I remember sitting in front of the old floor model Zenith television with my nose no more than two inches from the glass picture tube, a 16 oz. glass bottle of Pepsi in one hand and the other hand elbow deep in a bowl of buttery popcorn as I watched in mesmerized terror as giant ants terrorized the tiny humans! I couldn't help but to think of all of those ant hills that I had crushed on neighborhood sidewalks, with a creeping sense of guilt and fear, as I watched the huge radio-active monstrosities toss full grown men around like the plastic soldiers upon a backyard battlegrounds and the sandy dunes of the playground sandbox. The movie was simply called "Them!" and I was hooked from the opening credits to the last line. This movies is pure classic sci-fi/horror bliss!
(If you experience any problems watching the last part just watch it on the Anti-Society YouTube channel!)
After several people in the New Mexico desert wind up missing or dead, including an F.B.I. agent and most of his family, police Sgt. Ben Peterson teams up with F.B.I. agent Bob Graham to find out what's causing the strange occurrences. They find send a strange print found at one of the crime scenes and it is sent to the Department of Agriculture. Doctor Harold Medford and his daughter Doctor Patricia Medford arrive and ask to be taken to the scene of some of the disappearances. When they get there they are shocked to find gigantic ants, whose mutations were caused by the first atomic bomb explosion nine years earlier. They manage to destroy the nest of ants, but not before two winged queen ants and a couple of drones have hatched and escaped the nest. Now it is a race against time to find the two queen ants before they can establish more nests and hatch more queens.
