This film had a common theme for 50's sci-fi - that of man playing around with atomic power causing extreme adverse impacts on the global environment. Here James Arness plays an FBI agent and Edmund Gwenn is a Ph.D. from the Department of Agriculture, both of whom are sent out to help solve the cases of a group of small town New Mexico murders and disappearances that don't make sense to local law enforcement. This film is overtly judgmental of man's recklessness with nuclear technology and discusses the possibility that there is more to the after effect of the atomic testing that went on there in 1945 than just the immediate destruction of the blast. In this case, mutations in the form of giant ants are linked to those first atomic experiments.
Although the public probably wasn't afraid of actual giant insects in the 1950's, as a result of the cold war and nuclear technology, the atomic age certainly made the stars of past horror films - vampires and werewolves - look tame in comparison by opening up a whole new horizon of horrific possibilities. Highly recommended.
Although the public probably wasn't afraid of actual giant insects in the 1950's, as a result of the cold war and nuclear technology, the atomic age certainly made the stars of past horror films - vampires and werewolves - look tame in comparison by opening up a whole new horizon of horrific possibilities. Highly recommended.