Them!

Them! is a 1954 American science fiction horror film about a nest of oversized ants that appears in the desert of the American Southwest after nuclear testing. A series of violent deaths in New Mexico draws a state police sergeant and an FBI agent into an investigation marked by shattered walls, unusual tracks and strange sounds. Their inquiry leads them to a father-and-daughter team of entomologists, who identify the killers as mutated insects. The threat grows as the ants spread beyond the desert, and the scientists join the police, the FBI and eventually the US Army in an attempt to destroy the colony before it can reach the rest of the continent.

The film was directed by Gordon Douglas, the fourth of the sixteen films he directed in chronological order, following Only the Valiant (1951) and preceding Sincerely Yours (1955). Ted Sherdeman wrote the screenplay, and David Weisbart produced. James Whitmore plays Sergeant Ben Peterson, James Arness is FBI Agent Robert Graham, and Joan Weldon and Edmund Gwenn appear as Dr. Pat Medford and Dr. Harold Medford. Onslow Stevens and Sean McClory round out the principal cast of twenty-four credited performers.

Them! runs 94 minutes and was released on June 16, 1954. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 out of 10 from around 27,000 votes, while on TMDB its rating is 6.8 out of 10 from roughly 487 votes. A film critics' rating of 7.8 out of 10 from 58 reviews places it above both audience scores. It was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures.