Them – 1954
I don’t understand what was so special about the special effects for this movie. They used some very big animatronics, and that was their big draw, but I wasn’t impressed. The giant ants looked fake, moved slowly, and appeared to be very clunky. And I’m not just saying that based on today’s standards. This movie looked like it could have easily come out in the 1930s.
So why was it nominated for Best Special Effects? I’m not sure. So I did my research, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find much. The main thing were the giant ants. After doing a bit of reading, I found that my suspicions were correct. There was a reason we never saw more than three of them on the screen at the same time. Only three animatronic ants were constructed.
But that wasn’t the problem. I doubt there would have been enough room to have any more on the screen at the same time. But they kept talking about how there might be thousands of them, and if it was in any way intended to be realistic, there would have been. Power in the insect kingdom has a lot to do with numbers, and I never got the sense that there were that many of the creatures. Had it been a real ant colony, the humans would have been swarmed. They wouldn’t have stood a chance. But I get it. They were probably expensive, and budget was a concern.
In fact, the movie was originally intended to be quite different. Per IMDB, “[The film] Was originally supposed to be filmed in color. Two days before shooting began, a nervous studio cut the budget, and the film had to be made in black and white. However, in the opening credits, the title is shown in bright red [and blue] against a black and white background. It was also supposed to be in 3-D. Some elements of the 3-D effects, such as the ants having extreme close-ups and the flame throwers shooting straight into the camera, were used in the film.”
And as for those flame throwers, they were actually pretty cool, but flame throwers always are. There were even multiple shots of the ants getting set on fire while they were still moving. And there was a cool scene where a B-25 Mitchell bomber shared some screen time with the ants, which was pretty neat. And to be fair, the filmmakers did a pretty good job of building the tension in the first quarter of the movie, before the ants were ever even seen. The menacing and otherworldly noise they made helped to increase the threat of the unseen creatures.
But when it comes down to it, the ants just weren’t impressive enough, and they were what we had all come to see. They moved too slowly and there weren’t enough of them. They looked too fake. And as far as monster movies go, it just seems like earlier films did a better job. But the movie did pretty well at the box office, and critics still praise it today, so really, what do I know?