This classic sci-fi horror is about a brave scientific experiment that goes ludicrously wrong, and in turn produces gigantic mutant killer ants which start to rampage through New Mexico and into Los Angeles.
After a series of scientific nucleur tests are carried out in the deserts of New Mexico the affects are far more severe than anyone could ever imagined and the first signs of these begin with a traumatized five year old girl (Sandy Descher) is picked up by Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) and Officer Ed Blackburn (Drake), as she is wandering aimlessly in the New Mexican desert.
They soon discover a trailer with the girl's dead parents inside, and some very unusual footprints outside and the trailer smashed by a terrible force. No money is taken, but all their sugar has been eaten.
Sgt. Peterson figures that this is the sign of ants and leaves his state highway partner, Trooper Ed Blackburn (Chris Drake) to watch the general store that was destroyed, with Gramp's murdered body inside.
Peterson returns to interview the Ellison girl who is quite frankly too petrified to speak, hoping to get her to tell him what happened.
As soon as Peterson leaves him, Blackburn suffers at the hands of the gigantic mutant ants which lays a guilt trip on the sergeant, even though his precinct captain tells him he followed procedures and did the right thing.
Since the girl's father was a vacationing FBI agent, this incident becomes a federal crime and the F.B.I. are called in to investigate, in the person of, Bob Graham (James Arness).
When Graham sends the footprint (taken from outside the trailer) to the FBI laboratory, they send the troubled town entomologists, Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn) and Dr. Patricia Medford (Joan Weldon).
Now Dr. Medford is a real cantankerous character who is in a desperate rush to get started on this investigation so he can theorise as to what caused these deaths.
But first they revive the comatose girl with a concoction of folic acid, as she awakens startled and frightened out of her wits yelling, "It's THEM!"
Classic Cold War-era monster film.
Them! is a Film programme that first aired in 1954 and has been classified a PG certificate.
