Spring.  Sunny days. Cute flowers.  Unstoppable creatures.  Ants can be annoying.  And Hollywood has cut some wild footage of these picnic hustlers.

Them!:  One of the earliest ant themed horror movie.  With James Arness, Jim Whitmore, and Fess Parker, the cast are white lightning.  These ants are big, rip your camper apart big.  Residuals from the A-bomb lead to Them!.

Typical of the era, the movie includes a “documenarty short’ about ants.  Entertaining and cheesy, Them! is actually more high end then one might expect.

The Naked Jungle:  Two words: Charlton Heston.  The man takes on a couple hundred trillion little ants.  The movie slips between the glitter of Moses and the glamor of Omega Man.

Empire of the Ants:  Back to the big ants.  This 1970’s horrible horror has giant ants snacking on visitors at a Florida timeshare sales seminar.  And from there it only gets better—plaid leisure suit catharsis, penitent dialogue among the palms, and ants that have harnessed the local sugar business in what had to be a “hostile takeover”.  More Deep South creepiness for those who like watching ants reinstate slavery.

Ants!:  Definitely not a winner.  Lots of little ants lay seige to a northern California B & B.  True the B & B is up against a cliff.  But the ants are neither giant nor uncounted trillions.  Yet the humans are neither swift of foot or brain. A real loser of a film, best to be lost,