John – I will ignore your irrational bigotry toward homo vampiris culture and agree with you that Them! is a film to be celebrated. Despite coming out two decades before Empire of the Ants, it’s nonetheless the superior giant bug movie. I always remembered being fascinated as a kid with a line from Them! One of the reporters asks whether “the Cold War has suddenly gotten hot” or words to that effect. It might have been the first time it occurred to me that such a thing was possible. Hey, forgive the anti-Communist naiveté, I was like 8 years old or something.
Meanwhile, you’ve got to wonder why they’ve never made a (good) remake of The Day of the Triffids (confession: Until I checked IMDB I didn’t know about the TV miniseries remakes). Surely, the idea of trees getting payback against humanity is an idea the Hollywood community can get behind.
Update: Oh right. A reader just reminded me that The Happening — Mark Wahlberg/M. Knight Shyamalan — was about arboreal payback. I still haven’t seen it — on account of the fact my wife said it was so frickn’ stupid — but I gather the trees don’t actually move. That’s not what the Day of the Triffids was all about, and we now know from the Lord of the Ring and Narnia movies, that trees don’t have to be cinematic pushovers (“put down the axe!”) they can open some real whup-ass on the meat-based community.
Update II: A Twitter follower just pointed me to this: Treevenge!