ABSTRACT
Despite Hollywood's Cold War Emphasis upon the military establishment in the 1950s, the incorporation by filmmakers of residual cultural elements into the science fiction genre to give meaning to atomic issues points to an uneasy public grappling with the topic. The connections and ensuing contradictions involving radiation-produced monsters, residual cultural elements, and Cold War ideology are graphically presented in the prototypical movie of monster genre, Them!, in which mutated ants emerge near the Trinity test site. Most movies in the radiation-produced monster genre were not made by large studios but were cheaply and hastily made for distribution by independent producers. Most film narratives in the radiation-produced monster genre explicitly link the plot to real-life atomic tests while devoting large amounts of film time to military stock footage, frequently presenting footage of actual atomic tests. The concept that exposure to radiation could cause transmutation is central to all radiation-produced monster films.
