You Might Tut And Shake Your Head
"Conrad's been at the cooking sherry again, he's either mis-spelt 'Giant' or omitted the ending from 'Gigantic'," you'd sadly opine.
Not so! I came up with the intro to this Intro whilst walking Edna, part of my traditional Thinking Time, as I was attempting to construe a way to begin. Art!
The biggest transport aircraft of the Second Unpleasantness, truly a monster in the skies NOT FORESHADOWING MUCH THERE if you will.
You may have guessed that 'Gigant' is in fact the Teuton for 'Giant' and what this Intro will tackle is - Art!
 |
| Less Gigant than Big Ant |
Your Humble Scribe came across a Youtube channel called 'Just Iconic Rewinds', which promised '16 Weird Facts Of The Film That Changed Monster Movies Forever', and that's their grammar, not mine. Released in April 1954.
'12: Poster Lies' is exemplified above: the giant ants have eyes more akin to a cat than an ant, and don't resemble those of the ants in the film at all.
ANYWAY that's getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to 1).
1: The Ants Take Their Sweet Time. In appearing, that is. It's not until about 30 minutes into the film that a giant ant shows up in front of witnesses. Live witnesses, that is. Prior to this you hear their eerie stridulations, there are strange footprints at crime scenes and various buildings are partly demolished. True, you the audience do have to wait - which is how horror films build suspense, rather than having their monster lurch out of the shadows within the first thirty seconds.
2: In 3D And Colour? Alas no. Partly because the expensive 3D camera broke down, and the colour tests looked disappointing - although since studio head Jack Warner disliked the film intensely, this may have been due to budget cutbacks as much as anything else. Art!
Shooting in monochrome in the Mojave desert emphasises the eeriness of the location, with it's strange cacti and the ever-present windblown sand.
3: A Red And Blue Warning. The sole holdover of the colour version is in the title, which comes screaming out at the viewer in red and blue. Art!
Maybe in South Canada: the version Conrad remembers from a television broadcast in the Seventies used only white font.
4) Real Weapons, Real Veterans. You'll understand if you've seen the raid on the desert nest and the final battle in the sewers, with plentiful use of flamethrowers. Real flamethrowers firing real napalm. Art!
These weren't actors, they were real flamethrower operators from the Pacific theatre of war, who knew how these things worked, because with this amount of cast and crew, you cannot afford to make a mistake with them. Because they are EXTREMELY DOG BUNS DANGEROUS! Art!
5: Behind The Bug Eyes. There were various scale puppets built, 2 of which were full size, and the claim is that one weighed 12 tons, which seems to be pushing it unless it was made out of cast iron. Conrad did a bit of digging and found a few relevant film stills. Art!
 |
| It's behind you! |
We are told that it took a small army of technicians to make the ants move realistically, making the legs, mandibles, antennae and head all move independently. If so, a long search on teh Interwebz didn't reveal anything more visible than picture 4 above.
6: Nature's Voice Of Terror. As mentioned above, the ant's 'stridulations' before they appear set the scene audibly for something very, very wrong with the world. If you hear stridulations, a giant ant is nearby. The sounds were a combination of tree frogs, bearded warblers and red-bellied woodpeckers. 16WFOTFTCMMF alleges that these sounds were used in other films, yet neglects to inform which, and Your Humble Scribe hasn't found any evidence of same.
7: Hollywood Royalty In The Desert. The cast. Not remotely weird.
8: John Wayne's Big Recommendation: The Duke saw this film and loved it, enough that he put in a good word for James Arness in the starring role in 'Gunsmoke'. I wouldn't call that 'weird' but it does mark a quantum difference from his role as The Monster in 'The Thing From Another World'. Art!
 |
| Don't shake it's hand |
9: Filming In A Furnace. The film begins in New Mexico, but used the Mojave desert of California as a stand in. Temperatures regularly hit as high as 43ºC, which was seven shades of awful for the cast members wearing heavy woolen clothing.
10: Atomic Age Warning. Rather sensible and not at all weird in Conrad's opinion. Art!
 |
| Castle Bravo, South Canadian 15 megaton test of March 1954 |
11: Hidden Mistakes. The vlog alleges that the original theatrical release featured shots that revealed the inner workings of the giant ants. These have been edited out in subsequent VHS and DVD releases. This may be an urban legend as Conrad couldn't find any evidence on teh interwebz of this ever happening. File under 'Maybe'.
12: The Ending That Never Was. Originally the script called for the climactic battle to be fought in the New York sewers, which was nixed when it became obvious how expensive this would be, as the production was being filmed in California. Next came the finale in an amusement park, once again nixed thanks to costs - Jack Warner no doubt keeping a protective eye on his dollars. Thus we got the much cheaper option of the Los Angeles storm sewers, which nevertheless exploits all the claustrophobia of what turns out to be an underground ant farm. Art!
 |
| Be thankful you can't smell it |
14: Studio Doubts, Big Payoff. Warner Bros Studios, following in the opinion of Jack, didn't expect much from 'Them!' and we've already seen the budget being cut and scripts being re-written to accommodate this imperative. Despite this it made back $2.2million, in 1954 dollars no less, which was seen as a huge box-office success.
What was the actual budget? Ah, thereby hangs a tale. Conrad has been unable to find out any specifics, only that it was a 'modest budget' for the time, by which I would guesstimate about $500,000? Because that much would make the $2.2 million look like a very good return on investment. Don't forget, they saved money by location shooting in California in both desert and city centre, and by keeping it monochrome.
15: Oscar Snub. Nominated for 'Best Special Effects', lost out to '20,000 Leagues Under The Sea', which is a film with much higher production values and a much higher budget. O well. Art!
16: Pop Culture Legacy. There is no question that 'Them!' was the progenitor of all the 'Big Bug' films of the Fifties and Sixties, such as 'Tarantula', 'The Black Scorpion' and 'The Deadly Mantis' yet it remains head and shoulders above all that came after. There is a side-quest in a little-known computering game called 'All Out' called 'Those!' where the opponents are - you may be ahead of me here - giant mutant ants. Art!
There will be those who scoff at the film and insist that ants simply cannot grow to the size of a pickup truck. Hmmm challenge accepted!
You see, Conrad did a bit of number-crunching. The first nuclear weapons tests at Trinity were in 1944, so there have been 10 years for the ants to mutate to their film size. Normal ants produce one generation per year, but we are instead going to allow our Giganticants to develop generations in a Fibonacci sequence, where the previous number is added to the current, that sum then being added to the next number and so on. This gives a sequence of increasing generations over time of: 1;2;3;5;8;13;21;34;55;89 or 231 generations in total to mutate in. Art!
The average size of an ant is 0.2". If we postulate that over each year it's size increases by x2.1, then eventually over time their size evolves thus (in inches): 0.2;0.42;0.882;1.85;3.88;8.9;17;36;75;158.
Of course, I might be overthinking this -
Ooops. There I go, making the whole Intro the whole of today's evening blog. O well, it keeps me out of mischeif.
No comments:
Post a Comment