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Them! 1954 Directed by Gordon Douglas

Starting out as a child actor, Gordon Douglas was eventually hired by Hal Roach as a gag writer. His first directorial assignments were for Roach's "Our Gang" series. Graduating to features, Douglas stayed with comedies, directing Oliver Hardy in Zenobia (1939) and both Hardy and Stan Laurel in Saps at Sea (1940).

Douglas left Roach for RKO, for which he directed about a dozen films from 1942 to 1947, mostly routine programmers. He then went to Columbia for several years, but in 1950 he headed over to Warner Brothers, where he would stay for the next 15 years and where he would find his greatest successes.

His westerns and crime dramas for Warners met with critical and financial success, and it was during this period that he made what is considered one of the classic sci-fi films of the era: Them! (1954).

Although he had his share of clunkers, and has at times expressed dissatisfaction with his career (he once said, "Don't try to watch all the films I've directed; it would turn you off movies forever"), he was responsible for some of the more enjoyable films of the 1950s and 1960s.

One of his most successful films was also one of Frank Sinatra's best - The Detective (1968), a tough, gritty and controversial (for the time) crime drama about a homicide cop who gets involved in a murder case involving wealthy and powerful homosexual men.

Peterson returns with a machinge gun and opens up.

Peterson continues the rain of bullets. The creatures lets out an agonizing squeal and finally falls dead.

PETERSON: What is it?

H. MEDFORD: Species appears to be Camponotus, one of the family of Formicidae, an ant.

GRAHAM: An ant? I don't believe it. It's not possible.

PETERSON: And this is what got Ed Blackburn, Gramps Johnson, and the rest?

H. MEDFORD: Yes, a fantastic mutation. Probably caused by lingering radiation from the first atomic bomb. Notice it's order?

PETERSON: Yea, Formic acid?

GRAHAM: Well then that's why the little girl reacted so violently.

PETERSON: The coroner's report said that Gramps was filled with the stuff.

H. MEDFORD: See that. That's the stinger. Ants use their mandibles to rend, tear and hold their victims, but they kill with that by injecting Formic acid. Mr. Johnson was stung to death. There's no time to lose, we must find the colony, the nest.

PETERSON: You mean there's more of them?

P. MEDFORD: This was probably just a scout, foraging for food. You heard the sound, communicating with others in the colony.

GRAHAM: Communicate? You mean these thing send messages?

H. MEDFORD: Of course, all insects have means of communication with their own kind.

Once again they hear the high pitch oscillating sound, they look out into the dust filled desert.

H. MEDFORD: We may be witnesses to a biblical prophecy come true. And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation. And the beasts shall reign over the Earth.