They must be destroyed before they can devastate the whole country. Our heroes go investigate the remains of the colony only to find that two queens hatched and escaped. The US army deploys cyanide bombs to destroy it. In the first act, the ants’ nest is located not far from where we learn atomic bombs had been tested. In this film irradiated giant ants rampage through New Mexico. 1954’s Them! saw that threat brought to the big screen. In this age of nuclear energy and atomic bombs, people wondered and worried what other effects radiation might have on the world around us. On November 1st, 1952 the US detonated the world’s first hydrogen bomb, which proved to be powerful enough to level an island. In response to the Soviet atomic test, President Harry Truman ordered the US military to develop the hydrogen bomb, which was theoretically hundreds of times more powerful than the nukes used during World War 2. The American people learned of the test in September of that year, cementing the fear nuclear war could be right around the corner. On August 29th 1949, the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb. The overall theme of the movie, of one side having a technological advantage over the other, was already a palpable fear. It’s revealed the craft was invented by an American scientist, but that his assistant, a communist sympathizer, is trying to sell it to the Soviets. In The Flying Saucer, American intelligence learns Soviet agents are searching for (appropriately enough) a flying saucer (a term coined in 1947) in the remote areas of the Alaskan territory. It’s no wonder one of the first science fiction movies to deal with this fear, commonly referred to as “The Red Scare” at this time, was released in 1950. McCarthyism and Hollywood Blacklists were well in effect since 1947. What might be less obvious is how these films drew directly on the fear of communism and nuclear war that featured prominently in the era.īefore 1950, the fear of communism and the Soviet Union were a large part of American culture. When you think of movies in the 1950s, it would be impossible to ignore the slew of science fiction films of the era everything from space invaders to giant, terrorizing insects, to horribly mutated animals. The following is a guest post from Aaron Waagen.
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