Phase IV Review

★★☆☆☆ Super smart ants threaten the future of humanity in Saul Bass’s 70’s sci-fi horror. Phase IV is big on visuals, but tiny on everything else.

Legendary graphic designer Saul Bass will forever be remembered for many things. His distinctive posters and title sequences for movies like Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm modernised movie marketing, with visuals arguably just as iconic as the films themselves.

Phase IV — Bass’s one and only attempt at making a feature-length movie of his own, is sadly not one of those things.

Loosely inspired by H.G. Wells’ short story, Empire of the Ants, the film leans heavily on genre tropes of the era. Shortly after a mysterious event in the solar system, Earth’s ants begin to change, creating geometrically perfect crop circles and forming strange towers in rural Arizona. Two scientists (Michael Murphy and Nigel Davenport) are dispatched to investigate but are soon trapped in a deadly conflict with the rapidly evolving insects, a new race of intelligent ants who now threaten humanity’s standing as the planet’s dominant species.

As you’d expect, Phase IV’s visuals are by far its strongest aspect. The production design is slick and understated, similar to the stylish but practical looks seen in genre movies of the time like Westworld and George Lucas’ THX 1138. Bass is clearly in his element, crafting striking and often trippy visual sequences that say far more than the film’s dialogue ever could.

The ant footage captured by wildlife photographer Ken Middleham is even more impressive. These sequences — most notably a moment where the insects appear to bear some sort of rank insignia — are so detailed and well integrated into the story you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for some sort of special effects wizardry.

Unfortunately, everything else is an afterthought. While the story is perfectly fine, the film’s talented actors are hamstrung with dry and stilted dialogue that severely undercuts the building tension. The final act feels rushed and comes with the same head-scratching closing sequence that was so prevalent in sci-fi filmmaking of the time. Family Guy would perfectly lampoon this kind of depressing, out-of-left-field ending years later.

The sheer universal threat the ants pose is never truly felt, more just expressed through dialogue and clunky voice-over. It’s strange Phase IV hasn’t been remade. It’s a good concept that would still work well today, perhaps even more so given modern society’s obsessions with an existential crisis.

Vintage-loving genre fans will undoubtedly get a kick out of it, but there are much better examples of the genius of Saul Bass than this.

Originally published at michaelkenny.uk