DIR. Gordon Douglas
YEAR. 1954
COUNTRY. U.S.A
RUN-TIME. 94 mins
RATING. PG
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors 7.00PM
Film 7.30PM
Gordon Douglas’s 1954 film Them! is one of the earliest and most celebrated examples of the “nuclear monster” sub genre of 1950’s sci-fi. The monsters in Them! are eight-foot ants, mutated by left over radiation from the earliest nuclear weapons tests. The film serves as a stark indictment of the use and testing of nuclear weaponry.
The first images are that of a young girl wondering, shell-shocked, through the Alamagordo desert, the real life testing ground of the first H-bomb. Sgt Ben Peterson and his colleague find the girl and an investigation ensues.
After an unidentifiable footprint is discovered in the desert, myrmecologist (ant scientist!) Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter, Dr. Pat Medford are sent to investigate. Scientists, the local police, FBI and the military must now work together to try and undo what has already been done. Dr Medford is the heart and brains of the film, providing comedy and philosophy. The film ends with a warning from him that- "When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict".
“One of the landmark films of the 1950s,the film should appeal to fans of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Them! truly is, as its tagline suggests, “The Sci-Fi Classic of the Atomic Age”.”
Is This Yesterday?! comprises a series of Hollywood Science Fiction films from the 1950’s. The films in this season aim to give a broad reflection of the general psyche in America at this specific time. The films explore issues of invasion, atomic power and the progressing relationship between science and the military, the red threat and McCarthyism. The films selected vary in their moral and political standpoint, from the drastically conservative to the ideologically liberal.