Them! (1954)
Although the realities of the nuclear age where far from pleasant, for Hollywood it was a source of box office gold. Never mind radiation poisoning, cancer and birth defects; the atomic age was good for business. It meant super powers, mutations and giant big monsters. Such terrors offered a clumsy metaphor for the dangers of atomic energy and a source of terror, thrills and drama on the big screen. Them! was one of the first movies in this idiom and became a blueprint for the genre that followed in its wake. Featuring a colony of out sized ants, that initially terrorise New Mexico but eventually migrate to Los Angeles, Them! leaves a trail of destruction and dead B actors in its wake.
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