THEM 1954

Director... Gordon Douglas

Starring... Edmund Gwenn, James Whitmore, Jame Arness, Joan Weldon, Onslow Stevens

In the desert near Almagordo, New Mexico, a police patrol picks up a little girl (Sandy Descher) that appears to be in deep shock... A police plane informs the officers that there is a car and trailer further up the road... Upon inspecting the trailer they discover it has been demolished and nobody is to be found anywhere, although there are bloodstains... They continue on up the road and find the General Store has been demolished in a similar fashion... After looking around a bit they find the owner's mangled body and a strange animal track which is later cast in plaster and sent to the FBI Labs... One officer remains behind while the other, Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) heads back to town... This is a big mistake since we never see the one that remained again, at least not in one piece...

Later they find that the trailer and car belong to an FBI agent and the little girl is his daughter... Soon Robert Graham (James Arness) an FBI agent appears on the scene... Then two entomologists (Bug Doctors) from the Department of Agriculture show up... Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn) and Dr. Pat Medford (Joan Weldon), an elderly father and beautiful daughter team who call each other Doctor, head out to the desert... Pat, in tight skirt and high heels of course, encounters a giant ant and stumbles as she tries to escape... The ant is killed by gunfire from Ben and Robert...

The quartet then heads off to the hospital to see the little girl who is still in shock... Dr. Harold lets the girl sniff some formic acid which immediately brings her around and she starts screaming ''THEM, THEM, THEM''... The Doctors then explain that ants sting and inject formic acid into the victim...

Now they seek out the ant nest and kill them all off with cyanide gas... After checking out the interior of the nest they discover to their horror that two egg laying queens have hatched and flown away... One turns up on a ship at sea and kills the crew, but the U S Navy sinks the ship, thus eliminating that threat... The other one is tracked to the sewers of Los Angles...

The Army is called in and the action begins... They want to quickly destroy the ants but it is feared that two missing kids are in the sewers... Ben finds the kids but gets killed by an ant while saving them... The entire nest is then destroyed by flamethrowers and happily no new queens have escaped... Or have they?