Is this movie good?
I saw an ad for it on the special features of "The Valley Of Gwangi" and it looked alright. Do you guys recommend it?
"New York City is like a big ship..... and all the water is on fire." - Tom Waits
My better half and I like it. We'd both watched it several times before we ever met. Now that we have our own copy we still watch it every few months.
Okay: the basic idea is ridiculous. Atomic testing causing ants to mutate into giants. But (classic) science-fiction always allows one step outside of known science for the sake of the story. (Everything else has to follow logically from that one premise and from known science.) This they did, by the science known in the 1950s.
Okay: the special effects are thoroughly dated as well.
However, the acting is excellent.
• Edmund Gwenn was near the end of a long and distinguished acting career — he passed away about five years after this released. (Best known as Kris Kringle in the original "Miracle on 34th Street".)
• James Whitmore was in the middle of an equally long and distinguished career.
• James Arness was about to be picked for the part of Marshall Matt Dillon in the new TV series "Gunsmoke" — and even bigger things later.
• Fess Parker (the "crazy" pilot from Texas): Walt Disney saw him in this and tabbed him for the title role in his new TV series, "Davey Crockett".
Yes. We like it.
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"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things,"
Of atoms, stars and nebulæ, of entropy and genes.
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