Are you feeling antsy about this new year? Are you bugging in for the winter weekend? Want to watch a couple of classic sci-fi movies that really have legs? Well, look no further!
PHASE IV (1974) is the one and only feature film directed by legendary movie titles creator Saul Bass (1920-1996), whose distinctive, often animated title sequences for such films as Otto Preminger’s THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1955) and ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959), Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (1958), NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1958) and PSYCHO (1960), Stanley Kramer’s IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1964), John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS (1966), and many films by Martin Scorsese (GOODFELLAS, CAPE FEAR, CASINO) – to name only a few of the motion pictures his work graced over the course of a 40 year career — play as integral a role in their enduring appeal as do the choice of actors, composer, and cinematographer. That Bass should at some point be entrusted with the look of an entire film was, I guess, a no-brainer at one point, but PHASE IV was a bit of a head-scratcher when it came out in 1974. It was one of several SF films released in the aftermath of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and it has similarly far-reaching implications, though the kindest of the film’s detractors branded it a victory of style over substance.
PHASE IV begins with scientists all over the globe — and one (Nigel Davenport) in particular — noting that occult movements in the heavens have had a pronounced effect on the most insignificant of earth’s life forms: ants. As ants of different species begin to work, rather than war, with one another toward some unknowable end, a research pod is established in the Arizona desert and Davenport’s foreigner is partnered with an American (Michael Murphy, for whom the decade had begun with COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE and would end with MANHATTAN) of the opinion that the ants are attempting to communicate with them. Add to the equation a local girl (Lynne Frederick, who had played Davenport’s daughter in the apocalyptic road picture NO BLADE OF GRASS a few years earlier) who has fled a farmhouse overrun by the ant mobilization and things get progressively weirder. A siege scenario ensues, straight out of a John Ford western, with the forces of order barricaded within and the forces of nature — unbridled, savage, and yet undeniably logical — amassing without.
PHASE IV isn’t for all tastes — what is — but I took to it from the time I first saw it, on late night TV, in the mid-70s. It reminded me then, and still does now, of Roy Ward Baker’s QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1968), but rather than the concept of modern man learning he is the issue of a union between Neanderthals and a locust-like alien race, here modern man finds himself pointed towards a strange new future, one in which he may not be the master. I always loved Nigel Davenport (I suspect I first saw him as Professor Van Helsing in Dan Curtis’ TV adaptation of DRACULA, starring Jack Palance) and I enjoy the scientific interplay/gobbledygook between his character and Murphy’s. Another movie it reminds me of is Joseph Sargent’s COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970), another movie about genius scientists who have their asses handed to them; and of course one can’t help but think of THE NAKED JUNGLE (1954), which starred a pre-Save the World Charlton Heston as a South American plantation owner facing down an onslaught of — that word again — ants. I haven’t seen PHASE IV in several years so I look forward to revisiting it again as part of TCM Underground this Saturday.
Gordon Douglas’ THEM! just ran on TCM a week or so ago but I don’t care — it’s like family and I’m always glad to see it. There are some fun parallels between THEM! and PHASE IV. Both triangulate their protagonists — two guys and a gal — and both wrap up in tunnels. If THEM! has the edge for me it has everything to do with its vintage Los Angeles locations, its exemplary cast of jobbing character actors (boy, pick ‘em: Fess Parker, Dub Taylor, Olin Howland, Willis Bouchey, Onslow Stevens, William Schallert, Richard Deacon, Lawrence Dobkin, and Leonard Nimoy!), and the star performance of James Whitmore as a state cop who winds up saving the world. I’ve written about Whitman’s performance in THEM! before but keep your eye on his character throughout. Not only does Whitmore find cagey ways to upstate his costars (he’s always fiddling with props or his clothes, even when beached in the background while other actors handle the exposition) but his character is such an unexpected kid magnet: Sgt. Ben Peterson is the one who finds the girl in the desert at the start of the film, he’s the one she turns to when the smell of formic acid reminds her in a rush of the death of her parents, and he’s the one who goes into the storm drains to find the missing boys at the end of the movie. It’s a subtextural touch that, likely largely unnoticed by 90% of the film’s audience, has always struck a chord with me.
The fun starts at 11pm PST/2am EST on Saturday night.