For It Is Man's Number: james whitmore

Showing posts with label james whitmore. Show all posts

Friday, 17 October 2025

Them! (1954)

Anyone who has watched more than one episode of Archer, the very funny animated show about a dysfunctional, and often drunk, secret agent, should be all too aware of what you can do to get ants. Sugar spillages, sweet treats left around, just wandering around making funny noises while waggling discarded car radio aerials from your head, all of these things can attract ants. It wasn't just Archer that told us about this though. Back in 1954 we had Them! to thank for alerting us to the ant menace. These weren't any normal ants either. They were gi-ants.

While the cast here includes James Whitmore as a Sergeant, Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon as two scientists who are also father and daughter, and James Arness, the real reason for watching Them! is the giant ants, which are actually shown onscreen earlier than I thought they would be. The film is presented as a mystery for a number of the early scenes, but all of the clues are there to point towards the kind of creatures shown on the movie poster. What begins in the desert landscape of New Mexico will end in the very different terrain of L. A. in a film that holds up as a classic of the "oversized beastie" sub-genre.

Based on a story by George Worthing Yates, adapted and worked into screenplay form by Russell S. Hughes and Ted Sherdeman, Them! benefits from great pacing, more ambition than many of these films would have in subsequent years, and moments of mayhem that, despite being dated, still hold some power when watched today. Director Gordon Douglas does well with material that could have easily been mishandled, keeping things nicely balanced between the mystery, thrills, and the exposition. There's an energy and momentum to the whole thing, and it's somehow also light enough without injecting any forced and eye-rolling humour into any of the main sequences.

Considering how long I waited to finally get around to this, even after finding out about some of the main plot beats and the excitement of the third act, I was expecting to come away from this slightly underwhelmed. That wasn't the case though. This remains very deserving of a special place in the hearts of film fans, and those who love it will struggle to find anything coming close to it. You can get a fantastic film full of normal-sized ants with Phase IV, but your decent overgrown ant movie choices really boil down to just Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and Empire Of The Ants . . . none of the other attempts to wander through this territory have worked for me.

Everyone who is into their monster movies has already seen this by now. I am surely the last. But if you're a newcomer to creature features, or if you've just delayed this for as long as I did, then I highly recommend it. From the concept to the finalised special effects, from the sound design to the spectacle, it's just an absolute winner from start to finish. Get this cast and crew in place . . . and THAT'S how you get ants.

8/10

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Thursday, 16 November 2023

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Although it can be daunting to have an ever-growing “to watch” list, with every main movie title reminding me of at least three or four other movies I have still to get around to, I love any time when the film conversation flows around certain genres or topics in a way that leads to me being encouraged to check out something considered a classic by many. And that is how I came to belatedly watching The Asphalt Jungle recently.

It’s a simple tale. A group of people are put together to commit a robbery, but the job is endangered by the potential for misfortune and treachery. People start to suffer, but the moral core of the film means that viewers will be expecting a downbeat finale from the very opening scenes.

Based on a novel by W. R. Burnett, this is a screenplay co-written by Ben Maddow and director John Huston that nicely blends the prep and execution of the crime with moments showing us some more background of some of the key players. Huston keeps things paced perfectly, and benefits from an excellent cast.

Sterling Hayden is the nominal lead, Dix Handley, and he tries hard to keep a cool head, even as others start to panic. Sam Jaffe is the man with the expertise required to pull off the robbery, allowing himself to trust in the men who make up the brawn surrounding his brain. James Whitmore and Anthony Caruso play Gus and Ciavelli, respectively, the other two men making up the core team. Everyone does good work, but Hayden and Jaffe stand out, helped by the fact that we get to spend a bit more time with their characters. There’s also a great selection of supporting players, allowing us to enjoy great performances from Louis Calhern and Jean Hagen, the former as slippery and untrustworthy as the latter is sweet and dependable. I could reel off many other names, each deserving a mention for their part in making this a consistently gripping tale, but you should just see them all for yourself. Oh, and Marilyn Monroe shines in one main scene (the merest hint of what was to come with her star ascending).

It goes without saying that Huston is a great director for this material, and those familiar with any of his films will know what to expect here. The Asphalt Jungle shows a number of people who end up stuck between a rock and a hard place, some holding on to their own moral code while others are willing to make bigger sacrifices if it gets them an escape route, and it may well have you rooting for one or two people that you wouldn’t normally root for.

A classic, but most people know that already.

9/10

Tuesday, 1 August 2023

The Relic (1997)

One of those films I tend to revisit every ten years or so, mainly because my memory of it is slightly better than the reality, The Relic is a creature feature that is as enjoyable as it is silly. It’s a mess, both visually and in terms of the stupid plotting, but it’s an enjoyable mess.

Set in the Field Museum Of Natural History, in Chicago, this is your standard template. People start dying, police investigate the deaths, evidence eventually leads to some creature being to blame, the finale relies on a plucky cop and plucky scientist saving the day. Oh, but some VIPs need the museum to stay “safe” and usable for a bit charity gala do that is set to go ahead - giving the film an obvious “the beaches are open” riff - and there is a bit more work to be done before the scientist figures out EXACTLY what the creature is before it can be destroyed.

Based on a popular novel, co-written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (sadly, no, I haven’t read it), The Relic may suffer from a number of failings, but a dearth of writers isn’t one of them. Four other people worked to adapt the source material into a screenplay, which is pretty astonishing when you think of how laughable and formulaic it is in places. I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone, but there are one or two “revelations” that prove to be completely unsurprising, and the ultimate solution to the big beastie problem is something that would have worked on almost every other creature on the planet.

Director Peter Hyams doesn’t distract from the simple pleasures of the main story structure, although the scene in which a SWAT team tries to enter the building remains a glorious highlight, but he is slightly hampered by the fact that he has to blend practical effects and mid-‘90s CGI. Everything holds up a bit better than expected, but that’s down to the low lighting levels used in many scenes and plenty of canny editing keeping things only partially-seen until the outrageous third act.

Stuck in the midst of the madness are Penelope Ann Miller (plucky scientist) and Tom Sizemore (plucky cop), who both try their best with the cheesy dialogue. Sizemore fares a bit better, his natural air of pessimism and slight grumpiness offset by the determination and strength of his character (helped by a fun little conversational thread about him losing custody of his dog in divorce proceedings). Miller gets more exposition, and she is easy to root for when she is uncomfortably backed into a dangerous space as “the relic” looks set to defeat everyone around it. Linda Hunt and James Whitmore are enjoyable in supporting roles, as are one or two others, but things would have been helped enormously if we had been given a much larger ensemble cast of great character actors to watch being placed in peril.

If you remember enjoying The Relic many years ago then you will still enjoy The Relic now. Unlike the mutation at the heart of it, it is pleasingly constant and unevolved. Neither the best film of this kind, nor the worst, it’s still a great choice for whenever you are having a lazy evening in and after some undemanding entertainment. The 110-minute runtime goes by quickly enough, the setting is used well, the John Debney score is another plus point, and it’s just a shame that Hyams and co. didn’t decide to throw some more blood and guts around.

6/10