{"id":22481,"date":"2019-08-23T05:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T09:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=22481"},"modified":"2019-08-22T17:32:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T21:32:59","slug":"them-trivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=22481","title":{"rendered":"“Them!” Trivia"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mark Mancini and Mental Floss present 11 Fun Facts About Them!<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve watched Them! over the years.\u00a0 I’m happy to report it still holds up.\u00a0 When I was a kid, I loved that Matt Dillon, Spock and Daniel Boone all had roles, heck it still brings a smile to my face.\u00a0 And now without further adieu, here are three of my favorite facts…<\/p>\n

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4. LEONARD NIMOY MAKES AN APPEARANCE.
\n<\/strong>In one brief scene, future Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy plays an Army man who receives a message about an alleged \u201cant-shaped UFO\u201d sighting over Texas. He then proceeds to poke fun at the Lone Star State, because, as everybody knows, insectile space vessels are highly illogical.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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10. THE MOVIE WAS A SURPRISE HIT.<\/strong>
\nStudio head Jack L. Warner predicted that Them!, with its far-fetched plot, wouldn\u2019t fare well at the box office. So imagine his surprise when it raked in more than $2.2 million\u2014enough to make the picture one of the studio’s highest-grossing films of 1954.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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11. THEM!<\/em> LANDED FESS PARKER THE ROLE OF TV’S DAVY CROCKETT.<\/strong>
\nWhen Walt Disney went to see Them!, he had a specific objective in mind: Scout a potential Davy Crockett. At the time, Disney was developing a new television series that would chronicle the life and times of the iconic frontiersman, and James Arness, who plays an FBI agent in Them!, was on the short list of candidates for the role. Yet as the sci-fi thriller unfolded, it was actor Fess Parker who grabbed Disney\u2019s attention. Director Gordon Douglas had hired Parker to portray the pilot who ends up in a psych ward after an aerial encounter with a gargantuan flying ant. And while his character only appears in one scene, the performance impressed Disney so much that the struggling actor was soon cast as Crockett.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Mancini and Mental Floss present 11 Fun Facts About Them!.\u00a0 I can’t begin to tell you how many times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,53,54,65,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-horror","category-movies","category-trivia","category-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22482,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22481\/revisions\/22482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}