Them!
Though Gordon Douglas’ 1954 monster movie
Them! tells a far more quiet, intimate story than its modern descendants, one of the first ways it clues you in to the danger its human heroes are in is a haunting, piercing noise that calls out from the wilderness.
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When sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) and army soldier Ed Blackburn (Chris Drake) stumble upon a little girl (Sandy Descher) wandering around the New Mexico desert alone, the men can tell from the child’s catatonic state that something’s gone terribly wrong. Because she isn’t capable of speaking due to whatever she’d been through, though, Peterson and Blackburn aren’t initially aware of the situation at hand as they take it upon themselves to search for the girl’s family. Where many modern monster movies’focus on kids trying to reunite with their parents ends up becoming a distraction,