“Them!” @ FLMNH (July 10)

The Florida Museum of Natural History will resume its “Creative B” summer film series, featuring entertaining science fiction films and roundtable discussions by scholars, scientists, and artists.

To celebrate the installation on the Museum lawn of several large cast bronze sculptures of ants by artist Susan P. Cochran, this summer’s series will kick off on July 10, beginning at 7 PM, with Them!, Gordon Douglas’s 1954 film about giant ants attacking Los Angeles. One of the first nuclear monster films – Ishirō Honda’s Gojira (Godzilla) was released the same year – Them! is the first and best of the “giant insect” films of the 1950s. It features a strong American cast (James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, and James Arness), a famously unnerving soundtrack, and then state-of-the-art practical effects. Widely considered one of the best sf films of the era, Them! continues to influence sf film today.

The screening will be preceded and followed by a roundtable discussion featuring:

• Ian Breheny – Museum Operations Specialist at the FLMNH, and co-founder of the film series
• Terry Harpold – Associate Professor of English, Film & Media Studies at UF
• Tim Lawrence – A Jacksonville-based graphic artist and effects designer with a long history of SFX work in television and major motion pictures
• Andrea Lucky – Assistant Scientist, Department of Entomology and Nematology, UF, and founder of “The School of Ants” project, a citizen-scientist driven study of the ants that live in urban areas

Them! is unrated. Some scenes may be too intense for children.

On July 24, also beginning at 7 PM, the series will continue in an sf vein with Don Chaffey’s 1966 dinosaur and cavegirl epic One Million Years B.C., with special effects by Ray Harryhausen and Raquel Welch in the most famous fur-trimmed bikini of motion picture history.

All “Creative B” events are free and open to the public.