Why the 1950s Were Terrified of Giant Bugs

For a brief period in the 1950s, truck-sized ants, massive spiders, and a giant praying mantis tore through towns and military defenses on drive-in screens and downtown theaters across America. This cinematic theme highlighted a fear of a nuclear world, worry about scientific hubris, and even a distaste for household pests.

The giant creature features were not solely insects, but the majority were. Bugs in this context refer to insects and spiders, as well as other invertebrates such as crustaceans and leeches. Arguably, the first in the genre was Mesa of Lost Women in 1952. A “mad scientist,” as reviews of the time called him, used growth hormones to create human-sized spiders as well as women with spider-like abilities.1 A year later, Them! debuted and became the prototypical film for the genre. Nuclear testing in the New Mexico desert released radiation that mutated ants to giant proportions.

 

The film’s dialogue gives us some clues as to why ants were picked as the villains: This monologue by Prof. Harold Gwenn in Them! demonstrates how the film’s creators viewed ants:

As you can see, ants are savage, ruthless, and courageous fighters. This fight [between two ants] lasted 72 hours between those two alone. Ants are the only creatures on Earth other than man…who make war. They campaign. They are chronic aggressors. They make slave laborers of the captives they don’t kill. They have an instinct and a talent for industry, social organization, and savagery which makes man look feeble by contrast.

 

These giant bug films formed a remarkably unified body of work, particularly when compared with other giant-animal films. Among the latter genre, The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster emerged that same year, 1959, and the two were often billed together as a double feature. The rest of the “giant” creature films were deep-sea monsters, aliens, humanoids, or kaiju movies like Godzilla and King Kong.

The big bug films (as well as the smattering of big animal films) embody two trends happening in the 1950s. Anxiety over nuclear war, as well as scientific advancements untethered from human constraints. These films portray scientists as both saviors and cold, government-sponsored mad scientists. Secrecy and lack of morality often color the way the scientists are portrayed.

Military secrecy and fear of radiation are among the cultural ties. CONAD, now the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), is featured in The Deadly Mantis (1957). Radiation from Cape Canaveral is part of the story in Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). The exposition comes at the end of that movie, when Doc Grayson and his daughter, Nan, marvel at the giant leech.

Nan: Where could it have come from?
Doc: I wish I knew. We’ll have to make some tests. Maybe the proximity of Cape Canaveral’s got something to do with it.
Nan: The rocket station?
Doc: Well, they use atomic energy in the first stages of launching. Not all of them have been successful.
Nan: You think that it’s an animal life that was close by, not close enough to be killed, but close enough to feel the effects of a radioactive energy that—
Doc: A mutation. A type of gigantism of some common animal.

In addition, Monster from Green Hell (1957) centers on space exploration and the cosmic radiation that humans exposed the wasps to, causing them to grow into giants.

 

Fear of science was a part of the cultural momentum behind these films. At times, the “fault” for the giant bugs lay with science moving too quickly and with downright hubris. In other examples, the “mad scientist” trope emerges. Mesa of Lost Women is one example of the mad scientist theme. It was ill-fated radioactive food experiments that led to the supersized spider in Tarantula (1955).

 

In Beginning of the End (1957), giant grasshoppers attack Illinois and threaten to destroy Chicago. The “locusts” grew to giant sizes after scientists decided to use radiation to grow supersized fruits and vegetables with disastrous results. The film also recalls the fear of locusts among people in the Midwest and the Great Plains. Before going extinct, the Rocky Mountain Locust decimated farms between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains in the 1800s. The US government encouraged settlement of the Great Plains by offering free land, and that boom in human population ran into an overpopulation that was already there, the Rocky Mountain Locust swarms. By the time Beginning of the End was released, the Rocky Mountain Locust had only been extinct for 50 years. Surely, the hardships of communities on the plains would still reverberate.

The Horrors of Spider Island is perhaps worth including. This 1960 West German film features a giant spider, and the writing insinuates that uranium on the island caused its massive mutation.

For many cultural analysts, the films were a reflection of collective fear, science run amok, or nuclear proliferation. Famed critic Susan Sontag analyzed the themes in her 1965 essay The Imagination of Disaster. “[M]ass trauma exists over the use of nuclear weapons and the possibility of future nuclear wars,” she wrote. “Most of the science fiction films bear witness to this trauma, and in a way, attempt to exorcise it.”

Them! featured giant ants near White Sands, New Mexico, and Dr. Medford notes that that is exactly where atomic bombs were tested: “Yes, a fantastic mutation. Probably caused by lingering radiation from the first atomic bomb!” Dr. Medford says.

Science in these films was portrayed as flawed, and the portrayal was often flawed. In James Mertins’ review of arthropod films up to the late 1980s, he notes: “One cannot find among the arthropod features a single instance in which scientific endeavor is shown in a completely positive light, and science or the scientific method are often misrepresented.” 2

And, this flawed science and these flawed scientists are portrayed as childish entities waiting for the adult in the room to solve the problem. In a post-World War II context, that adult is the military. In many of the 1950s bug movies, the military is the savior, and the scientists are either the source of the problem, the hapless observers, or the providers of somewhat helpful insight.

Gerhard Wiesenfeldt wrote about the themes in the films of prolific science fiction director Jack Arnold whose Tarantula is among the more famous of the 1950s big bug movies.3

As Science, in both its guises, while understanding the problems it has created through experimentation, is unable to produce any useful solutions. When science fails, the only solution left is the Deus ex machina presented by the Air Force’s annihilation of the spider, a lackluster plot device that Arnold later attributed to lack of experience.

This dynamic isn’t isolated to Jack Arnold films. In Beginning of the End, scientists accidentally created giant locusts when they targeted vegetables with radiation. Dr. Ed Wainwright and Gen. John T. Short trade barbs in several parts of the film as science and military chastise each other for overreach.

Wainwright: Now, you’ve seen what a locust can do in its normal size, smaller than your thumb. Imagine if you will, a locust that’s grown bigger than a man, and is continuing to grow. I hope you realize we haven’t much time.
Short: You are a scientist, Mr. Wainwright. You know what locusts can do. I’m a soldier. I know what guns can do. I feel secure the Illinois National Guard can handle this situation.
Wainwright: You can’t drop an atom bomb on Chicago!
Short: Washington has given me authority to do just that.

In Them!, the doctor needs to be taught the basics of military communication. The film makes a point of showing how uneducated he is on all things military.

In The Monster that Challenged the World, conflict between science and the military again becomes a plot point. Dr. Robers gets a phone call from Commander Twillinger after the discovery of the giant snails/mollusks.

Rogers: Yes, commander. Yes, we’re working on it. We hope to have something,late today or tomorrow.
Twillinger: Tomorrow! Look, doctor, that’s the only clue we’ve got. I could have sent it to San Diego by now.
Rogers: Hold on, commander, don’t pressure us. We don’t need it. I’ll call you as soon as I finish.
Rogers to a collegaue after hanging up with Twillinger: I’ve just been read the riot act by our friend from naval intelligence.

Scientific hubris and military overreach, and the clash between the two, were common themes in these films, and nuclear radiation was a central plot for the big bugs. William Tsutsui, however, puts forward a different theory of why big bugs were such a common theme in the 1950s:4

“I would like to suggest that the giant insect films of the 1950s were, in fact, about… giant insects. Movies like Them! and Earth vs. the Spider, I would argue, reflected a widespread unease about insect infestation and humankind’s ability to control it during the 1950s and early 1960s, that pre-Silent Spring heyday of DDT and sweeping government pest control offensives.”

These movies are not very good. Them! has a reputation for being the better of the genre. As someone who has seen a lot of insect horror movies (you can see my ranking of 50-plus such movies on Letterboxd), I find that most of the genre is not good. As entomologist James Mertins wrote in his survey of such films, Arthropods on the Screen:

Despite some awards, most arthropod features are abysmal failures — artistically, critically, and financially. It is difficult to describe how poorly written, badly acted, and cheaply made some of these films are.”

I’ll be analyzing some of the themes that emerge from these films in subsequent articles, and reviewing as many of these films as time will allow no matter how bad they are.