Them!

Them! (1954)

4 factual errors - chronological order

(2 votes)

Factual error: The crew gasses out the ant hill by dropping chemical grenades into the hole. But there are two reality mistakes about the grenades: 1) chemical grenades do not explode; they spray their contents into the area; and 2) considering the size of the ants, the size of their nest must be gigantic, and therefore, it would take more than a hundred grenades to flood it completely with cyanide gas.

Factual error: Grandpa Johnson's .30-30 Winchester rifle was apparently bent by the giant ants during their attack on his store. But as we can see later, the ants' mandibles are too thin and too curved to provide enough gripping and leverage area for bending a metal rifle barrel that severely.

Daniel4646

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Impossible. When Ben Peterson is killed near the film's end, you can see that the ant's mandibles leave too much space even as they clamp shut. And their slender form is made for grabbing bites, not sturdy enough for crushing jobs.

That's just what I was talking about, if not quite correctly worded.

Daniel4646

Factual error: In order to keep the giant ants inside the New Mexico nest, the protagonists bombard the entrance hole with phosphorus shells. Phosphorus burns at an average temperature of 5,000° Farenheit. At this temperature, the heat from the shells should have fused the sand around the entrance hole to glass (the threshold for this process is about 4,200° Farenheit), yet the sand remains unchanged.

Daniel4646

Factual error: When they put the pin on the map of Texas to mark the city of Brownsville, they are hundreds of miles off in West Texas near the city of Alpine. Happens around the time the patient who crashed the plane is interviewed in the hospital in Brownsville.

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Trivia: When Ben Peterson is killed by a giant ant, he emits a high-pitched, half-choked death scream. This scream has been used in many other movies ever since: in Small Soldiers (when Brick Bazooka loses his legs); in Star Wars - A New Hope, when Luke shoots a stormtrooper in the shaft-swinging scene; in Lord Of The Rings - The Two Towers, when an Elf warrior is thrown off the Helm's Deep wall; and in Lord Of The Rings - Return of The King, when a Gondor soldier fleeing from Osgilliath is snatched up and dumped by a Nazgul steed. I guess that makes it the most used death scream in movie history.

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Question: Did anyone notice, or can explain how both James Whitmore, a state trooper, and James Arness, an FBI agent suddenly become outfitted in Army or National Guard uniforms, fully qualified to fire bazookas, etc and more or less in charge when the action moves to the pursuit in the LA sewer? seems like there would have been jurisdictional issues there (at least for James Whitmore).

Answer: Like the General said, the less people that know about the ants the better. They were a special task force assigned with the equipment and deputized to use any and all measures to stop the ants. Since the movies was set in the 1950's, James Arness and James Whitmores were most likely veterans of WW II and Korea.

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