"Them! " Topic

So Cool!

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Amicalement
Armand

One of the blogs I follow regularly. I really like Mike´s low key style and his love for 50s sci-fi. Good fun!

Me too my good friend! (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Lately Mike has been repurposing a broken toy into a great Castle Doom… neat stuff.

But…but…but…
they're all _queens_!!!!

Capncarp,

That's how that species does it – when a colony reaches a critical size the old queen ends her reign by laying a clutch with 100% queens. When they hatch, they leave the nest in a swarm, attack anything in their path (in this case little green army men), and any of the surviving queens goes on to found a new colony.

It's the beginning of the end!

No, Beginning of the End was giant grasshoppers, not ants.
YouTube link

I think what CapnCarp was referring to was that in Them! only 2 queens escaped the nest. One was sunk in a cargo ship full of sugar, the other ended up in the L.A. storm drain system. (We used to play down in the L.A. River near the entrance to the colony).

Roderick

Pattus was kidding. The reference to "BOTE" was a reference to the giant insect genre in general.

I was kidding, but, Wow, I'm shocked at my own ignorance about the giant bug genre… I didn't even realize that "Them!" and BOTE are the titles of actual movies! The shame ;) Next time maybe a quick google search would be in order before I post!

Specific movies aside, giant bug gaming looks like a lot of fun, and has the added bonus that an attack of giant bugs could be launched against pretty well any army you have figs for – like the little known encounter between Alexander the Great's veterans and giant bugs in the Indian jungle on the way home after Hydaspes… (Heck, in "The Persian War" Herotodus actually has a description of giant gold-hoarding ants somewhere in "the East"!)

Happy you enjoyed it boys!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Re: The giant bug genre also includes "Tarantula", "The Deadly Mantis", "Mothra", "The Black Scorpion", and "Earth vs. The Spider".

Thank you Tango for the link, and thank you all for the kind words. I have posted about Trantula and others as well!

link

I have a Facebook page on '50's sci fi.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

A votre service mon ami!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Near the end of the movie Them! there is a scene with a room full of winged ants, queens and their consorts. This diorama reflects that penultimate scene from the movie.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

"I was kidding, but, Wow, I'm shocked at my own ignorance about the giant bug genre… I didn't even realize that "Them!" and BOTE are the titles of actual movies! The shame ;)"

<Capncarp sadly shakes his head in dismay and disbelief. Where is the youth of our world heading if two of Monster Movies' Greatest films slide right under their noses without even raising a blip on their pop-cultural radar. Oh, the Humanities, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.
tsk.
tsk.
tsk.>

B^Ž~~~~~~~~~

--AND--
<SPOILER ALERT>
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Well, at least they didn't have to embalm James Whitmore's body. It was pretty well pickled by the Formic acid he got while trying to save Mike and Jerry Lodge.

>>Where is the youth of our world heading if two of Monster Movies' Greatest films slide right under their noses without even raising a blip on their pop-cultural radar.<<

I agree with you re: "Them". Re: "BOTE"…not so much.

capncarp,

You're right, my education in this critically important field has been neglected. I'll have to correct that with some close study – and some games involving massive bugs. I think some dollar store bugs pitted against my 1/72 WW2 Germans would be in the spirit of things – a platoon of Heer come across the site of a soviet experiment gone horribly wrong…

There's a famous story from the making of Them that the director asked the cameraman, "How do they look? Do they look real? Do they look honest?" And the answer came, "Well…, about as honest as twelve-foot ants can look!"

Them was a masterpiece of cinematography, good acting, and packed with lots of good screen talent.
BOTE was a…blatant shirt-tail-riding cheap SFX-filled (a shot of normal sized grasshoppers crawling up a _photo_ of a building? Sheeeesh!), bandwagon-jumping ambulance chaser of a monster movie. But beloved by its overindulgent nostalgic audience anyway.

And Pattus, get diggin' into those giant-bug films and don't come back until you can tell me:
Which star-to-be was the jet pilot in "Tarantula"?
The names of 4 stars-to-be in THEM.
What volunteer public service organization was showcased in "The Deadly Mantis"?
How did the "sensitive alien kid" managed to destroy the escaped Giant Alien Crab in "Teenagers from Outer Space"?
Why is Gorgo _not_ the one you should be afraid of?

There will be a snap quiz during the intermission--and don't get any popcorn butter on your papers!

Love the giant bug movies!

Which was the one with the giant spider in a cave, that was a volkswagon Bettle with a shag carpet over it, legs, and the brake lights were it's eyes?

Oh, and how many of them had Elisha Cook Jr. playing a town drunk killed off in the first scene? (I can name like 4)

"Them" was another one my Mom had me watch when I was like 2. Still remember! Horrified.

Smokey, Elisha Cook Jr. played the "kid" in Bogie's version of "The Big Sleep", and the overeager "punk" in "The Maltese Falcon", which shows how long he had been around by the time the 50's horror films were around.
If those films had been in color, he woulda been wearing a Red Shirt in his scenes.

>>Oh, and how many of them had Elisha Cook Jr. playing a town drunk killed off in the first scene? (I can name like 4)<<

You can name like none. He was never in any sort of science fiction movie playing a town drunk. In fact, the only flick that he was in that can be called sf/horror was "Voodoo Island".

@Pattus Magnus:
" and some games involving massive bugs. I think some dollar store bugs pitted against my 1/72 WW2 Germans would be in the spirit of things – a platoon of Heer come across the site of a soviet experiment gone horribly wrong…"

Well, Pattus, here is where that marvellous anti-cholinesterase byproduct of Reich insecticide chemical engineering, Zyklon-B, would actually have a beneficial effect. How you'd explain them having some on hand is your problem.

Thus Spake CapnCarp:
<And Pattus, get diggin' into those giant-bug films and don't come back until you can tell me:>

spoilers lurk below……
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Which star-to-be was the jet pilot in "Tarantula"?
--Clint Eastwood

The names of 4 stars-to-be in THEM.
--Leonard Nimoy, William Schallert, Fess Parker, Richard Deacon, Dub Taylor--5 actually.

What volunteer public service organization was showcased in "The Deadly Mantis"?
--The Ground Observer Corps

How did the "sensitive alien kid" managed to destroy the escaped Giant Alien Crab in "Teenagers from Outer Space"?
--he tapped into a downed high tension line to jury-rig a power source for his depleted disintegrator pistol.

Why is Gorgo _not_ the one you should be afraid of?
--Because his _Mommy_ ripped through London to come and free him!!!

>>The names of 4 stars-to-be in THEM.
--Leonard Nimoy, William Schallert, Fess Parker, Richard Deacon, Dub Taylor--5 actually<<

Dub Taylor was already a star of sorts having co-starred with "Wild Bill" Elliot, Tex Ritter, and finally Charles Starrett as the side kick character "Cannonball" with all three. These were all "B" westerns, but there were a total of about 50 or so films, and we was very well known for that character.

Oh, and the Sensitive Terran-Lover Alien Kid zapped the Giant Mutant Alien _Lobster_. Giant Mutant Alien Crabs is what the Trusting Innocent Terran Female got from the…nevermind.

I know this is thread necromancy, but rather than start another thread on this great movie, just wanted to chime in that I watched it last night for the first time in what turned out to be a longer time than I thought. I could have sworn I watched it in the last decade, back when we had a cool hipster movie rental place in town, but there were too many scenes in the middle that I didn't have a memory of, so I'm guessing it's 20+ years.

I first saw this when I was 5 or 6 on after-school TV in the 1970s and it scared the beejeezus out of me, particularly the ant's chirping, which sounded to me like a field of crickets. At night up at the cottage for years after, the sounds of crickets made me think the ants were on the march.

Seeing this now, it was amazing how perfectly I remembered the first 20 minutes or so, up the Officer Blackburn's encounter. I remembered most of the end scenes in the sewers, though they seemed to last longer and be more involved in my memory, they felt a bit rushed watching it last night.

Watching it now though, I appreciated a lot more of the acting and film techniques, things like the way the ants' chirping faded in and out, how solid Whitmore was as an actor, the classically scatterbrained old scientist, even the man on the street scenes as martial law was declared over the radio.

And I think Sandy Descher should have gotten an Oscar for her performance of the traumatized girl, her walk through the sand was chilling and giving me the creeps from the get go.

The Shadow: In fact, the only flick that he was in that can be called sf/horror was "Voodoo Island".

Not much in SciFi, I grant you, but some of Elisha Cook Jr's horror movies include The House on Haunted Hill, The Haunted Palace, Rosemary's Baby, and Salem's Lot.
rags

I have been working on a series of games called parlor wargames. Using pieces, boards and such from typical parlor games. In The giant insects genre reminds me of one that I'm doing using a bunch of Cootie sets. The basic premise of the game is that as you go along , The people discover these creatures and fight them, you remove pieces from an already put together figure.