Written by: Mayo Simon
Directed by: Saul Bass
Starring: Nigel Davenport, Michael
Murphy, Lynne Frederick
It really bums me out that the current
generation will know the SyFy Channel as nothing but purveyors of
awful Asylum movies and stupid ghost hunting shows, not to mention
that condescendingly idiotic misspelled name. Believe it or not,
kids, there was a time not that long ago that the Sci-Fi Channel
fucking ruled. I used to all
but beg my parents to go on weekend motorcycle trips so I could stay
at my grandma and grandpa Clark's house, because they had one of
those enormous satellite dishes that you had to aim at different
coordinates to pick up different packages of channels grouped into
“galaxies”. Yeah, TV used to be a lot more fun. It felt like
you were doing science when you tuned in to Space: 1999
or a nature documentary back when the Discovery Channel used to have
those instead of reality shows about rummage sales or whatever
bullshit it is they do now. I got to see so much great stuff at
their house. I remember when the Sci-Fi Channel launched, and for
days they ran this weird loop that looked like some kind of spaceship
console and a voice that kept saying, “Prepare for invasion.”
Then,
when I was 13, the dream came true and mom and dad sprang for a dish.
Granted, the technology had advanced a great deal by that time and
it was just a boring little plastic thing bolted to the roof, but
still, the stuff I used to have to make plans to visit the
grandparents to see was now at my fingertips. I remember the day we
went to the installation company to order the package, they had a big
screen TV in the lobby that happened to be tuned to Sci-Fi, and
Destroy All Monsters
was on. I'm pretty sure I asked them if it was possible to get the
thing hooked up immediately, as that particular Godzilla flick had
eluded me up til then. My head spun with the possibilities.
That
summer was a heady time. It seemed like every week was a different
themed marathon. All five Planet of the Apes
movies; Peter Boyle hosting a week of Godzilla movies, a couple of
which I had never seen; Saturday mornings populated first by bizarre,
insane anime and later by Mystery Science Theater 3000,
and oh the revelation that was, not to mention Joe Bob Briggs's
MonsterVision on TNT. Then there was the week of killer bug
movies, day and night. There were a lot of excellent movies that
week, but by far the one that made the strongest impression and stuck
with me all these years was tonight's movie, Phase IV.
It was one of the first hard science fiction movies I'd seen, and
was my introduction to the 70's downer ending. The sparse shooting
locations in Kenya, coupled with the spectacular micro-cinematography
by Ken Middleham and director Saul Bass's distinctive visual style,
give the movie a unique atmosphere.
Some type of
bizarre cosmic event involving the alignment of several celestial
bodies and a spectacular light show grabs the attention of the whole
world, with the exception of one man. Entomologist Dr. Ernest Hubbs
has been looking not at the sky, but at the ground, where species of
ants from all corners of the Earth have begun communicating and
working together to conquer ecosystems all over the planet. Never
mind the pretty lights in the sky, something much more urgent and
terrifying is taking place right beneath our feet. Together with
game theorist James Lesko, he sets up an isolated research center in
the middle of the Arizona desert to study the ants' behavior and
tactics, and try to communicate with them. The base is set up next
to a series of geometrically perfect towers of unknown purpose, and
after a couple of weeks of inactivity from the ants, Hubbs is
threatened with being shut down by his bosses. So of course he does
what any good scientist would, and blows up the towers with a grenade
launcher to provoke his subjects.
The ants'
retaliation is two-pronged, both blowing up the scientists' truck and
generator, and attacking the farm of a family of holdouts near the
research base. They herd the family toward the base, and as the base
is hermetically sealed with no windows, Hubbs and Lesko have no idea
the family are outside seeking their help when they blast the land
for hundreds of yards in every direction with highly concentrated
yellow pesticide foam. Upon leaving the airlock in the morning to
collect specimens, they discover not only thousands of dead ants, but
three dead people and one alive but in shock, hiding in the cellar of
an abandoned house nearby – the farmer's granddaughter, Kendra
Eldridge. With the surrounding area evacuated and help hundreds of
miles away, the only thing the two scientists can do is take her back
to the laboratory and hope she doesn't die on them. Kendra recovers
just fine, but picks the moment Hubbs begins to separate his few
living specimens for testing to start walking around and talking.
She sees the ants and freaks out, smashing a table full of glass
boxes and tubes, and setting all the ants free. Hubbs hurries
everyone into the next room and floods the contaminated compartment
with poison gas, but not before he got stung by one of them, and his
hand is already starting to swell.
Meanwhile the ants,
in one of the coolest sequences in the movie, have taken samples of
the yellow pesticide back to their queen (not actually an ant, but a
pepsis wasp fitted with a fake abdomen, and wouldn't you have loved
to sit in on that makeup session?), who eats it and starts laying
yellow eggs, which hatch yellow ants immune to the pesticide. It's
such a neat sequence because we see several different worker ants
lugging the glob of hardened foam through the nest and dying from
exposure to the poison, only to have the labor picked up by another
ant, who drags for a while and dies, and so on, until the last one
collapses at the feet of the queen with its deadly burden. The
yellow ants swarm into the toxic land around the laboratory and build
more towers, this time shorter and with mirrored surfaces aimed at
the lab. Apparently these ants have a highly developed sense of
irony. The homemade heat ray starts cooking the humans trapped in
the dome, and when one of the ants blows up the air conditioner, the
temperature quickly rises beyond the point where the other systems
can function. Without the computers, Lesko can't continue working on
a method of communication, and Hubbs, who is suffering hallucinations
from the ant venom and whose hand is so swollen he can't even put his
boots on, is in no condition to help.
Lesko manages to
shatter a few of the towers with ultrasound, but he doesn't get
enough of them before the systems all shut down. For a few hours
each night, the temperature drops enough to run the equipment.
Kendra decides they want her and wanders off, while Hubbs and Lesko
argue about whether to try to keep communicating or just blow up the
distant hill where Hubbs believes the queen lives. It's hard to
argue sense with a man who can barely remember his own name, and
Hubbs blunders out the door into a pit trap and is immediately
swarmed over by thousands of ants. All his options exhausted, Lesko
grabs a hazmat suit and a tank of pesticide and heads for the queen's
lair. What he finds when he gets there is not what he expected, and
it has big implications for the fate of mankind.
This movie has been
favorably compared to Colossus: The Forbin Project and The
Andromeda Strain, and it definitely deserves to keep such lofty
company. If you're looking for action, look elsewhere. Phase IV
is all about watching people doing science, combating a foe that
they don't fully understand, and that is always a step ahead of them.
Lots of twiddling dials and squinting at readouts and frowning. If
you're like me, however, you'll find it captivating. There may not
be many exciting moments, but there are never any boring ones either.
There's something about seeing science in action that is fascinating
in a way violence and explosions will never be, and if you have a
decent attention span and a few brain cells to rub together, this
flick is a rare treat. I was reading an interview with Steve
Thompson (writer of several episodes of Doctor Who and
Sherlock) recently, and he said that he had watched Blade
Runner with his son just before the interview, and it struck him
how slowly paced the movie was, and that brilliant though it is, the
studio today would have insisted Ridley Scott make it move faster.
While we still get some cerebral science fiction – just look at
Europa Report – and the ratio of thoughtful and deliberate
SF movies has always been on the low side compared to loud, fun, dumb
SF – there has certainly been a trend toward increased stupidity.
After all, even most of the loud, fun, dumb SF movies of past decades
have had a few big ideas at their core. Now even someone of Ridley
Scott's stature can't keep the studios from turning their big ideas
into Prometheus. These days you don't get much intellectual
entertainment outside the independents, and you certainly would never
see one of the majors ponying up to release a virtually actionless
movie about people doing math at ants.
The real stars of
the show, though, are the ants. Ken Middleham also did the
micro-cinematography for The Hellstrom Chronicle, so he knows
his way around a bug, and the things he captures with his camera are
little short of amazing. My favorite of the bunch is a yellow ant
with a distended bright green translucent abdomen, who appears to
portray a caste specialized for battlefield tactics and strategy, and
works alongside the drones, directing the assault on the humans from
the front lines. I'm not sure what kind of ant it is
[antracist]there are rather a lot of different kinds, after all, and
they all look more or less the same[/antracist], but my guess is
Anoplolepis gracilipes or maybe Acanthomyops interjectus
based on pictures. The green abdomen is likely a special effect,
achieved by having the ants gorge on colored sugar water.
At one point early
on, Hubbs and Lesko are examining a bizarre pattern the ants have
created in a field, and as Phase IV predated the first
appearance of hoax crop circles in the UK by several years, so maybe
instead of aliens the original pranksters were trying to get people
worked up over an invasion of superintelligent ants!
Mayo Simon had
written and Saul Bass shot a very different ending for the movie.
Originally Lesko's trip to the ant colony was followed by a
four-minute-and-change montage showing what life in the world of the
ants would be like. The studio put the kibosh on that, and made them
change it to the more vague and ominous ending it has now. Most of
the time studio interference is to the detriment of a movie, but in
this case I think it was the right decision. I've included the
original montage ending so you can judge for yourself, but
considering the serious tone of the rest of the movie, I think the
montage is too artsy and goofy to be a satisfactory finale.
If you like your
science fiction with a heavy dose of intellect, you can't do much
better than Phase IV. It's a unique take on the end of the
world, with loads of atmosphere, that inimitable 70's grimness, and
some fantastic insect footage. It's an under-appreciated classic of
the genre that deserves to be much better known.
This review is part of the It's the End of the World As We Know It roundtable. The last week of 2013 we'll be taking a look at ways the world comes to an end, and the first week of 2014 we'll wallow in some post-apocalyptic wastelands. Admittedly we're almost a decade and a half late with this gimmick, but screw it. It's our party, we'll procrastinate if we want to. Check the links below for entries from my partners in cine-crime.
Checkpoint Telstar: Seeking A Friend for the End of the World
Micro-Brewed Reviews: Invisible Invaders
The Terrible Claw Reviews: GenocideMicro-Brewed Reviews: Invisible Invaders
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