Phase IV

Currently, I've been having this problem with sugar ants near my kitchen sink. I've caught them in their perfectly aligned army, slowly angling around the faucet, across the counter, and up the wall to the window sill. Unlike my younger days, lately I'm pretty timely with doing the dishes. No honey spills of which I'm aware either. Recent dilemma, after over two years in this apartment. Why did they pick my kitchen? What brings them here? Will they eventually take over? Organize a few billion strong to carry away the entire building? As I applied droplets of "Ant Kill" (you know, that nondescript bottle with the stick figure holding a mallet over a defenseless ant) around electrical outlets and the kitchen window sill, I thought back to a curiosity I watched last year called PHASE IV.  

Odd little obscurity; I'll bet you haven't heard of it. Unless, that is, you happened to catch an episode of Mystery Science Theater some years ago, where Servo and co. heckled the life out of it. The movie, while certainly qualifying as a "B", is actually a rather thoughtful, quietly disturbing sci-fi which leaves the viewer more than a bit of food for thought. A lonely desert lab is populated by two scientists: one a game theorist, James, the other a biologist, Dr. Hubbs, who exhibits a fair amount of possible megalomaniacal tendencies. They study and try to communicate with some super intelligent ants. James explains in voiceover that he believes that some cosmic event has caused the ants to rally and take over the local Arizona drylands.

After the insects kill horses and seem to be organized beyond control, the men (and a girl who sorta wandered in) barricade in their sphere and declare war. Hubbs believes that carpet bombing them with some sort of yellow and later blue toxins will annihilate them into oblivion. Hey doc, you realize that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? More immune? Right. James, all too aware of the score, and far more rational, begins to direct his considerable intellect more towards survival than academia. We are led to an enigmatic and quite uncomfortable finale, one that belongs in some sort of Hall of Fame for downbeat wrap-ups. 1974's PHASE IV is a film one in a few hundred will appreciate.

It is more concerned with introspection than pace or action. It is edited with no particular regard for thrills, but rather meditation. Lots of silences. We get gorgeous shots of Arizona sunsets, plus lots of microscopic footage of ant colonies going about their business. One fascinating sequence documents what appears to be an ant funeral following the extermination of many (but of course not all) of the insects by the aforementioned chemical sprays. The ants are not some oversized mutations like we've seen in other movies, but rather normal sized and capable of executive function and decision. All of this is realized with a minimum of spectacle by director Saul Bass, who was better known as a famed title maker of a great many classics. His style is somewhere between that of one of those old scratched up 8mms you saw in science class and an episode of Outer Limits. The movie suffers from some camp, but is mostly an engrossing battle of wits. The ultimate victor? Let's just say that my fear of collectives was not cured by the outcome of this film.