Actuakers One of my all time favorites.
Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
themidnightoriginal i've been watching this film forever and it's not the biggest deal in the world why is Lynne Frederick's character Kendra Eldridge barefooted??? none of the two scientists ask why she is shoe-less or in her bare feet nor does she ever explain??? i know that in the end of the movie it makes sense as she's easier too capture by a group of ants smaller than herself attacking her vulnerable naked feet with convenience still unknown too what they use too turn her into their queen???
Prismark10 Saul Bass is better known as a title designer rather than a film director on his own right. This film provides the answer why. If you are afraid of ants then stay away.The film with its set design wants to reflect the symbolism of 2001: A Space Odyssey with its giant towers and action inside a dome like laboratory somewhere in the Arizona desert.A colony of ants have somehow gained heightened intelligence and are manipulating events so local people leave the area. Two scientists remain examining and conducting experiments on the ants and rescue a young woman wandering around. However the ants are using their collective intelligence to torment and play mind games on the people.I can see that this film has a cultish following. Not a giant ant or a man in a rubber costume in sight. It wants to be enigmatic and perplexing, it suddenly ends leaving you puzzled.I found the whole thing dull, poorly acted with Nigel Davenport and Michael Murphy desperately trying to rescue this mess of a film.
Raphael_Sarker I watched Phase IV in the 1970s when I was probably too young to understand it but I was hooked on it anyway... It's the ants.This film has a lot to offer and is deeply rewarding when watched again and again over the years. I only recently realised that this is one of the very few films directed by Saul Bass, whose production, titles and graphic designs defined the coolness, and the cool, of the 1950s, 60s and 70's American cinema. Mad Men? Not without Saul Bass.And Phase IV is very much a design cinema, the kind that Don Draper would watch several times over. It's Sci-Fi for sure. It could be an extended episode of a never-realised 1970s visit to the Twilight Zone. It's a type of American film that makes you think of the low-budget Americana of Easy Rider, Corman, and early Coppola. It's very cool. If you can imagine an American SF film reconfigured as world cinema nature documentary with aspects of Cronenberg horror, then you have only just begun to embrace this film.A few years ago I listened to a Blue States album and the cover reminded me of this film so I watched it again. And I keep watching it. It's haunting, worrying, apocalyptic, cool, beautifully photographed and minimalist in its attitude to conventional drama and character. The actors are amazing, though. Michael Murphy. Understated and subtle. Nigel Davenport. A Don!Finally, If you are afraid of ants, DO NOT watch this film. The idea that they could truly harm humankind is outlandish and beautiful. I love ants, so it's OK.
irearly One of the spate of "environmental" sci-fi movies that came out in the wake of 2001, SILENT RUNNING comes to mind as well as the superficially similar (to PHASE IV) THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE, this movie has the benefit of some good macro photography of various ants (and, if I remember my days in California, a blue-black wasp with orange feelers and wings known as a "tarantula hawk"). I saw it again last night on the final day of SIFF. Included was the "long lost" alternate ending which was influenced (obviously) by 2001 and some other obscure films like THE MASK (Julian Roffman's 1961 3-D extravaganza) and William Cameron Menzie's, also a noted designer, THE MAZE.The movie is a bit dated and clearly "hooie" although I remember it as being a bit more convincing when I saw it in a theater in 1974. The alternate ending would have made it a better movie experience although it resolved nothing and is basically a montage of surreal, suggestive imagery.Will anyone ever get a chance to see this? Some have. You might. Do it if you can.
