely our own fault. Watching the film in the 21st century, it’s increasingly difficult to cheer for the film’s human characters – even the plucky and likeable police sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) – as they attempt to destroy the insects with bullets, gas and fire.

Throughout the latter half of the 1950s, Them! inspired several imitators in which an assortment of oversized insects and arachnids threaten the supremacy of the human race, including Tarantula (1955), The Deadly Mantis (1957) and Earth vs the Spider (1958). In fact, it’s difficult to overestimate just how influential the film has proven to be; it kickstarted an entire science-fiction subgenre focused on deadly bugs of all shapes and sizes, from Phase IV (1974) and Empire of the Ants (1977) to the recent Infested (2023) and Sting (2024). 

It was also the primary inspiration for Rodan (1956), one of Toho’s finest post-Godzilla giant monster movies, and was later homaged in Tremors (1990) and Joe Dante’s Matinee (1993) via its film-within-a-film (the excellently titled Mant!). In a year of landmark anniversaries for science-fiction cinema, then, Them! deserves to be recognised as a towering giant of the genre.