Hooptober 9.0 | 10/34 | Insect-Centered 1/2 | Decades 4/8 | 1950s
A police spotter plane flies over the New Mexico desert. They spot a kid walking the desert, catatonic, her baby doll’s head bashed in. The police take her to a nearby trailer, hoping to find helpful information.
The trailer is in shambles — walls torn asunder, blood-stained clothes, and sugar cubes.
Police find prints, but they are unidentifiable. The wind carries a high-pitched sound that causes the girl to become alert. No one notices as the wind dies and she reverts.
Someone (or something) has vandalized Gramps Johnson’s general store as well. Gramps’s shotgun lay on the floor, nearly torn in half. They find the cash register is full of cash, and a barrel of sugar is overturned.
They find Gramps, his body, lying dead and pulverized in the storeroom basement. A later autopsy shows that, besides a brutal beating, his body also contained “enough formic acid… to kill 20 men.”
The winds pick up, and a sandstorm overtakes the store. Gunshots — the sound of stridulation — the wind overtakes Officer Ed Blackburn’s screams.
Lots of evidence. Loads of clues. But nothing adds up.
The police share evidence with the FBI and the Department of Environmental Resources, and they send out an expert myrmecologist. The scientist, Dr. Harold Medford, claims to recognize the prints. Before he can tell the others his theory, the proof crests over the hills behind them — a giant radioactive ant.
I love the combining of the detective story with the sci-fi direction. The collecting of clues makes the journey up to the reveal thrilling. We know where the movie is going — we’ve seen the poster. Watching them try to figure it out is a pleasure — a rare achievement in the genre (at least compared to all the MST3K episodes I’ve watched).
The giant ants look great! The initial shot of it coming over the ridge made my eyes widen. While their movement is a little fake, their design is spot-on. They watch footage of different ant species to educate themselves on the issue, and the giant ants look remarkably similar. The poster uses cat eyes to make them look more menacing.
Thematically, the events of the movie suggest some apocalyptic connotations. The giant beasts of the earth will overtake humans, signifying the biblical Armageddon.
The movie loses me a bit in the third act as it takes the Kaiju approach of the military intervening in the situation. Seeing the ants in the city makes up for it.
Stray Thoughts
- I know this inspired “Those!” from Fallout 3. The mission shares several similarities with the movie, including the antennae being a weakness.
- You can also see the influence of this movie on Alien. For instance, when they encounter the empty eggs in the nest. Or how they use flamethrowers.
- The sound design is superb! They combine tree frogs and bird sounds for the stridulation to great success.
- This has one of the earliest uses of the Wilhelm scream! It was only three years old then so they piled it into the movie.
- I am morbidly curious about Michael Giacchino’s upcoming remake of this movie.