When it comes to the parade of giant cinematic monsters introduced in the 1950s, the one with the longest (and most profitable) legacy is Godzilla. Working as both sheer spectacle and horrific nuclear metaphor, the “King of the Monsters” went on to have a ludicrously successful film career. However, it wasn’t the first big creature to stomp across our screens, nor was it the first one to harness potent atomic allegory. Seventy years ago, and a few months before Godzilla’s Japanese premiere, Them! gave us an underrated genre classic, albeit with a very American point of view.
