The World's Worst Picnic

Join Obie Knox for another descent into The Introverted Obelisk as the Swarming theme continues with one of the most influential creature features ever made: Them! Released in 1954, this Atomic Age classic transformed ordinary ants into towering predators and helped establish the blueprint for decades of giant monster cinema.

In this episode, Obie follows the investigation that begins in the New Mexico desert after a young girl is found wandering in shock and several mysterious deaths leave authorities searching for answers. What starts as a seemingly isolated tragedy soon grows into something far more terrifying when police officers, FBI agents, and scientists uncover the impossible truth: radioactive fallout from early atomic bomb tests has created a colony of gigantic ants. As the insects spread beyond the desert and establish new nests, humanity finds itself racing against time to prevent an invasion that could overwhelm the country.

Along the way, the episode explores why Them! stands as one of the defining science fiction films of the 1950s. Obie looks at how the movie blends monster horror with police procedural storytelling, allowing the mystery to unfold naturally before revealing its unforgettable creatures. The discussion also highlights the film's remarkable practical effects, the eerie sound design that gave the ants their distinctive presence, and the surprisingly grounded performances that help sell even the most extraordinary moments. Rather than rushing from one attack to the next, Them! patiently builds suspense, making every discovery feel earned and every encounter with the giant insects more unsettling than the last.

Of course, no visit to the Atomic Age would be complete without reflecting on the decade's favorite explanation for the impossible: radiation. Obie examines how Cold War fears shaped films like Them!, turning scientific progress and nuclear testing into the perfect ingredients for unforgettable movie monsters. Along the way, there's plenty of room for the dry humor listeners have come to expect, from government officials trying to explain away the impossible to scientists delivering increasingly alarming news with remarkable professionalism.

Whether you're revisiting a beloved classic or experiencing it for the first time, this episode celebrates the film that launched the giant insect craze and forever changed the landscape of science fiction horror. More than seventy years later, Them! remains a suspenseful, intelligent, and surprisingly effective reminder that sometimes humanity's greatest monsters are the ones it accidentally creates itself.

Transcript

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Welcome back, listeners, to the introverted obelisk. I'm your host, Obi Knox. It's still August, and we're all still trying to survive the heat and endure the mosquitoes and the drone of the cicadas. And the obelisk is having its own bug problems. There appears to be a chrysalis hanging from one of the pipes down in one of the maintenance closets. Yeah, I I was just looking for a mop in a bucket, and uh it's roughly the size of a refrigerator, and judging by the empty coffee cup beneath it, I think somebody already decided it's somebody else's problem, and as such, I too have adopted the same philosophy. So tonight's giant insects are confined to the television screen, at least for now. We're taking a look at them, a film that helped define the atomic age creature feature. It's a movie built around one very comforting idea. That humanity detonated atomic bombs in the desert and accidentally created giant ants large enough to drag people screaming into underground nests. Because apparently the 50s looked at nuclear science and thought, there is absolutely no way this comes back to haunt us. And honestly, that feels exactly like the sort of thing Cold War America would actually lose sleep over. And then along comes them, which takes all of that fear and gives it mandibles, coordinated hive behavior, and the horrifying realization that ants already outnumber humanity before you make them the size of Buick's. Which honestly feels kind of rude just thinking about that. So, our film opens with the police discovering a little girl wandering alone through the wasteland, clutching a doll, and staring into space like somebody whose nervous system has permanently resigned. Nearby, a police officer is also found, but he's dead in his patrol car, with a look on his face suggesting his final thoughts was probably, this doesn't seem good. Well, the little girl refuses to speak at first, and when she finally does manage to whisper, she whispers a single word, them. And it is I don't know, it it's impressive to me because it somehow answers nothing, and simultaneously makes the entire situation seem very much more worse. The local authorities call in the FBI, and agent Robert Graham arrives alongside New Mexico State Police Sergeant Ben Patterson, who immediately becomes the closest thing this movie has to real heroes, because while everyone else is confused, they're actually investigating the situation like professionals, you know, instead of immediately running into traffic screwing about the apocalypse. Well, the investigation eventually brings in Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter Patricia Medford, entomologists specializing in ants. And one of the things them does remarkably well is treating the science seriously. The Medfords don't actually behave like eccentric movie scientists, you know, surrounded by bubbling beakers and irresponsible ambition. They feel like intelligent professionals who slowly realize nature has developed a deep, unsettling new feature. And then once the movie reveals the ants for the first time, you completely understand why everyone starts panicking. The creatures themselves are magnificent in that very specific 50s practical effects way, where you know, part of your brain understands you're looking at a giant mechanical ant puppet, while the other part of your brain immediately decides that that distinction doesn't matter because the things look horrifying once they start moving. And the ants are built as enormous articulate props covered in textured exoskeleton material, operated through a combination of hydraulics, wires, and mechanical rigs. And the result still works surprisingly well because the creatures, I gotta say, they feel like heavy, like real and physical. Like their legs scrape across the desert floor, you know, their antenna are constantly twitching, and their mandles clack together with this awful mechanical aggression that somehow feels more, I think, unsettling than if the movie hit tried to make them, like, you know, really graceful. And then there's the sound they make. Oh my god. It's this high-pitched shrieking chirp that the ants make throughout the film. And it's probably one of the most iconic sounds of the 50s science fiction. And it was created by blending recordings of tree frogs and bird calls into something that sounds completely alien while still feeling weirdly organic. It's the sort of noise that instantly tells your brain something enormous is nearby, and your day's about to get dramatically worse. So, following the clues of the desert, Graham, Peterson, and the Medfords eventually discover a massive ant nest hidden beneath the sand near the atomic test site. And this is where the movie fully reveals what it's actually about. Consequences, and and of course giant insects, but the ants are mutations created by the irradiation exposure from the Trinity atomic tests, which means humanity quite literally manufactured their own problem. And the movie never lets you forget that these creatures didn't crawl out of like, you know, ancient caves or come from another planet. No, that they're they're practically stamped with made in the USA. Well, the net sequence to me works amazing because Gordon Douglas directed it almost like it was a war film instead of a monster movie. Because you got soldiers advancing cautiously through tunnels, while you know you got flamethrowers illuminating the darkness, and then ants are emerging out of shadows of this horrible combination of like intelligence and almost like instinct that makes them feel like I think less like animals and more like an enemy military. And honestly, giant ants organized enough to establish underground colonies and defend queens are significantly way more terrifying than most giant monster movies because ants already function like a civilization before you make them radioactive. So the military eventually destroys the nest using flamethrowers, you know, machine guns, and pretty much just enough firepower to convince the desert that it has personally offended the United States government. But the Medfords realize something much worse has happened. Two queen ants have escaped. Which means somewhere out there, giant radioactive ant queens are potentially building new colonies. And now suddenly every day is getting dramatically worse again. And I gotta say, one of the smartest decisions the movie makes is shifting from, you know, the isolated desert horror and then moving into urban paranoia. Because once the queens disappear, the film stops feeling less like, you know, a contained creature feature and starts feeling more like the beginning of an infestation story. And let's face it, the possibility of giant ants spreading into populated areas, that's uh that's a nightmare. Like, that is the worst possible result. Because one monster can be killed, but an entire colony? That's something else. Well, eventually evidence leads authorities to Los Angeles. Because it's either Los Angeles or New York, always in these movies. And the ants have established a nest deep inside the city's storm drain system. And honestly, there's something deeply unsettling about realizing that, you know, giant or radioactive insects have apparently decided municipal infrastructure makes excellent real estate. Try to not think about it. The storm drain climax is probably the strongest section of like the entire movie, because it transforms Los Angeles into a subterranean war zone. Again, you got soldiers armed with flamethrowers moving through tunnels while the ants attack from the darkness, and the movie suddenly starts feeling weirdly modern because, you know, underneath all the 50s science fiction imagery, there's a very real fear of unseen threats living underneath civilization itself. And then we get the finale, which becomes especially tense when Sergeant Peterson sacrifices himself to save two trapped children during the final confrontation with the Queen. And the scene works because the movie has spent so much time treating Peterson like a genuinely decent guy, you know, and just instead of just disposable monster fodder. So when The Last Queen finally dies beneath the stream of fire and gunfire, you know, the city survives, the infestations stop, and we find that civilization has narrowly avoided becoming an all-you-can-eat buffet for radioactive insects. So the film was directed by Gordon Douglas and was released by Warner Brothers in 1954 during the absolute height of the atomic monster boom. But what I think separates this film from a lot of the other imitators was its scale and absolute seriousness. Because you see, Warner Brothers treated this movie like a major production instead of just a you know disposable B-movie filler. And that investment to me shows in everything from the cinematography to the creature feature to even the military sequences. And then, dude, the cast. Like this cast was stacked. You got James Whitmore, who is bringing like genuine like warmth and exhaustion to Sgt. Peterson. You got James Arnes, who appears, well, only briefly, as FBI agent Robert Graham, before later becoming television's gunsmoke legend, Marshall Dillon. And then you got Edmund Gwen's giving, you know, Dr. Medford a serious sense of intelligence and authority that, I mean, let's be honest, it helps ground a very ridiculous premise. You know, giant ants, nuclear testing. It's all silly. It just it is, but it's still well done. And I think with the actor's choice, it had to be done because the movie desperately needed actors capable of, you know, delivering lines about, again, giant radioactive ants, and they had to do it with like total and complete sincerity. And I have to say, they understood the assignment. Now, there's also this fascinating production detail connected to the film, because Warner Brothers originally planned to shoot portions of them in 3D and color. Mw well, you know, before budget concerns forced the studio to scale the production back to, you know, standard black and white photography. I don't know. I've I've seen this movie a few times, like three or four times at least. And I've tried to imagine it in color and even in 3D, and with given what we do have, like the finished result, I kind of feel that the limitations maybe helped the movie enormously. You know, because I feel like the black and white cinematography actually gives everything like a harsher, almost documentary feel. You know, that makes the ants seem actually believable. Because again, already said a few times, but like, it's a silly premise, but it's handled so seriously and delivered so just professionally, you almost forget how silly it is halfway through the film. And then, oh man, let's talk about this film's influence on science fiction, because it cannot be overstated either. Them essentially established the template for the giant insect movie and heavily influenced later films, I would say ranging from the beginning of the end all the way to aliens. And aliens is one of my favorite movies, so just stick with me for a second. Just just hold on, allow me to explain. I feel that you can see the DNA from them in these later stories, again, like aliens, because let's let's look at it. You have hive-minded creatures, you have military containment operation, and you got ordinary people slowly realizing the world underneath them has become hostile. I'm just saying, the DNA is there. And dude, them? It still works today. And I think it's because they understand that fear works best when it starts quiet. Because the film starts with, you know, first a dead police officer, then a terrified child, and then we get these strange sounds out in the desert. And people slowly starting to realize that something impossible has already happened, meanwhile the rest of the world just keeps on going about its business completely unaware. Like, the desert stretches endlessly beneath the sun, the highway still cut through the sand, city's still home of life, but underneath all of it, something radioactive has started breeding. And the movie never lets you forget it. Alright, folks, well, until next time, keep your flamethrowers nearby, keep your eyes on the desert horizon, and if somebody in a 1950s science fiction movie tells you the ants seem unusually large this year, maybe start packing your bags. Good night. And roll credits.