PHASE IV @ 50

A vaguely described cosmic event has caused a rapid advance in the cognition of the ants on Earth. Two scientists travel to the site of a particular outbreak of aggression from the social insects and find themselves increasingly out of their depth with bigger questions than they expected.

From the late '60s to this film's production in  the early '70s, science fiction cinema had grown complex. Some strands amped the action like the Planet of the Apes series, others like 2001: a Space Odyssey pushed philosophical themes. By the time Saul Bass got to making his own feature, having ground away at short films and some of his era's most striking design in film, he was ready to take the higher road. The trouble is that he was making this for people who were expecting a monster movie like Them.

If you go and look up stills of this film you will find plenty to marvel at. From the nature documentary perfect footage of ants in their own scale, the structures their on screen versions create, the effects of the yellow insecticide making a monochromatic yellow of the area, to the ominous towers with mouth-like openings that the colonies have fashioned. There are sequences in Phase IV that never fail to take breath.

So why was it almost impossible to see for decades? To dismiss it as a flop is a little pointless when you consider what made it to home video at the dawn of that medium. What then made it to digital is another story. The fact that I watched it for this on a eye popping 4K presentation is due to the power of cults in cinema's margins. It's why directors like Lucio Fulci can be released in lovingly restored ultra high res long after the last crumbling VHS of their movies has withered into history. 4K is a collector's market, not the mass that is still happy enough with streaming or even the much cheaper DVDs. Phase IV made it to 4K because its reputation precedes it and it famously has a lost ending.

I should point out that you could get this film on DVD and Blu-Ray (two different labels brought it out in the past decade) but when the preservation-crusading Vinegar Syndrome (the name refers to deteriorating film stock) set it up they delivered a multi-disc special which not only has the long ending but on a reproduction of the print previewed in 1974 (that led to the ending being cut to begin with). 

The reason for me to bang on about this is that Phase IV, for all its virtues, falls well short of what a contemporary viewer might make of it as science fiction. After decades of the likes of Cronenberg (whose work it will remind you of) and ever more elaborate fare, this thoughtful and visually stunning film feels small and ... dull.

This is partly due to Bass's lack of skill with performance. The heavily British Nigel Davenport has few restraints, the much subtler Michael Murphy's performance works despite itself against his co-star's blustering. Lynne Fredrick is given so little to do that when she communes with the ants it seems for real. The olde-worlde tape reel computer banks (which really were computers rather than set dressing) and printed circuit boards of the cubist mushroom lab can only provide so much authenticity before the acting against the lack of breakout action begins to drag the middle act from cause and effect to a series of things that happened.

Once we do break out and some of the climactic moments have been unintentionally subverted, we are treated to a stunning conclusion which pays off all the impressive micro work we've been witnessing and takes it somewhere else.

On the original ending: it's great but would have felt strainingly long, especially to the suits who cut it in preference for something that kind of said it in less time. The problem is that it doesn't. The dreamlike sequence of the full Phase IV has the look of a De Chirico painting and the emotive content of a Moebius graphic novel. The very contemporary electronic score provides a perfect bed for this ever widening coda. The problem is that, in order to respect the history of the film, we are given the cut version as the best treated edit. The preview cut is on one of the extra blu-rays and plays perfectly well but it ain't 4K. This reminds me that the recent afforably priced Wicker Man 4K offers 3 cuts of the classic in UHD because that's the way it should be. See also, recent releases of Apocalypse Now and The Exorcist. The alternative is to release the typically bloated "director's" cuts (quotes there as many of them are not) as the only versions available (looking at you, Amadeus). At least, here we do get the original fruition in context (and, really, Blu-Ray resolution isn't anything to sneeze at).

So, while it's hard to unreservedly recommend Phase IV as a sci fi essential, it remains a frequently impressive entry in the roll call of existentialist fiction, made in an era when such big thinking got funded without having to recreate what went before and with at least a chance given to genuine creativity. If that excites you (and it should) find your way to a copy of Phase IV.