Ground Zero

Them! (1954)
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Starring:
James Whitmore - Police Sgt. Ben Peterson
Edmund Gwenn - Dr. Harold Medford
Joan Weldon - Dr. Patricia Medford
James Arness - Robert Graham
Sandy Descher - The Ellinson Girl

"And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth." Genesis 6:12

Gordon Douglas' atomic age masterwork, Them!, begins with visions of a desert land blighted by divine retribution; a wasteland where sunlight is sifted and made pale by the dark-silver air of sandstorms; where wind sounds a thin keening as though blown across ragged tears in the sky.

The setting in question is the stretch of baked desolation in the deserts of White Sands, New Mexico; the site of Trinity - the point upon the earth which absorbed the first detonation of an atomic device. Them! treats this epicenter as the focal point for a corruption deeply entrenched in biblical prophecy - a final and everlasting ground zero. This cursed place shall be as an irradiated portal from where the beasts will rise.

In the beginning: Police are investigating a missing persons report - a whole family, in fact, gone missing in the desert near not far from Alamogordo. A single engine plane casts a black speck of shadow racing across the vast, flat tableau as the pilot scans for signs of life. On the ground, two policemen in a car communicate via radio with the pilot. All seem bored, heat-blown from the mid-day sun. Then the pilot sees something, a tiny figure, impossibly tiny - a small girl walking across the immense pan of the desert. She is so very small and straight, walking across a land of Cholla cactus and mesquite - of Joshua trees gnarled and ancient. We see her now, close, and the plane roars over her, making a pass. We see her walking, walking - her eyes blank as still water, her mouth slightly open. She is very young, maybe five or six, with blonde pigtails, and she's in a nightgown as though having just brushed her teeth for bed. She carries a doll absently - a porcelain doll with a broken head.

The policemen pull up near her on a flat stretch of sand, park their car. They get out, and one cop calls to the girl through cupped hands (his voice clipped of all resonance in this mammoth space). When she doesn't respond, he jogs over on bandy legs and kneels in front of her, puts his hands on her shoulders. What's your name? he asks. Little girl? Who do you belong to? He waves a hand in front of her face, stares into her blank eyes for a moment, then his expression registers understanding and a flat, unsentimental compassion. We hear the plane roar overhead again, the sound moving off into the distance. Police Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) picks up the unresisting girl gently and carries her back to the patrol car bundled in his arms.

Peterson's partner, Trooper Blackburn (Chris Drake) is talking on the police radio to the circling pilot as Peterson places the girl onto the car seat as though unpacking a china doll. There is a trailer about three miles up the road, says the voice over the radio. Maybe the girl came from there. You better check it out. Ten-Four, says Blackburn, and hooks the mike back on the dashboard.

"What's wrong with her," says Blackburn softly, looking now at the blank, staring face of the little girl. "Sunstroke?"

"She isn't sunburned," says Peterson. His eyes take in the girl's face. His own is covered in sweat from his exertions in the desert heat. "It looks like she's in shock."

Behind the wheel, Blackburn studies her a moment, the staring eyes - the flat expression. He makes a sound of agreement. Both men are probably veterans of WWII, considering their age and occupation. They have seen shock before. As they pull out, Sgt. Peterson sits next to the girl, puts his arm around her shoulders, and cradles her head against his chest. As they drive along, she falls asleep against him.

As the cops pull up to the trailer, things appear abandoned. A station wagon nestled in the sage out front appears hastily parked and has the back tail down. The wind is beginning to kick up, tumbleweeds are blowing around. Blackburn hops out to have a look, walks around to the side/front of the trailer and stiffens. He signals for his partner to join him, and Peterson carefully sets the sleeping girl's head upon the seat and smoothes her hair.

The scene is of such destruction that neither cop says anything. The entire side of the trailer is nothing but a gaping hole ragged at the edges with shredded curtains and siding hanging like shattered teeth. Material is littered over the desert floor nearby. The rend in the side is so large, neither man has to stoop when entering. They walk into the trailer warily, looking around, their boots crunching. Both men have their hands covering the straps on their holstered .38s.

Inside is complete devastation. The trailer now is simply a pit with the specifics of life hurled about, broken beyond recognition. Debris is pressed mostly to the edges of the trailer's main room as if it were flotsam washed up on a filthy shore. Light from the trailer's gaping side floods into the place; and behind the men, through the hole, the desert sky is flat and clear and goes on forever. Inside, with the men, things are cramped and ruined and the edges go quickly to shadow. Paper money is littered about with the other stuff, some clothes, broken dishes, a single shoe - all the material now lacking the significance of any purpose.

And there is blood, which never looses its significance. Peterson holds up some torn clothing, spattered. He guesses the blood to be about 12 hours old. "Whatever happened here," says Peterson, "happened last night or early this morning." The wind blows sand and dust into the ravaged interior. Soon, the trailer will be shorn of mortal use, will simply be part of the harsh landscaped - sand scrubbed and gray.

Trooper Blackburn is sent outside to investigate the exterior while Sgt. Peterson remains inside, sifting the clues. He comes to a bedroom. Under a bunk bed he finds a piece of torn cloth and a bit of ceramic. Perhaps a broken piece of lamp or a bit of pottery. Whatever it is, Peterson seems to recognize it. Is face becomes still, thoughtful. He places the items in his uniform pocket and joins his partner outside the wreck.

"This sure wasn't a traffic accident," says Blackburn.

"No," says the sergeant. He puts a hand to a mangled piece of trailer side. "This wasn't caved in. It was caved out.

Blackburn as found sugar cubes strewn about in the sand, just odd enough to warrant a mention; as well as a strange track or marking in the sand. The cops kneel over it. Mountain Lion? "No, says Peterson. "No cat ever left a track like that."

They go back to the car. While Trooper Blackburn calls in the specifics, Peterson goes around to the passenger side, removing the bit of pottery and cloth from his pocket. He goes down on one knee, leaning into the open door where the little girl still sleeps on the car seat. She is still clutching her doll to her, the one with the broken head. Paterson takes the fragment he has found and gently, so as not to wake the child, sets it onto the broken head of the doll. The piece he has found fits onto the gap like a lid set onto a cookie jar. He pulls the bit of fabric he has found from his breast pocket and places it against a tear in the girl's nightgown. Plaid against plaid - a perfect match.

"Anything else, Ben?" asks Blackburn holding the hand mike away from his mouth, finishing up the details of his report. Peterson looks at him, shakes his head no and, making sure his partner sees, simply moves the pieces away and fits them back together again, both doll and fabric. Without a word, the two cops understand one another.

The girl belonged to the trailer. She was there when the trailer was destroyed - blown apart from the inside out. She saw it all, survived somehow, and was cast into the desert wandering in her PJs.

The forensic and medical units come. One man in plainclothes takes pictures of the scene, his flashbulb popping; while another is taking a plaster cast of the markings in the sand. Sgt. Peterson walks through, exchanging pleasantries: How's the kids? Oh, fine, thanks. Another one on the way. Good for you. Peterson walks over to the ambulance. The back is open and the driver (the ever-reliable William Schallert) dressed in white is fussing with the kid stretched out on a cot, making sure she's warm. "Look, take good care of her, huh?" Peterson says, as the driver tucks in a blanket. The driver looks up, nods once; understanding that Peterson has made a point to check on the girl. "I'll give her a nice, easy ride right to the hospital," he says. "I'll be with her all the way." "Good," says Peterson.

Suddenly a noise is heard - an unfamiliar, elliptical, high-pitched whine. It's loud enough to replace the wind, and both men turn toward it out there in the desert somewhere, their faces suddenly focused. They don't notice, but the little girl without a name has sat bolt upright in the back of the ambulance, her face infused with a fearful attention. Neither man moves a muscle until the high, piercing sound fades away and the dry hissing of the wind returns. The girl slowly lies back down. After a moment, the ambulance driver says, "must have been the wind," but his voice is empty, saying something just to say something. He is rubbing the fingers of a half-closed fist together nervously. "It gets pretty freakish in these parts." Peterson says, "yeah."

Peterson walks over to the lab man working on the cast in the sand and kneels beside him as he works. "You know what that is, Cliff?" He asks, a bit abruptly (clearly, Peterson doesn't like not having answers). "I haven't the faintest idea," says Cliff the lab guy (Cliff Ferre), stiffening. His voice has a bit of an edge as well, not at all at ease working in the desert beside the destroyed trailer. Behind the men, the wind is riffling at debris from the guts of the trailer - a magazine, a collapsed and ruined baby carriage; some odds and ends that can't be identified. Peterson says "Well, you better hurry up before the sand fills it in, looks like a sandstorm's kicking up."

"You and Ed got any idea what happened out here?" asks the lab man.

"Nope," admits Peterson flatly. "Nothing that ads up."

After a bit, Trooper Blackburn and Sgt. Peterson decide to pay a visit to the local store, hoping the propriety, Gramp Johnson, might know something about the folks that missing from the destroyed trailer.

By the time they arrive at the general store, twilight has come and the wind storm is in full blow, giving the evening an unnatural illumination - a pale, desert earthglow of blowing sand. The Joshua trees, stark and top-blown, stand like mute and broken souls against the darkening sky. The store's hanging porch light is swinging wildly, throwing weak splashes of light about in the advancing darkness - sweeping over the storefront, out over the gas pump. The lamp makes a rattling sound as it blows around, jittering at the end of the wire. The wind has a loud, bleak voice now, deep as the horizon at the edge of the world. It comes from there, whipping over the ground, blowing along the scrub - a living thing whistling without teeth.

As with the trailer, it is instantly clear that life is absent here. All is too still, too blown without care by the sandpaper wind.

The cops walk into the place and stand still. The destruction here is worse than the scene of the trailer. Much worse. Here the broken interior seems not so much swept aside but willfully smashed. The torn store has the look of a mammoth, raw wound with the cops standing at the rim. This time, Trooper Blackburn draws his gun, holds it ready as he walks through the remnants. Peterson allows his palm to rest on the butt of his piece. He hears a radio playing from a back room. He carefully pushes open a door and enters, finds more wreckage. A coffee percolator has boiled away to steam. As Peterson looks things over, the radio newscaster extols the recent advances in medical science: ". . . such diseases as malaria, cholera, and sleeping sickness have been entirely wiped out from areas that were formally in a state of plague conditions."

Peterson continues searching - finds a lever-action rifle, the stock splintered and the barrel bent back on itself like a licorice stick. Peterson shows Blackburn the rifle, and the cops look at one other' both knowing things are going from bad to worse very quickly. Neither seem terribly surprised when they find the store owner, Gramp, stuffed bloody and broken into a cellar like a bag of dirty laundry. A hanging overhead lamp swings with the wind filling the torn building; sweeping light over the corpse in pendulum fashion. The body seems unnaturally white in the hard light. The policemen jump at a loud rumbling sound and rush to investigate.

It seems a bit more of the store might have blown off in the wind to make the sound or, maybe, something inside has blown around. They look over the floor and around at the shelves with flashlights and, strangely, find more sugar (like the cubes at the trailer, oddly littered over the sand). This time a barrel of sugar has been crushed and spilled out onto the floor. Peterson runs his hand through the sugar, scattering a covering of ants.

"What do you make of it," says Peterson, having to make his voice a bit loud now against the wind.

"Same thing I made of the trailer," says Blackburn."

"Yep," says Peterson.

It's decided that Peterson will call it in then drive over to the hospital, being eager to hear what the little girl says if she starts talking. Blackburn will stay behind and wait for the lab boys to show up. Sgt. Peterson pauses a moment before leaving, looks at Blackburn, making sure their eyes are locked. He offers his partner a smile. "Stay loose, he say. "Sure, sure," says Blackburn, smiling back easily.

Naturally, this bit of understated maleness is the last the partners will ever have of one another.

After Peterson leaves, Trooper Blackburn pokes around a bit, turns off the radio. Suddenly he hears the noise, the same noise we've heard at the trailer. But this time it's louder. Moving carefully, Blackburn draws his weapon. He reaches up slowly and turns off a hanging lamp. He turns off another lamp as he slowly crosses the room. His eyes are glittering in the darkness, wet and large with focus. The sound becomes even louder, more high-pitched and piercing. Blackburn pauses a moment, straightening at the sound, and his face blanches.

We see the officer stand a moment in the store's torn opening, his back to us; his figure outlined against the doom-dark sky beyond. The wind ripples his uniform. He moves outside, stepping over debris. From the dark inside, we follow him; see him walk passed a window as clouds of sand blow along with him; and he is gone. All we see now is the storm raging outside behind the panes of window glass. The sound intensifies, becomes something horribly shrill. We hear a gunshot. Then the guttural sound of screaming - a screaming that only can mean an agony onto death.

And we have entered the middle period, the time of witness. We have seen the beginning of an prophesied apocalypse, heralding the coming of a pale rider on a pale horse - of the four riders on four horses. These harbingers will have no scythes or diseases, however; coming instead with winged Queens, mandibles and stingers.

Over the next few scenes our principals are gathered and are established. Police are stymied with an abundance of clues that make no sense. Sgt. Peterson spends some time starring into coffee cups over his partner's death, pulls himself together in short order (after a brisk talking to by his Captain), and declares he has a score to settle. The missing folks from the ravaged trailer, identified through fingerprints, are an FBI agent from Illinois named Ellinson and his family (wife and two girls) on a two-week vacation. This brings in a federal presence in the form of FBI agent, Robert Graham (the towering James Arness). The coroner establishes that along with crushed legs, skull, chest, and back; Gramp Johnson had been somehow injected with enough formic acid to kill twenty men. Agent Graham sends the print casting to Washington, which brings Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter, Dr. Patricia "Pat" Medford (Joan Weldon) from the Department of Agriculture into play. The father and daughter have examined the print and have rushed to New Mexico with a theory.

As the doctors examine evidence and doctor's reports in the police station, Agent Graham points to places on the big wall map where the incidence of devastation took place. Dr. Medford (the elder) is an obvious academic eccentric, ignoring the giant FBI man for the most part as he fusses over evidence, or speaking to him as one would a child. Sgt. Peterson stays in the background, watching the egghead team carefully with his arms folded. "Tell me," says the Doctor, turning his attention to Graham and speaking slowly. "In what area was the atomic bomb exploded? I mean the first one, in 1945?" Graham makes a circle on the map with his finger. "Right here in the same general area." He pokes the spot for emphasis. Pop Pop. "White Sands."

Hmmm. Yes. Hmmm. 1945. Only nine years ago. The Doctor leans in close to his daughter, mumbles something about genetic possibilities, some other mumbo-jumbo leaving the cops out of the brainy talk. The big agent's expression darkens. He steps in and posts his hands on the desk where the two doctor's are sitting, leans over them. He really isn't that big. He doesn't quite block out all the light in the room. "If you two know what this thing is," he says, his voice flat, "I suggest you tell us." The elder doctor wags a finger at Graham and in lecture voice explains he won't discuss his theory until he is certain.

Soon, the doctor and crew visit the little girl (now known as "the Ellinson girl") in the army hospital. She is still completely comatose, still staring at the foot of air in front of her eyes and unable to speak. Dr. Medford the elder pulls a chair up, leans in close an examines her eyes. Nothing has worked, says the hospital doctor. Perhaps a shock might bring her out of it?

The doctor puts some Formic Acid in a small glass (he will later explain that Formic Acid is the agent found in an ant's sting). He waves it under her nose. The girl's nose twitches once, twice; and her eyes blink.

Suddenly her face contorts in an expression of sheer terror. A sudden near convulsion seizes her, twisting her face horribly, uncontrollably. She begins screaming. She no longer looks like a little girl with pigtails, but has become simply a screaming, jagged mouth without age - one eye is squeezed shut, the other seems large - out of proportion. She propels herself out of the chair, skitters like a bug caught in the light to a corner, presses herself flat and small into it. Her feet are digging in, peddling backward, as she tries to make herself vanish.

"Them!" she screams, her eyes seeing whatever has burned into her injured mind. She screams over and over: "Them! Them! Them!" The adults in the room stand and watch her in a shaken, stiff silence. Sgt. Peterson is the first to respond appropriately, scooping the girl up in his arms. Her screaming is reduced to a pathetic sing-song of sobbing as he holds her close.

The other adults take a moment to absorb what they have seen. We have to go to the desert now, says Medford. It's pretty late, says Graham. Later than you think, says the doctor.

Out in the desert a sandstorm is blowing so harshly that everyone has to wear eye-goggles, giving them the prophetic look of insects. The four (father and daughter Medfords, Sgt. Peterson, and Agent Graham) investigate a bit, looking where the track was left, while wind whips at their faces, flaps their clothes, hurls their voices away like tumbleweeds. The air is full of light-dimmed waves of sand and grit. Dr. Patricia remarks that there is hardly any source of food; that "they" might turn carnivorous in such barren territory. The elder Medford agrees. Graham and Patricia have a shouting match about the senior doctor's theories, which he has yet to verbalize much to Graham's consternation (He will tell you when he's sure, says Pat).

As the men search the sand for more markings, Pat wonders off; investigating over the ridge of a sand dune. We hear the ominous, high-pitched noise, but it is blown hither and yawn by the storm. And then . . . one of "them" appear.

It rises like a thing prehistoric from behind the dune, over and behind Pat unseen, rising higher and higher; its huge mandibles moving (which produce the intense, whining sound we have heard throughout the movie). Its eyes, the size of truck tires, are bulbous and multi-celled. Its massive head rises higher still, hairy antennas like flagpoles waving, sensing - smelling - food. It sees her, lowering its head as the mandibles open.

Pat turns, begins screaming (This will be Pat's single fear response in the movie). She starts to back peddle frantically (like the Ellinson girl in the hospital room), but her heels tangle in the sand and she falls. Agent Graham is the closest, and we watch him running through the Joshua trees and Cholla, nearly obscured by the sand and wind, firing his .38 as he comes. He rushes to half-fall in the sand near the doctor. He rises to a kneeling position, putting himself In front of Pat, firing now with purpose. The creature absorbs the bullets, squares itself, begins to approach - its mandibles grinding and screeching as they work together.

Sgt. Peterson, standing a bit away with Dr. Medford the elder, takes a few shots with his police revolver, manages to hit an antenna, which snaps and droops as the creature makes a higher-pitched sound. Yet the creature seems largely unaffected. Peterson stares at his revolver, makes a decision, and rushes back to the police car.

"Get the antenna!" shouts Medford to Agent Graham, cupping his hands against the wind. "Get the Antenna!" Graham sets both hands on his revolver, taking careful aim. His third shot makes a ricochet splang off the ant's eight foot antenna, and it folds in the middle as the creature makes a wild, metallic sound like screaming.

Peterson comes running back, short and bowlegged, across the sand carrying a Thompson submachine gun. The cop's obviously through fucking around. Once next to Dr. Medford, Peterson sets his legs in a hip-wide stance, works the cocking lever to chamber in a round, and gets to work. We watch .45 slugs hammer in staccato against the giant beast, blowing off fist-sized chunks. The creature is bellowing now, rocking and rising in agony. Petersen grits his teeth, moving the barrel back and forth like a paintbrush, and the gun pounds out rounds and flashes - bang-bang-bang-bang-bang - with the steady rhythm of a jackhammer. The creature makes a roar, thrashes, roars again; then falls suddenly, its head driving into the sand like some crashed, alien saucer.

The sound of the wind returns, lonely and distant. Dr. Pat and Agent Graham pick themselves up off the sand, and all gather around the carcass of the creature. Peterson keeps his machine gun at the ready. All stare down at the huge, dead thing, covered in hair and gore. Dr. Medford identifies it by species and genus in a blur of Latin; finally adding the common name.

"Ant?" barks the agent. "I don't believe it! It can't be!" Dr. Medford (elder) explains his theory, now proved: The insects have mutated due to the lingering radiation caused by the first atomic blast in 1945 (Trinity). The most important thing now, says the doctor, is that we must get the nest. Destroy it entirely.

Peterson lifts his face suddenly, looks at the old doctor. "You mean there's more?" Yes, assuredly, answers the daughter calmly, clinically. This one was just a scout, looking for food. The sounds it made was a communication to others - the colony - a potentially vast nest of others. Dr. Medford the elder comments on the awful smell of the thing. Formic acid, he explains. An ant packs formic acid in its sting, carries the smell on its body always. No wonder the Ellinson girl reacted so violently when she smelled it, says Graham. Gramp Johnson was filled with the stuff, says Peterson. The doctor points at the end of the creature, to a stinger (thick base, nasty hook at the end). It's the size of a scimitar - about three feet long.

The sound comes again, as they are talking. It becomes loud enough that all turn to the source, way out there in the distance of the desert. Peterson tests his cocking lever, satisfied that he has a round in the chamber, and tucks the Thomson's butt against his hip. The sound fades.

The old doctor stares after it, across the miles of irradiated desert and withered sage. The wind blows at his jacket, at the ends of his white hair; as he stares out over the land through his sand-frosted goggles. He speaks softy, suggesting that a new and horrible age has come. As though uttering tongues, he speaks a prophecy, staring across the sand. He speaks the words as though they have come to him already spoken on the wind.

"And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation; and the beasts shall reign over the earth."

No one says anything as the wind blows and blows - a dirge now; a high, plaintive sound without pity. Graham stares down at the creature, his head bowed as if in a schoolboy's half-hearted prayer. The sound begins again, a bit louder, as the minions call to one another. The four mortals raise their faces into the sand storm to stare at the desert - at the unseen but terrible place where the beasts are speaking.

The principals collect themselves and go searching for the nest. Flying over the area by helicopter, it doesn't take long. Hold it, shouts Pat to the chopper pilot, seeing a large depression in the desert floor below.

From above we see a large crater shape in the desert sand, nestled atop a large, concentric rise of bare sand. As the helicopter swings around we see inside the huge pit. There's a massive ant working along the side of the pit, moving something in his mandibles.

As the camera view switches to a ground view, it takes us a moment to realize what the ant is doing, what he's holding: He has a human rib cage held in the massive ridges of this mandibles; tearing of bits. Just finishing, it lets the ribs fall clattering into a large pile of bones scattered about the nest entrance. Horribly, laying next to a skull, we recognize the gun belt of Trooper Blackburn, along with shreds of his uniform.

"We just found your missing persons," says Dr. Pat Medford with her usual cold logic while Agent Graham, looking much too huge for the tiny chopper, sits next to her with mouth agape in horror (from this point forward, Dr. Medford the younger will gradually but firmly assume the role of leader whenever the men confront the mutated ants, displaying a natural authority).

The United States Military, realizing the potential for a public relations disaster of, well, Biblical proportions as well as continent wide panic, enters the picture in the person of General Robert O'Brien (Onslow Stevens). All agree that the entire operation is to be kept on the serious QT. The General, quite naturally, wants to simply, and will all necessary force, bomb the living crap out of the nest. No, no, that would never work, explains Medford the elder. Such a surface bombing regardless of force would only drive them deep into the underground nest, killing few and letting the majority escape. The old scientist shows them a large diagram of an ant nest, pointing to it, stressing the genius of the layout. The entire network of tunnels and compartments is designed so virtually no action on the surface, flooding, fire, etc.; can much endanger the ants living in the nest. And this nest, considering the size of the ants they've seen, might go down hundreds of feet.

It is decided that they will carpet the surface of the nest with phosphorus, which will force the hive deeply into the nest, then they will fill the tunnels with cyanide gas, killing all inhabitants.

"How can you be sure we got all of them?" asks the general.

"We go into the nest and find out," says Medford the elder simply.

Yes. Of course. Go into the nest. The general is left speechless at this suggestion, and a Major sitting nearby simply goes slack jawed.

The men carpet the area with phosphorous, shooting shells of the stuff by bazooka onto the area with white explosions that shoot feathery tendrils in spider shapes across the sand. This scene, with men at work in a quasi-military operation, is quite typical of sci-fi films from this era in that it is assumed and understood that most of the men have seen service during the war. Both the FBI agent and rural, state trooper know how to load and fire a bazooka as a two-man team. Interestingly, only the general is not familiar with the weapon. "It's the first time I ever loaded one of these babies," he says, stuffing a shell into the ass-end of the tube. "That makes us even," says Sgt. Peterson, adjusting the bazooka on his shoulder, fitting his eye against the scope. "This is the first time I've ever given orders to a general." General O'Brien looks at Peterson for a moment without smiling, then taps him on his head as a signal he can fire at will.

After the fire bombing, the men (and one woman) go down into the nest with gas masks and tanks of cyanide on their backs and spray the nest. But the mutant insect holocaust doesn't work, at least not completely. A winged queen and a few winged males have escaped, which - as it turns out - is a worse-case scenario. From this point forward the movie gains speed and moves quickly (but never in a rush) to a slam-bang finish.

Eventually, after trying feebly to keep the affair quiet a bit longer; the general and all principals grit their teeth through a press conference wherein the public is told that the insect threat might mean human extinction. Considering how fast the ants can lay eggs and multiply, man will very soon not be the dominant species on Earth. With this news, the search for the nest quickly becomes a national priority.

The new nest is eventually discovered within the storm drain system of Los Angeles county (itself quite similar in intricacy to a massive ant nest). In a the final, gripping scene, Sgt. Peterson is attacked by a giant ant, sacrificing himself to save two young boys that have wandered into the nest while flying a model plane in a drain basin. The creatures and their eggs are finally destroyed in the only way appropriate: By an army belching massive quantities of cleansing (and yes, biblical) fire. The film ends in the grand tradition of 1950s sci-fi - with a question. With all the ants and their eggs turned into a massive bon-fire, Graham (Arness) looks over the blazing pit and wonders what else may come as the result of atomic testing. This was, after all, just one bomb test of many. Agent Graham could not know, but across the pacific on the still war-torn island of Japan, a film maker named Ishiro Honda would be answering that question the same year Them! was released, 1954; with a creature of vengeance and horror all his own (Godzilla or Gojira).

Watching Them!, a movie near perfect in its parts, is like taking a smooth ride in a huge Caddy - any small bumps in the road are smoothed out by the massive weight and quality of the vehicle.

And now, let's get to the good stuff that makes the ride so enjoyable:

The Good Stuff Part I (of 1): A cast of well-cast characters

The characters in this movie are so well defined - so consistent in their actions and so well scripted - that by end of the movie, all four main principals (Dr. Harold Medford, Dr. Pat Medford, Agent Graham, and Sgt. Peterson) are completely known, so much so that we can guess what they would do in any given situation; even ones as trite as shaving or doing dishes. That is to say, the characters have come to life.

These players have been perfectly cast. In order of appearance, they are:

Sgt. Ben Peterson (James Whitmore): The Defender

At the beginning of the movie, Peterson saves and protects the damaged Ellinson girl, carries her in his arms out of the desert desolation, smoothes her hair, wants to be close at the hospital when she begins talking. In the hospital, his impulse is to comfort and protect the girl when her mind spasms in screams, snatching her up and holding her protectively when she has pressed herself into a corner (the rest simply stare at her, maybe even recoil a bit). At movie end, he dies saving children. In the final scene, watching the monster approach and knowing he will not have time to do more than push the two boys into a protective drain, he calmly sacrifices himself to save them.

During the course of the film, it is not only children he will protect. In several scenes with the absentminded, brilliant Dr. Harold Medford; Peterson is seen looking after him - guiding the old, academic scientist through an unfamiliar and dangerous world. In the desert, Peterson gently instructs Medford in the use of the goggles, even adjusts them gently so they cover the old man's eyes during a sandstorm. Later, in a gently comic scene, we see Peterson teach the older doctor how to communicate with his daughter via a military head set.

"But she knows I'm finished," complains the doctor.

"Still," says Peterson, "you have to say 'over and out.' It's a rule."

While the doctor rants in frustration, Peterson takes the head set so gently from his hands, the older man barely notices. "Over and Out," says Peterson softly into the mike.

To Protect And To Serve reads the police motto. Indeed, Sgt. Peterson.

James Whitmore, an actor of immense humanity, fills these policeman's shoes as though born to them. It's a pleasure watching actor, the way he allows scenes to come to him without chasing them. Whitmore never needed to steal a scene, never flailed much. Yet, in scene after scene, it is Whitmore's Sgt. Peterson we remember.

Agent Robert Graham (James Arness): Man of Action

As a young actor, James Arness was six feet seven inches tall. He made John Wayne, a pal, look like a kid brother. I mention this first because it needs to be said. His sheer size (the tallest star in Hollywood) is simply impossible to ignore. In Them!, when the actor steps into a scene, it is like watching Gulliver stepping carefully among the Lilliputians.

Not that he couldn't act. Anyone that has watched as many Gun Smoke episodes as I have will know: cast correctly (he really wasn't designed to play anything but "authority"), he could hit the pitch perfectly. And as a man of action, he had something few actors can claim: believability. When Marshall Matt Dillon made the Long Branch Saloon go dead quiet just by walking through the swinging doors, it never seemed silly.

At first blanch, Agent Graham seems an unimaginative if efficient Federal agent, simply moving from Point A to Point B in straightforward, nearly ruthless fashion. He can certainly be no-nonsense to a fault. We have seen him strong arm the Medfords, and we will watch him toss a pilot who has witnessed the flying, giant ants (Fess Parker) under the preverbal bus for the sake of national security (he will insist the patient not be released from the military hospital psych ward even after telling the young flyer he believes him and will work to get him released). Yet, by the movie's end, we have seen this agent in action several times, and it is in action that his worth becomes apparent.

Arness' Agent Graham is perhaps the most interesting, and often undervalued, character in the movie. He is a man who's nature gravitates to action yet, and this is what makes him so interesting, he is not without fear. In the final scene, when trapped in a collapsing tunnel with a giant ant; he actually screams in terror (not pain as does Peterson once in the mandibles). Yet (and this is the man's whole card) his instinct is to fight. His natural response when trapped with a monster is to bring his submachine gun into play and blaze away even though obviously in the grip of blind fear. Despite being scarred to his bones more than once in the movie, he is never paralyzed - and he certainly never runs. He has no flight response at all. None. Zero. He is pure fight. His instinct is to run at danger, despite his fear; as he did when defending Dr. Patricia Medford. Courage is the mastering of fear, not the absence of; and Agent Graham - a tall man racing across the desert, his pistol blasting at the monster threatening fallen Patricia, serves as example.

Dr. Patricia (Pat) Medford (Joan Weldon): The Leader

The first we see of Pat Medford is a view of her legs. She is climbing down out of the military transport plane that has brought her and the elder Dr. Medford to New Mexico, and her dress gets caught on something climbing which pulls it up. While an aide helps her untangle, Agent Graham and Sgt. Peterson take a moment in appreciation. Agent Graham even tilts his head, smiling. This is the first, and the last, bit of prerequisite cheesecake in the movie, and it is handled with subtle reserve. Other sci-fi films of this vintage often take a much broader approach, to say the least. In Forbidden Planet, for example, these bits of sexual fluffery are nearly burlesque, with comic snatches of music; wince-inducing wolfish dialogue; and broad expressions. Here, things are efficient and brisk. As the two men lawmen are walking away from the airplane (Patricia and her father have hustled on ahead, eager to get to work), Graham says, "I'm going to have to get this suit pressed."

Later, as Graham and Patricia are having one of their wonderful toe-to-toe standoffs, Patricia smartly turns the voltage down a notch by suggesting that Graham call her "Pat." The agent, towering over her, doesn't smile; yet he visibly relaxes, and his voice warms. "I'd like to," he says. As far as flirtatious repartee goes, that'll about do 'er for the movie entire. Instead of the token romance, we'll watch these two professionals slowly gaining respect for one another, learning to compliment one another, so as to defeat a world-threatening enemy - period. These two haven't "found" each other - they tolerate one another - with only occasional, grudging amusement - only because each needs the other for the work at hand.

After the carpet bombing and gassing of the first nest, a team must be assembled to go underground with flame throwers and burn out any survivors. Graham and Peterson are gearing up, of course, preparing the tanks, strapping them on - working along without much discussion. Patricia Medford pops into the scene and insists on joining them. Graham barely considers it. She presses a bit harder, and Graham turns to face her, now giving her his full, harsh attention (probably in Graham's career not many have withstood this treatment well). Your not going, he says gruffly, issuing an order as he looks down at her upturned face. It's no place for you or any other woman.

Pat returns the favor. She now gives him her full attention. She squares herself to face him straight on, takes a step closer. Warming to the discussion, she catalogues the reasons that she must go: There must be an entomologist on the team, and her father is physically incapable of going along. Only an entomologist will be able to understand what to look for - will be able, for that matter, to understand the significance of whatever they find. She is the only one that can do that job.

"You can tell us what to look for," says Graham, his voice hardening, rising. "You -"

"Look, Bob," she says, cutting him off, "there's not time to give you a crash course in insect pathology. So let's cut all this talk and get on with it."

The two glare at each other for a moment, and Graham turns to look at Dr. Medford the elder, as if for some backup, but no help is forthcoming from that quarter. Knowing his daughter, the old doctor simply looks at Graham with something less than scorn but not quit sympathy. Graham turns back and eyeballs Pat for a moment longer, but the fight is clearly over. Graham is not particularly imaginative, but he's a far cry from stupid; and only a stupid man would argue the point further. It would be like arguing against the perfect logic of mathematics.

"OK, OK," he says, marching off, unable to hide the petulance in his voice.

As they venture underground, Pat quickly assumes the roll of leader. She is the one that gives the orders, directs the two men; her voice ringing with steady authority. Once in the trenches, even Graham follows her directions without question. While down in the labyrinthian nest, Pat Medford demonstrates another trait of leadership: she never, ever shows fear. She is, in fact, fearless. Unlike Graham, who can use his fear, Medford is very close to being without fear entirely; and it is this trait the two lawmen respond to.

"Look," she says, running her hand over one of the nest walls as they descend into the heart of the nest. "Held together with saliva."

"Yea?," says Peterson, "Spit's about the only thing holding me together right now, too."

The two men look at one another through their gas masks, but Pat doesn't respond. She simply goes on rubbing the wall with her hand, neither understanding or judging how anyone could be frightened in such fascinating surroundings.

Joan Weldon's performance as Dr. Pat Medford is one of the strongest female characters in all of atomic age sci-fi, ranking alongside Beverly Garland's work in Alligator People; and she is easily the most believable "beautiful scientist" (or beautiful lab assistant) the genre ever produced (among many). Weldon convinces beyond the range of her substantial beauty, bringing home a character so real that the men around her finally respond to nothing but her authority and her knowledge.

Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn): The Prophet

Actor Edmund Gwenn is best remembered for his great performance as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street; and the Kringle of Miracle is not terribly dissimilar from the Dr. Medford of Them!. In fact, if you watch the movies back to back, one will morph into the other. Both characters stand a bit apart from the world, observe the actions of regular mortals with a pleasant curiosity. Both characters see the world only in large strokes, and both characters are untouched by the petty trivials that dominate and corrupt our human lives. Kringle would never be jealous of a co-worker, and Medford would never be secretly happy over a friend's divorce. Both characters are "good" and "true" not from a saintly impulse but rather from complete separation and disinterest regarding the minutia of emotion. They neither notice or care about these frail human connections. It is impossible to imagine either character doing something foolish for the sake of love or cheating on their taxes (or even knowing how to do their taxes). Santa, and Dr. Medford, live in a worlds of their own creation, are observers of the trails of man. And both men have a head full of visions (Kringle’s are visions of a paradise come to earth – Medford’s of Hell).

Dr. Medford certainly sees the world latent in prophecy - rich in ancient meaning. When the doctor stares into the shimmera of desert heat and says "there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation . . ." it is clear he has been seeing signs in the sands, hearing their meanings in the wind.

Them! is a prototype film - the first of the irradiated "big bug" movies that captured in end-time terms the powerful, nearly-spiritual misgivings Americans felt over the vaulting science of the atomic age. The film was made a mere nine years after the first atomic testing in the deserts of White Sands. Them! is an American touchstone, a piece of art which helped clarify and archive a culture's inchoate feelings about the atomic bomb on the one hand; and was a thrilling piece of film making on the other.

Summer, 1945.

White Sands, New Mexico.

Watching that first horribly beautiful mushroom cloud boom and then flatten out, crushing the sand under it - then billow and rise magnificently into the clouds, many of the atomic scientists and physicists watching began to cry. Some giggled in a kind of awestruck panic. Robert Oppenheimer, laboratory leader, famously thought about a bit if Hindu scripture: " . . . Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Like Dr. Medford - Dr. Oppenheimer was a scientist seeing terrible prophecies shimmering in the desert.

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Now let's love that trailer!

Mental Vampires in the Great White North

Fiend Without A Face (1958)
Directed by Arthur Crabtree
Starring:
Marshall Thompson - Major Jeff Cummings
Kim Parker - Barbara Griselle
Kynaston Reeves - Professor Walgate
Stanley Maxted - Colonel Butler
Robert MacKenzie - Constable Gibbons

Despite being made in England, and being produced and directed by Englishmen, (Richard Gordon and Arthur Crabtree respectively); 1958s Fiend Without A Face offers up a pretty fair slice of American Cold War pie. The movie is infused with two prime atomic age ingredients: A bowel-numbing fear that the Russians might gain the upper hand by unforeseen (always unforeseen) Communist treachery, and 2) a nearly primal sense that atomic energy, though rife with wondrous potential, is somehow fundamentally wrong. And not just wrong like two-plus-two-make-five wrong. More like we-are-piddling-about-in-God's-sandbox wrong. Throw in a dash of USA swagger for just the right flavor, and Bob's your uncle! An English take on an American classic!

Two of the main ingredients are established before the opening credits roll wherein we find a bored sentry patrolling the fenced parameter of an American Air Force base, "Interceptor Command Experimental Station No. 6," in the remote wilds of Canada (Winthrop Manitoba). As the sentry rests his rifle against the fence and lights a cigarette, he gazes skyward. We hear the roar of a supersonic jet (We have seen moments earlier a row of Lockheed F-80 Shooting Stars on the base tarmac, just to shore up the picture's Cold War credentials) and see a vapor trail making a white arc in the blue sky. We next see radar dishes making a powerful, whining hum as they sweep back and forth. Finally, we see a massive, squat power plant, its single smokestack belching white smoke.

We have our suspicions which the film will quickly verify: America has established a radar facility in the far northern boondocks, positioned within range of Russia so that we may keep tabs on the reds and, if necessary or convenient, attack the shit out of them. Through the use of an atomic reactor (The belching smokestack), the military hopes to enhance the strength of the base's radar, thereby making it super radar - capable of seeing every incoming missile and possible Commie target with greater strength and clarity. As one officer puts it "so we can see right in their own backyard!"

The sentry, hearing a strange, thumping, crunchy sound coming from the nearby woods; flicks his cig, grabs his rifle, and rushes to investigate. We see him burst into a small clearing and freeze. His face goes slack from fear, and off camera we hear a hideous crunching, slurping sound. The soldier stiffens and his eyes go white as we hear a man's horrific scream (and this picture, as with most Richard Gordon productions, has stupendously effecting screaming). Our dumb struck soldier finally gathers his wits and runs to the side of a civilian slumped backward and dead over a tree root. The Sentry is turning his head around, searching frantically. It is obvious that whatever has killed the man, it is completely invisible. As the soldier searches the civilian for vitals, the opening title credits roll over timpani-booming theme music from Frederick Lewis; and we have a basic cold war special popped into the oven save one crucial ingredient:

The dash of USA swagger comes courtesy of one Major Cummings (Marshall Thompson) who oversees day-to-day operations of the base. We first see the major under some jaw-clenching stress as the Winthrop locals - backward, ignorant peasants that they are - suspect that having a nuclear power plant in their backyard may be having an adverse effect on their livestock. This kind of superstitious claptrap really gets the major's goat. This namby-pamby PR problem wouldn't be so bad except that the nuclear-enhanced radar experimentation is going poorly, too; and just to round things off to a large order of shit sandwich, now some dumb-ass cow farmer has gone and gotten himself killed in the grounds right next to the base. All this has put the major in such a state that he's living on uppers and . . . well, more uppers.

"You ever think of trying sleep instead of Benzedrine?" asks fellow officer Capt. Chester (Terry Kilburn) helpfully, fetching the major a glass of water to wash down some Benzedrine. "You might like it." The captain brings the major some files and papers on the dead farmer.

After washing down his uppers, the major settles himself (after a bit of grousing over his circumstances) and looks over an FBI file on the dead peasant. Turns out he was a respectable French-Canadian nobody named Jacques Griselle - went to college in Toronto, good war record, came back home to the hinterland to establish himself as a farmer; has one sister, Barbara - Blah, blah, yawn.

"Let the local authorities figure it out, Jeff," urges Chester.

But a couple of things concern the major. First, what the hell was a local dairy farmer doing prowling around an American Air Force Base, ending up dead under mysterious circumstances not a stone's throw from the parameter? And secondly, the dead man had a final look on his face - one the major can't forget - that suggests something other than death by natural causes. Well, suggests the major, maybe we can put this all to bed with the results of the autopsy. The two tuck their hats under their arms and hustle off.

But nothing is to go that easily for our pill-popping major. His luck stays bad as he learns from the base medical officer, Dr. Warren (Gil Winfield), that there will be no autopsy as there is no longer any body. Local authorities - the mayor and coroner - have already claimed Griselle's body and declared cause of death a heart attack.

The major, sitting in a chair in front of the Doctor's desk, broods and crosses his arms petulantly. "They'll probably blame the death on our atomic reactors." He stares darkly into space, imagining a series of horrible press conferences.

"Hmmm," says the doctor gently. "It's this fear of radioactive fallout." He begins to say more, but he is cut short as the major stiffens in his seat.

The doctor has clearly pushed a button: "Were not exploding atomic bombs!" bristles the major, huffing up his shoulders and tightening his cross arms. "We're just using atomic power for our radar experiments." Cummings is like a square block in his seat, eyebrows meeting in a scowl.

"Sure, just go on out and tell them that," says Dr. Warren, "You know we're a thousand miles from any decent-sized city."

"What a bunch of backward people," says Captain Chester with weary contempt. Chester has been lounging against a file cabinet, smoking (not having been offered a seat). He crosses behind the doctor and snuffs out his cigarette in an ash tray on the doctor's desk. "They've blamed us for too little rain, too much rain, a blight, a beetle, and even Ms. O'Leary's ailing cow."

"That's why we have to have an autopsy," insists the glowering major. "So we can prove the death wasn't caused by radiation."

The captain, leaning again against the file cabinet, shrugs. He points out that the local coroner has declared it a heart attack, so why rock the boat? Because, says the major, an autopsy will prove the rube's death wasn't from radiation! Just as the major is working himself into a rant, a nurse comes in and informs Cummings that he was been requested to join Col. Butler (Stanley Maxted) in his office immediately.

Before the major enters the next scene, we find Col. Butler standing behind his desk, obviously irritated with two locals, Winthrop's mayor Hawkings (James Dyrenforth) and the sister of the dead man, Barbara Griselle (the taut Kim Parker).

Surprisingly, neither Winthrop's mayor or Ms. Griselle, despite being citizens of rural Winthrop; are wearing overalls or have noticeably missing teeth. Ms. Griselle, in fact, with her smart, black dress and sophisticated hair style, appears never to have sucked on a bit of straw in her life. We find the three in mid-discussion wherein it has been established that there will be no autopsy per the sister's wishes. The colonel blusters, but the mayor and sister sit quite calmly, unmoved. The major enters the office, snaps a salute, and eyes the two locals with obvious suspicion. The colonel returns the salute and makes the introductions.

With Cummings standing with hat in hand by the door, the colonel makes one more attempt to convince the locals to relinquish the body for an official, military autopsy, trying a patriotic approach (cooperation between our great nations sort of stuff), but it's no soap. With that, the colonel gets down to brass tacks and the reason he has summoned major Cummings to the office. After a few words of amelioration, the colonel pulls a small notebook from a desk drawer, identifying it as belonging to Barbara's dead brother, found near his body. He wags it at her. "He's made some very interesting notations. Major?" The major steps over and looks at the notations, which he, with his military expertise, identifies as a time table corresponding to take-offs and landings of the base's aircraft. The implication is clear and dangerous: Jacques Griselle was a red spy, working undercover. "I'm afraid this gives me all I need, Ms. Griselle," says the colonel darkly. Both military men stand over the dead man's sister with expressions suggesting a firing squad might be in order despite the brother's already dead status.

"May I see that notebook?" asks Barbara, extending a long, elegant hand. "Give it to her, major," snaps Col. Butler as if relinquishing damning state secrets.

The woman sits calmly, looking over the notebook. She flips a few pages, reads some more. "These entries are a schedule of take offs and landings," she says; and goes on to explain that the cows on their farm have been milking at low cream content, which her brother felt was the result of the base's jets flying overhead. Jacques Griselle, being university trained, had taken a scientific approach to establishing a connections between sonic booms and cow's poor grade milk.

"If you'll notice in the following pages," says Barbara with a sly expression, "here's what it says. 'Helen, quite nervous today, quality low. Diane, apathetic, quality poor. Mabel, quite pert, generally improved,' and so on with other members of the herd." The grieving sister snaps the notebook closed. "This is a daily reaction of each cow." Throughout the reading, both military men have shuffled on their feet while the mayor, smelling blood, smiles at them with all his teeth. The mayor holds his grin up at them as he sticks the ice pick in a bit deeper, just for fun: "Perhaps the colonel can tell us what he thought the items referred to?"

Standing side by side, the two military men look as though they have just shit their pants and are in desperate need of a uniform change. Instead of a communist spy caught red-handed, they have a local farmer with the smarts to keep careful records. The colonel, perhaps due to greater rank and experience, is able first to summon upon his reserves of dignity:

"I guess that's all we have to discuss," he says somberly, drawing himself up as straight as possible. "thank you for coming."

The major drives the sister home to her cottage after her triumph and, wishing to salvage something from the afternoon, puts some heavy-handed moves on the girl, despite the fact that she is still wearing black in mourning for her dead brother. After some initial frostiness which the major, being an American, blunders through like a rhinoceros crashing through brush, she does warm to him a bit (Barbara has openly laughed at him over some moment of bluster during their drive, and the major has had the good grace and confidence to grin at himself). They part with a friendly wave.

But soon there are more killings. The mayor is slain horribly in his home, and a local couple is killed. Here, we see a farmer's wife, doing chores in a barn, become alert to the same crackling, throbbing sound we heard with the first killing. As she looks around, the sound becomes louder. She sees the hay on the barn floor ruffle. Suddenly she screams hysterically and clutches at the back of her neck, thrashing miserably against something unseen. Her husband comes running into the barn, only to meet the same fate.

This time, a military investigation and autopsy cannot be stopped and, in a morgue of deep noir shadows; Dr. Warren explains to the principals that the dead couple both had missing brains "sucked out like an egg" through two holes at the base of the neck. The corpses also both had their spinal columns sucked out right along with the brains. "It's as though some mental vampire were at work," offers the major.

Colonel Butler understands instantly that the backward, country folk will naturally panic and blame the base's atomic experiments for this kind of bizarre death. Quick, Jeff, he orders, acting a bit panicky himself, dash on into town and put your ear to the ground for unusual behavior. "The townsfolk know you," says the colonel.

The townsfolk. Right. Major Cummings hot-tails it with all-due haste to one, specific towns person he would like to know much better: Barbara Griselle, whom he surprises post-shower dressed only in towels (he comes into her home unannounced through a door that - only in the movies - swings open when knocked upon). Seeing her wet and clothed only in a snug towel distracts the major entirely from sucked brains and missing spinal columns, and he continues his overtures of the previous meeting with even less tact (after Barbara has slipped on a bathrobe). Just as the major is about to round first base, the raw-boned brute of a local constable, Howard Gibbons (Robert MacKenzie), is seen standing in the bedrooms' doorway (and judging by Ms. Griselle's pleasant reception - "Hello, Howard, come on in" - it's not unusual for the tall lawman to come into the house, and bedroom, without knocking). After a moment of alpha unpleasantries, the constable suggests gruffly (but not unreasonably) that perhaps the major's time might be better spent searching for the killer instead of "tomcatting around." The major goes on the attack and, despite being a full head shorter, holds his own against the rugged looking constable (well, he is cranked on bennies, remember). Barbara, still with a towel around her head, breaks the boys up and orders the major out.

Yet, the visit hasn't been an entirely disgraceful waste of time for the major. In between trying to get under the bathrobe off a grieving sister and attacking a local law officer, Cummings noticed a stack of papers and a manuscript entitled: "The Principles of Thought Control by R. E. Walgate" on a writing desk in Barbara's bedroom (just so we know this discover is important, doom-dark music plays as the major gazes at the title page). It just so happens that Barbara is the private secretary of the author, Professor Walgate, who has retired to the wilds of Winthrop for health reasons. It also just so happens that Prof. Walgate is a world-renowned authority on "psychic phenomenon." Hmmm. Thought control. "Mental vampire." Yes, this is one too many "just so happens," and the movie has offered up the script's single option for culprit.

While the major sets himself on the trail of Prof. Walgate, Constable Gibbons has taken a more traditional approach in finding the killer. He has worked his fellow townsmen into a froth, armed them all with shotguns and hunting rifles, and marched the whole ill-trained troop into the woods in search of some fiend (whom, it is assumed, is probably a GI from the base gone berserk). Watching the men happily grab firearms from the backseat of a car and rush into the forest, one can't help but imagine this may have been the response to any crime, even, say, a stolen bicycle. Yet once the woods become full of ill-trained shopkeepers and chicken farmers whirling their weapons at any bird chirp, even the heartiest of the posse seem fearful of being caught in a dreadful hail of crossfire. "It's me! It's Beck!" yips one panic-stricken townie stepping into a clearing, waving his hands frantically at the battery of firearms that have suddenly clattered and chambered themselves at him.

Eventually, the men become exhausted and most go home, finished with the romp and satisfied with having escaped the harrowing, useless afternoon with their lives. The constable and one terrified, reluctant townie (the same hapless "Beck" who has already pissed himself once in the afternoon) remain for one last look near the air base. Near a hollow, the two hear the by-now familiar thumping, grinding sound and, much to the consternation of Beck, the two split up to investigate ("you said not to let each other out of sight!" squeals Beck, his anus shrinking so suddenly it makes his entire body smaller). After a bit of very cautious walking through the woods alone, Beck hears the sound grow louder, then louder still, then stop. He runs through the woods, shouting Gibbons' name (In a nice bit of movie making we see the camera pan the sky, pull back further to take in whole stretches of dense forest, as Beck's voice becomes lost in distance).

With the loss of their constable, the townspeople call an emergency city council meeting where, horrifically, Constable Gibbons will reappear - barging into the meeting - a gibbering, mindless idiot, making a terrible bawling like a tortured calf (his brain, presumably, partially sucked out).

Meanwhile, Major Cummings applies himself to Professor Walgate who, despite being a avuncular, pipe-smoking Englishman in the grand, dusty tradition, is the "fiend." Or rather, through thought transference (or mental projection or some such) Walgate has created the invisible fiends through a device which enhances his powers of mental projection (with the aid of atomic energy bleed off from the nearby plant).

Which leads us straight into the good stuff:

The Good Stuff Part I: The Scorpion Brains

While conducting his search into psychic phenomenon, the professor has created a machine by which he can siphon off some of the atomic power of the nearby air-force base to materialize his thought. So enhanced, the professor's thoughts have become a living force, separate from his consciousness. Naturally, being so brainy, the professor imagined a sort of brain when strapped into the machine and, like thought, they are initially invisible.

Yet as time passed, and the thought creatures became stronger, they existed beyond the professor's control or even knowledge. Being brains, they needed both blood and a spinal column to survive (and unfortunately for many townsfolk, they developed a way to get both). Eventually toward the end of the picture they become detached completely from the professor and begin to multiply. Once the major has things figured, he realizes that he must make the brains visible to fight them effectively, and he boosts the atomic output of the base. Once the atomic reactors are given a jolt, the fiends become part of the physical world (and visible). And it is the visible brains which give the picture's its great wallop.

At picture's end, we find many principals trapped in the professor's house, engaged in a claustrophobic shoot out with the now-visible brains, which sputter flatulently when shot, spraying and bleeding huge gouts of black, lumpy blood (it looks for all the world like blackberry jam). The pulpy brains, with their trailing spinal columns and elastic lobster eye-tendrils, are moved through stop-motion animation; so they resemble bulbous scorpion snakes, crawling along by the worm-like motion of their bare, skeletal spines. When attacking, they wrap their naked back-bones like a python around the neck of the victim, while their brain bodies stab into the neck with a mosquito beak to suck out the brain matter. The overall effect is simply stunning. Even in this age when Saw CCCXXIX is slated for summer of 2232, the sight of these plugged brains, spluttering forth their filth like oil-filled bladders - often spraying their black gore everywhere when shot - still qualify as a legit guilty pleasure. In fact, the special effects in this final sequence are so fine, it has kept the film beloved and selling well to the current day.

The Good Stuff Part II: Arthur Crabtree

Although not well remembered, Director Arthur Crabtree keeps things lean and mean throughout and proves real talent for building tension in close spaces (as well as being a director capable of fine moments of subtle feeling as when Air Force jets boom over the graveyard service for Jacques Griselle, obliterating the country priest's prayer). In the final scene, when the survivors are trapped in the professor's house, the odds become so overwhelming that the only course of action is to blow up the atomic reactor (yes, blow up the atomic reactor). The major makes a desperate break for the plant's control room with dynamite in hand (yes, to dynamite the nuclear reactor); while the professor, in a guilty bid for redemption, decides to leave the house and battle his creations with his mind. He is attacked almost instantly and dies buried under a pile of pulsing, feeding brains.

Crabtree keeps things wound extremely tightly, as we watch the main party nailing shut windows, blocking doorways, and blasting away at the brains (overall a fine entry in the oft-used "trapped-in-a-rural-farmhouse" theme), while the major scrambles to make his way via Jeep to the plant with some dynamite he's picked up from a convenient shed. As the major nears the plant on foot, we see him run passed the dead, brain-sucked bodies of base personnel, many draped like dirty laundry over stair railings or laying in heaps over the grounds.

The major, with his .45 blasting some very messy holes in some very angry brains, manages to blow the plant (we see a magnificent sequence here of a dying, gore-spattered brain struggling in lurches to reach the burning wick of the dynamite, ultimately failing as it slumps over). Once the atomic power hums to a halt, we watch the brains go limp - falling off necks and dropping from trees and window ledges like rotten fruit; where, once on the ground, they bubble, splutter, and sizzle like sacks of acid spilled on the ground (another giggly effect).

Hurrah! Major Cummings hurries back to the farmhouse, where he has become "Jeff!" in Barbara's eyes. The two embrace in a kiss as prelude to a blissful marriage and family; and the end credits roll.

The Good Stuff Part III: Our Fiend The Atom

In 1957, the profoundly optimistic Walt Disney produced a short film that was seen by American school children called Our Friend The Atom. In this film, noted atomic scientist, Dr. Heinz Haber, discussed the many possible positives of a tremendous new recourse, atomic power. The purpose of the film was to forestall the growing trepidations about fission while pointing the way to a brightly lit future, powered by this clean, inexhaustible source of endless power. While it is easy to snort at the film now, it was an honest attempt to explore the massive potential that rested slumbering in the splitting of the atom (it should be remembered that Dr. Haber also compares atomic power to a genie from Arabian Nights; stressing the wither the genie is used for good or ill resides in the moral fiber of the one doing the wishing).

Yet, judging by Fiend Without A Face and hundreds of B-movies like it made in the atomic age, few completely believed in the goodness of the Atom. Not even the school children, sitting glassy eyed at Disney's magic in countless auditoriums, were probably much convinced; considering a few years earlier these same children had been shown brutal black and white civil defense films like Duck and Cover - just in case the atom wasn't so fucking friendly.

Fiend is terribly conflicted, and ultimately scared shitless, about atomic power. The film, via the major and other military personal, seems sincere in ridiculing the Winthrop population for their ignorant fears of atomic radiation. In fact, it is proven that all the townies' fears are misplaced regarding loss of cream content in dairy cows, loss of rainfall, illnesses, etc. Also, the film makes a strong case for the military potential for atomic power for gaining a massive edge against the destructive might of communism. We see a brief scene in a darkly light radar control room where, for one glittering moment, our radar is so enhanced by atomic power that we see the entire land mass of the USSR, stretched out before us clear as a Texaco road map. All in the room become rigid with excitement, looking up at the big screen with awed expressions.

Yet, the image is weak and fleeting. The plant has been running on peak overload even to produce this fleeting image and, as the reactor crackles and hums dangerously; the promising image of military superiority flickers, dims, and becomes a watery pool of vague light. "There it goes again," says the major, his voice guttural with anger. "Same Trouble!" The major can't know, but the atomic power is being drained off, misused (and that is important) by the semi-mad professor. And what of local, peasant fears of radiation? Well, they may have been wrong bout the bad milk; but weren't the good folks of Winthrop far more than right to fear the atomic monster? Did it not bring the ruin of their pastoral paradise? No bad milk, sure; but instead mind-sucking, atomic powered brains.

Ultimately, the military and the citizenry of Winthrop come to understand that it was just as Dr. Haber and Walt Disney had explained in beautiful Technicolor: That atomic power is indeed a bristling, crackling genie; at our pleasure for any wish. The only mistake Walt Disney made was assuming our wishes never held nightmares.

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Now, let's see that trailer! -- Mykal

All Monsters Go To Heaven

20 Million Miles To Earth (1957)
Directed by Nathan Juran
Starring:
William Hopper - Col. Robert Calder
Joan Taylor - Marisa Leonardo
Frank Puglia - Dr. Leonardo
John Zaremba - Dr. Judson Uhl
Thomas Browne Henry - Maj. Gen. A.D. McIntosh

Special effects legend, Ray Harryhausen, loved King Kong and the man behind the big ape's stop-motion life, Willis O'Brien. When Harryhausen was a boy, his mother and aunt took him to see King Kong at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. The event was a watershed moment. From that day forward, Harryhausen did little else but pursue a career in movies and the perfection of the model animation (stop-motion animation) process he had seen in Kong. Eventually, Harryhausen would not only fulfill a lifelong dream and apprentice under master O'Brien (on 1949s' Mighty Joe Young), he would eventually become the absolute monarch of the process; keeping model animation viable into the 1980s (Clash of the Titans). Considering this, it is easy to imagine that Harryhausen was at least doffing his cap to O'Brien with his amazing work on 20 Million Miles To Earth.

The plot of 20 Million Miles is a basic monster-on-the loose theme - the monster in this case being a bi-pedal reptile (Harryhausen called it "the Ymir" ) brought back in a gelatinous pod from a space expedition to Venus. Once on Earth (via the returning mission crash landing in the waters off the Italian coast), the Venusian creature hatches and grows at an incredible rate (due to the differences in an earthly climate and the environs of its home world). Its growth rate is so fantastic, in fact, that a caged curiosity quickly becomes a city threatening behemoth in very short time.

When our movie opens, we see a US spacecraft returning from Venus slam into the ocean off the coast of Sicily. Most of the fishing boats at work make a run for it, but one brave crew investigates. Before the spaceship sinks like a stone, the fishermen are able to haul two men to safety. One crewman dies in hospital (with a horrible Venusian rash covering his face); but the other, Col. Robert Calder (William Hopper) survives. Meanwhile, a young Italian sprat, Pepe (Bart Braverman), has discovered a canister washed up on shore from the ship's wreckage containing a slimy pod about two footballs long. As Pepe holds it up to the light, we see a long embryo within about the size and shape of an iguana (I feel compelled to add here that Pepe, though designed as innocent and charmingly mischievous, caused me grind my teeth in restraint throughout). Being the enterprising young urchin that he is, Pepe decides to sell his find to a local Zoologist, Dr. Leonardo (Frank Puglia), so that he may buy an American cowboy hat (insert sound of teeth grinding). Leonardo is living and doing field research from a trailer by the sea with his daughter, Marisa (Joan Allen). Much to the surprise and delight of Dr. Leonardo, the creature hatches. We can virtually see the scientific awards spinning in Dr. Leonardo's eyes, and he quickly cages the newborn creature and hightails to Rome where, presumably, he can officially register his "discovery" and become world famous.

It is about at this juncture in the movie when Kong similarities begin to surface. These corresponding themes and particulars between King Kong and 20 Million Miles are simple and striking; and it is no stretch to imagine them bringing delight to Harryhausen. Let's consider:

Point 1: A Monster Enslaved

In both movies a creature is abducted from a natural environment, where it thrives both happy and healthy, and is escorted as prisoner to a completely alien world of "civilization." Both Ymir and Kong are thrust into hostile, Lilliputian worlds where everything is tiny and fragile; and the native populations seem capable only of screaming, stampeding like terrified cattle, or - in uniformed gangs - banding together and shooting them with needle-some weapons. Both creatures are enslaved for the rewards they might bring their civilized wardens. In the case of Ymir, the rewards are to come through military research of a Venusian reptile; and in the case of Kong (who is turned into a Broadway show) the motivation is purely financial. Yet, in both cases, the respective creatures are chained, shackled, kidnapped, or otherwise enslaved to improve "our" lot. The monster is for "us," to use as we may see fit, for what we may gain from its life. Kong, a movie of finer nuance, has a sense that this is shameful. In Kong, the captive has his advocates protesting the beast's treatment simply because it is wrong to torture a living thing for money, fame, or glory (even a giant gorilla big enough to squash cars). Ymir, the much more alien of the two creatures, is not so fortunate.

Point 2: A Monster Innocent and Feared

Both Kong and Ymir are feared on sight because of their great size and "otherness;" yet of the two, Kong is recognizable. He is a mammoth gorilla - therefore never hideous, only terrifying. Ymir, in contrast, is completely devoid of any familiarity; his taut, scaly musculature sparking nothing with but memories primal and horrid. With is powerful, human torso, massive lizard head, and long snake tail; Ymir appears when born ready to perch on Satan's shoulder. As he grows during the course of the movie, his place in Satan's hierarchy appears to advance in proportion to his size. To make matters worse, his only communication is an open-mawed, toothy screech. In short, no one speaks for the Ymir.

Neither creature is treated well, certainly. Kong is chained in his captivity, first bound by chains onboard the ship which takes him from Skull Island to New York; and later he is chained and shackled to the stage on Broadway - being the main attraction on the Great White Way. Yet, he is of financial value; so his physical health must be maintained. The great ape is well fed, kept warm, etc.; so that he may maintain his great ape appearance for the paying customers. Ymir, our test baby from Venus, is of value only as a research subject - and a subject of military research at that - so his treatment is as harrowing as his worth suggests: When he has grown so large that caging is no longer viable, an electric net is flown in and dropped. Ymir is jolted, amid a convulsion of horrid spasms and screeches, into unconsciousness (Ymir, being from Venus, is helpfully but inexplicably extra susceptible to electricity). Ymir, now the size of a dinosaur, is taken to the zoo in Rome and secured to a vast platform with steel clamps. Electricity is sent perpetually coursing thorough his system, which keeps him unconscious so that military doctors may perform their "research."

Yet both creatures are, in essence, innocent of everything save their vast potential for mayhem. Even the dogged Col. Calder acknowledges this when, in the best scene in the movie, they have the Ymir, who has grown to the size of a man, trapped in a barn. As the creature looks down from a hay loft, flicking his tail like a wary cat, Col. Calder and a research scientist, Dr. Uhl (John zaremba), discuss how they may capture the creature alive. "Actually," explains Calder, "they're not ferocious unless provoked." Naturally, before the Ymir can escape the barn, he is attacked by a dog, prodded with a pruning shear, stabbed with a pitchfork, beaten with a shovel, and shot. Just as Col. Calder has promised, thus provoked, the creature exits the barn quite ferocious (prior to the barn, we have seen the Ymir walk through the farm grounds, looking at lambs and horses with only a gentle curiosity. He is after all, at this point in our story, a lost orphan perhaps three days old).

Both Kong and Ymir receive nothing but violent provocation throughout their respective stories.

Point 3: A Monster Seeks the High Ground

What is it with bad guys and heights? Think of Mad Dog Earle (Humphrey Bogart) in High Sierra, struggling upward through the jagged rock of the Sierra Nevadas; or of Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), the horrid momma's boy of White Heat, standing atop the oil rig, laughing like some god caught in a blissful orgasm of death. Certainly, the instinct is to dominate, to get above and over all enemies; yet surely as well there is another force at play: The need to rise, to ascend that height where there are less things and more space. To climb until the air is pure, where all things are purified. Heaven.

Kong's 1933 ascent of the Empire State Building in New York City is certainly one of the most iconic sequences in the history of film. The images may, in fact, have entered some untouchable place of shared, international memory - a planet-wide memory snapshot of Kong scaling the building into the clouds. When I lived in New York, I often walked streets near the Empire State Building (I had a buddy that tended bar in Midtown). I was never able to pass near the towering, art-deco skyscraper without looking up and imagining Kong with hand-like feet clasped to the upper pinnacles. I could nearly hear the distant insect buzzing of the biplanes that floated around him, way up there.

Imagined in those vast heights, I could feel the immense size of Kong. In the foggy drizzle of a rainy afternoon, the distances seemed gray and terrifying, nearly beyond comprehension. In white summer sunlight, the heated concrete had a smell somehow intimidating and unknowable, as though we had built our cities too high - too hard - for the soft flesh of man. On these days, looking up, I could smell Kong's fur mixed with concrete dust, heated along the expanse of his wide back, as he climbed to the top of the world. How magnificent was the city because of these daydreams. How clear was my own place in time, having these shared dreams of Kong.

Like Kong, the Ymir will also have his ascension. Having escaped the brutal torture of the zoo, he rampages the streets of Rome; eventually seeking an escape through height. The Ymir finds his Empire State Building in the ancient ruins of the Roman Coliseum.

Yet with the case of Ymir, the motivation for ascension is wholly different than Kong. The great ape, in climbing ever higher into the air of New York, clearly sought dominance over his domain, the vantage point of a lord over this new "stone jungle." With the Ymir, his climb atop the ruins of the coliseum is simply an act of desperation. Despite his huge size and monstrous appearance, Ymir is a child blindly, frantically, trying to escape torment. When the Kong succumbs to man and gravity, his fall is that of a king. We feel like bowing our heads. When Ymir looses his grip and plummets, we want to turn our faces.

Now to the Good Stuff!

The Good Stuff Part I: Harryhausen

Yes. Of course. Harryhausen.

Harryhausen dominates this film. At this point in his career, indeed throughout much of his career, Harryhausen went severely unaccredited for many of his contributions to a film, insisting only on his name above "Special Effects." In 20 Million Miles, for example, Harryhausen thought of the story, drew all the storyboards and conceptual drawings (in fact was able to sell the film on the strength of his beautiful artwork. Harryhausen has never gotten full acknowledgement for his draftsmanship), created and animated all the models, worked closely with the actors; and created the exterior and interiors for the crashed space ship (as well as effects for same).

His effects in 20 Million Miles were simply revolutionary - light years ahead of their time. In this film, as well as others from the same period, he created monsters and effects of a smooth, seamless quality no one had ever seen before. The Ymir moves with a reality that is enthralling, has expression and weight. When his peers where figuring imaginative ways to hide their screen monsters in shadow and action, Harryhausen brought his creations walking, slithering, striding into the full light of day - made them move without camouflage. A Harryhausen monster was beyond real. To quote the man himself:

"Fantasy is essentially a dream world, an imaginative world, and I don't think you want it quit real. You want an interpretation. And stop motion (animation), to me, gives that added value of a dream world that you can't catch if you try to make it too real. And that is the essence of fantasy, isn't' it? To transform reality into the imagination." - from The Harryhausen Chronicles

The Good Stuff Part II: Professionals At Work

Harryhausen loved working on B-movies, seemed to prefer it to working on big budget productions, for two reasons. First, a small budget picture always had less overlords and producers patting his back, allowing him to work without interference (thank heavens a producer like, say, Selzinck never footed his bills). Second reason: the actors in B-pictures were a re-occurring cast of pros that could hit the mark all day long and got it right on the first take every goddamn time. Harryhausen always spoke of these actors with true affection. In interviews, actor William Hopper is always "Bill," and Director Nathan Juran is "Jerry." Harryhausen only worked with "Hollywood Stars" once in his career: 1981s' Clash of Titans. Harryhausen is always . . . polite, when remembering the experience.

William Hopper is a television immortal for his excellent work on Perry Mason, where his pitch-perfect take on the rakish private eye, Paul Drake, was the correct counterbalance to Raymond Burr's black-eyed intensity. He was an actor capable of projecting an easy, confident sincerity (no small gift for an actor) with just the right amount of charisma. He certainly gracefully earns his pay here, particularly in his romantic scenes with the Dr. Leonardo's daughter, Marisa (Joan Taylor).

Joan Taylor made two films with Harryhausen: 20 Million and Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, and she talks about the experience as though she were allowed on the greatest carnival ride in the world. In both films, she is pretty without any lens frosting; and has smarts enough to be more than fluff.

Thomas Browne Henry, with his hawk profile and authorative style; played the sympathetic man in uniform several times in his long career (The Beginning of the End, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, etc). Likewise, Frank Puglia and John Zaremba (who both had faces you could swear you've seen a thousand times) always made any fan of atomic age sci-fi feel right at home.

Harryhausen genuinely loved these guys. They were all fine actors, easy to work with, and not a one of them ever needed "motivation" to do their jobs. All were immensely at ease in front of a camera and never blinked under the searing heat of movie lights (which right there makes them Harryhausen gold). None had the dreaded star's ego, and wasn't that a good thing, too - because, like his mentor Willis O'Brien, if Harryhausen created a creature for a movie, the creature was the star. An actor could struggle against that or not. Actors that lacked a sense of humor about themselves or (worse) were foolish enough to imagine themselves the star, always looked terribly unhappy and defeated. Think of the easy smile of William Hopper. Now picture the glowering (always glowering) visage of Clash of the Titans "star," Sir Laurence Olivier.

One can imagine Harryhausen saying, gently, "Let's call Bill."

Now, here comes the trailer! - Mykal