Who wrote this stuff?

Ah, old movies. Specifically, old science fiction movies. A good one has a few basic plot elements:

1. A brilliant but socially inept scientist who uses terms like "neutralization of mass." He should have glasses made from the glass bottoms of Coke bottles still available in the fifties.

2. A horrible monster. Giant insects are always a favorite, provided they don't break the movie's budget ($120, excluding the cigarettes everyone smoked back then). Carnivorous plants are better because you can get away with stop-motion animation. "Alright, Phil, now move the ivy a little further over the model of San Francisco." Alien robots are best because you can make 'em out of old milk cartons and talk about horrible alien weapons like the xenon-helium electron baryon ray pulse heat wave gun. It should look like the offspring of a stand mixer with an attitude problem and a .50 sniper rifle. It's waves/pulses/beams should be manually drawn on the film by a four-year-old.

3. Deep, thought provoking dialogue. "Oh no, I think it's going to eat the world." "If it reaches Los Angeles it will eat Los Angeles." "Millions are fleeing the doomed city/country/planet." "Gee, we really were thick, doing all those nuclear tests."

4. Special effects. Smoke is always useful, as are scale models. Just remember that a burning wad of newspaper does not look like a flaming planet. Also, stuff looks larger when slow motion is used. Rabbits scurrying through a model of a city can be turned into ponderous, thundering bringers of doom just by playing the footage at 1/4 speed. Oh, wait. Someone already tried that...maybe if they'd played "Eye of the Tiger."

5. Someone who looks kinda like Marilyn Monroe. She should end up with:

6. The hero. The hero is, ideally, six foot one, has dark brown hair (insofar as you can tell in black and white), and carries a lot of guns that don't work against the insects/plants/alien robots/giant rabbits until the scientist bails him out. I never got why the hero (instead of the scientist) ends up with the girl. Maybe the nerd in me is just jealous. Then again, I never really liked Marilyn Monroe.

So, let's break down an old sci-fi classic: Them. Them is a movie about ants that, due to nuclear testing, grow to abnormal size (think Rosie O'Donnell only with more human kindness) and proceed to kill and eat everything they encounter.

The movie opens with a little girl being found in a catatonic state in the desert. An eerie, howling wail is present in the background, indicating the Cubs have lost again. She is picked up by some kindly people in a car or plane or something (it's been ten years since I've seen this, okay?) and brought into town. Everyone wonders what happened to the people she must have been with, but all she ever does is flip out and start yelling about "them." This is where the movie gets its title. Clever, eh? I didn't think so either and I was eight. Cigarettes are bad for you in so many ways...

Anyway, a bunch of people on the outside of town are found dead looking like they've been attacked by giant insects. The townspeople are unable to figure this out even thought he ants left a business card on every table and a few Polaroids of themselves eating the deceased's belongings and legs.

Eventually, THE SCIENTIST is brought in, aided by THE HERO and escorted by his long-suffering daughter THE MARILYN. They find an ant and THE HERO blows it away with sustained fire from a Thompson that is apparently modified to accept five-hundred round magazines. His aim is terrible, but the sheer volume of fire was evidently sufficient. He then stares at this eight-foot long ant and asks what it is, confirming that listening to sustained gunfire without ear protection can also damage one's brain. THE SCIENTIST explains that it is a giant ant, earning him admiring glances from the townsfolk, who by now have figured out how to understand normal speech.

By the end of the movie, the ants migrate to a major city and are mowed down by machine gun fire. Life goes on, but the movie has proved its point: nuclear testing results in giant bugs and you have better odds of winning the girl if your brain is smaller the .45 rounds you lug everywhere.

Ah, old movies. At least they aren't new movies. But that, I'm afraid, is another post.