Bloodtype Online

    When a young girl is found wandering in the desert miles from her family’s wrecked camper the State patrol is at a loss to explain what happened.  Since the girl’s missing father was a vacationing FBI agent they get involved in the investigation.  With the help of a scientist from Washington they are able to bring the girl out of shock long enough for her to scream about “them”.  Soon they all find out that the “them” the little girl was screaming about is a nest of giant ants!  And even though they take care of the nest they aren’t in time to prevent two queen ants from flying away.  Now the FBI, the military, and the police must track down where the two queens went off too before they create a nest that is capable of making more queens.   

    There is something fun about a giant bug movie, and this is one of the best that has ever been made.  The movie starts off with a creepy atmosphere, which it maintains all throughout the film.  There is a scene where the characters are looking away but we the audience gets to see something in the background that is just cool.  The script takes time to develop the characters into people that we the audience care about, and then promptly puts them in danger.  The action is pretty steady throughout the movie.  This keeps the film engaging and entertaining from start to finish.  The cast is pretty damn good, especially James Arenss (The Thing from Another World) who actually gets some lines in this Sci-fi classic.   

    Whenever you watch a movie that is more than 50 years old it is easy to pick apart the special effects.  I’m sure that the giant ants look pretty silly and goofy by today’s standards, but I really like them.  A few things that set this movie aside from others is that there the filmmakers made a real effort to make sure that the scale remained the same. In other words the ants are in scale with the actors and their surroundings.  When the scientists say that the ants are 8 feet long, the prop is 8 feet long.  This is accomplished because the filmmakers made multiple creatures to scale and put them on some really nifty looking sets with the actors.  This is what sets this movie apart from many of it’s contemporaries and is also why it was nominated for an Oscar for it’s effects.  .   

    Them is an example of what happened back in the day when a major studio (Warner Brothers) got behind a project like this.   Them is a well-written movie with great characters and atmosphere that just happens to have giant ants in it!  If you aren’t a fan of the 50s, but want to check one out then check out this one.  If on the other hand you are a fan of the 50s you have already seen this one.  This is a classic of the genre that I can’t recommend to you guys enough.   

Rating - ****

-John "El Juan" Shatzer