Ants In My Pants

On Saturdays, as a kid, I used to go with my Mum and Dad to visit my grandma Daisy. The afternoon and early evening would normally involve eating Banana sandwiches and watching the Wrestling on ITV (Big Daddy Splash yeah!) and then maybe Doctor Who, followed by a movie on BBC1.

I remember many of the great films that were shown: The Satan Bug, Fantastic Voyage, Jason and the Argonauts, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Day of The Triffids, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Journey To The Center Of The Earth, The Incredible Shrinking Man and Colossus - The Forbin Project amongst them. Some like The Colossus Of New York and Donovan's Brain scared the hell out of me! Others had ants in; I was amazed by the marching army ants in Charlton Heston's Naked Jungle and freaked out by the giant ants in THEM!

I recently watched THEM! (1954) again. It had probably been 20 years or so since I had last seen it. It still gets to me; Atomic testing producing giant ants, the creepiness of the desert, the eerie score, the shocked little girl who is so scared she shrieks 'Them!, Them!', the U.S. Army fighting mandibled monsters! OK so the ant effects look a little tame these days but as a young kid watching it on my Gran's TV I was stunned.

What if there really were ants the size of a Ford Explorer or Venessa Feltz? Ants are always dashing about lifting grains of sand and tiny pebbles - just think how strong and fast they would be if they were 15ft tall! Note to Mr Spielberg... Please forget Indy IV and remake THEM! And then a Dinosaurs vs Giant Ants sequel! How cool would that be?

'When Man entered the atomic age he opened a door to a new world. What we eventually find in that new world nobody can predict'

Michael C. LaBarbera has written an informative paper on The Biology of B-Movie Monsters. God save the Human race.