Phase IV

Dir: Saul Bass

1974

*****

Saul Bass is a movie legend but although he is linked to many of the greatest films ever made, he only directed one feature himself – Phase IV. Bass was a graphic designer known for his design of motion-picture title sequences, film posters and corporate logos. During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood's most prominent filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, working on greats such as The Seven Year Itch, Around the World in Eighty Days, Spartacus, Ocean's 11, West Side Story, Big, Goodfellas and my personal favorite It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, among many others. Among his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock's North by Northwest and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho. Bass also designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America, including the Bell System logo in 1969, as well as AT&T's globe logo in 1983 after the breakup of the Bell System. He also designed Continental Airlines' 1968 jet stream logo and United Airlines' 1974 tulip logo, which became some of the most recognized airline industry logos of the era, as well as the famous Quaker Oats, Kleenex and Boys & Girls Clubs of America logos. His style is unmistakable but Phase IV – his one and only feature film – is unlike any of his other works. I consider it one of the greatest sci-fi thrillers of the 1970s alongside Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain and Peter Hyams’ Capricorn One. 1974 was awash with disaster movies with The Towering Inferno, Earthquake and Airport 1975 all doing rather well following the popularity of The Poseidon Adventure but films like Phase IV and The Andromeda Strain followed a far more scientific route, more in the vein of Andrew Marton’s Crack in the World and  Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World. These were horror stories made horrifying due to the scientific possibilities, or at least, the science aspect felt plausible. This is real sci-fi done good – but more than that, it’s visually compelling and a work of art in its own right. The cinematography produced by the unfortunately named Dick Bush is sublime and the overall picture is beautiful but terrifying at the same time. I’m a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 but when they featured Phase IV in 1989 I knew they didn’t know everything, the film may have been a flop at the box office but it is far from a b-movie dud. I'll never forget seeing the ant coming out of the dead man's hand for the first time when I was young. The film starts as all good sci-fi horrors do – with the narration of the last survivor who explains the story. One summer the planet witnesses a ‘cosmic event’ but quickly forgets it after nothing seemingly changes. However, one scientist discovers that the planet’s ants have undergone rapid evolution and have developed a hive mind. The scientist, Dr. Ernest D. Hubbs (played by Nigel Davenport) requests the help of James R. Lesko (played by Michael Murphy), a brilliant mathematician and expert in game theory who had just successfully completed a project communicating with whales. The pair travel to Arizona and begin investigating strange towers and geometrically perfect designs that ants have built in the desert. All but one local family have moved out of the area after the ants began behaving strangely and creating crop patterns (the first time crop circles were shown on film – a good two years before the first ever real life recorded crop circle). The two scientists set up a computerized lab in a sealed dome located in an area of significant ant activity and between them, the ant colony, the scientific team, along with the holdout family, fight each other, though the ants are the more effective aggressors, working out how best to weaken the humans. The narrative uses the scientific team as the main protagonists, but there are also ant protagonists going about their duties in the colony. The ants immunize themselves to the humans' chemical weapons and soon infiltrate their lab. Teams of ants penetrate the computers of the lab and short them out. After Lesko decodes an ant message, Kendra Eldrige (a young woman and lone survivor of the local family killed by the ants played by Lynne Frederick who beat Linda Blair to the role when Bass realised he couldn’t afford her), becomes convinced that her actions have enraged the ants. Seeking to save the two scientists, she abandons the lab and apparently sacrifices herself. Hubbs and Lesko begin to have different plans for dealing with the ants. While Lesko thinks he can communicate with the ants by means of messages written in mathematics, Hubbs plans to wipe out a hill he believes to be the ants' central hive. Delirious from a venomous ant sting, Hubbs can barely get his boots on but is determined to attack the hive and kill the ant queen. Instead, Hubbs literally falls into a trap – a deep pit that the ants fill with earth. Helpless to save Hubbs and convinced that the ants will soon move into desert areas where their growth will exceed man's ability to control them, Lesko chooses to follow Hubbs's plan. He sets out to the hive with a canister of poison. Descending into the hive, Lesko hunts for the queen, but instead finds Kendra reaching out from under the sand. The two embrace, and Lesko realizes that far from destroying the human race, the ants' plan is to adapt the human race and make them a part of the ants' world. In voice-over, Lesko states that he does not know what plans the ants have, but he is awaiting instruction. It’s a sci-fi finale that is hands down the best of the bunch, eerie but quietly terrifying. Davenport brings some great theatrical drama to the film while Murphy is entirely believable as a relaxed and scientific, er, scientist. The science lab scenes are good and the attack on the farm house is exciting but Ken Middleham’s ant sequences are amazing. Middleham also shot the insect sequences for the documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle that dealt with much the same subject. Maybe it’s a nerd thing but I love an intelligent and intriguing sci-fi and they don’t come more intelligent, intriguing or indeed beautiful as this. I was amazed, hypnotized and utterly transfixed throughout the whole film, even though my skin was crawling like never before. Mystery Science Theater? Feed them to the ants!