This one manages to be equal parts goofy giant monster movie and super-serious, end-of-the-world, nuclear-warning science-fiction. The world's greatest, and only as far as I know, giant ants on-the-loose epic. Atomic bomb testing causes giant ants to run amok in the desert. One of the seemingly million giant bug movies that were churned out in the 50's and probably one of the bigger-budgeted ones. There's a, surprising for 1954, tough woman scientist character and plenty of army vs. gargantuan ants action. Although watching it today the giant ants don't look very realistic it's still pretty remarkable that they actually built these big-ass things and got them to sorta move about(especially when you compare that to the lazy FX work done today). This is helped out by the weird sound effect that's used whenever our murderous monsters appear. This is a fav monster flick from my childhood and essential monster-kid viewing that was played often on Chiller Theater programs and is the movie that's credited with spawning all the rest of the 50s giant bug flicks, so it's hard to say much negative about it. It does get a little talky in a few bits and for a 50's horror/sci-fi movie it's got an unusually long run-time of over 90 minutes whereas most of these things just barely made it over and hour. Still you get lots of army vs. ants action along with the super-serious 50's acting. Also even goofy-looking puppet-headed ants beat modern CGI cartoon shit in my book.
Italian poster!:
FORMICULA! (It's German for 'little ant'. Those silly Germans!):
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