PHASE IV (1973)

‘Yes, but what I really want to do is direct.’  That old Hollywood punchline is usually tagged on ‘personality’ actors, but here, acclaimed graphic artist Saul Bass, whose posters & credit sequences for Hitchcock & Preminger are the stuff of legend, picks up the megaphone for this small-budget Sci-Fi Horror.  Even more surprising, it works!  A real creep out on an eclipse that changes the nature of all the ants on Earth, defanging their natural enemies & turning various ant species from combative to single collective.  The film a three-hander for two scientists (Nigel Davenport; Michael Murphy), sent to an isolated desert lab to work out ant communication & a plan for human survival, who wind up hosting a left-behind local (stowaway Lynne Frederick), who plays Eve to the men’s double Adam act.  Davenport the nihilist; Murphy the idealist; Frederick the author of the lab’s original sin, ruining the experiment before she's catalyst to transformation.  Not without gauche moments and all too obvious moves & motivations, but also with many memorable visuals (expected) and ideas (less expected).  One shot of rows & rows of pale poisoned ant warriors on their backs, surveyed by their black ant compatriots quite spectacular, and not only conceptually.  The end proves more than the budget (or Bass) can properly handle, but taken for what it is, this film should have led to further adventures for Bass away from his drafting table.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Why so unknown?  Best guess is that Stateside releasing company Paramount simply didn’t know how to market this sort of thing.  Pity.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Scientists experimenting in an isolated lab a genre unto itself in this period.  Skipping over all those orbiting Space Station variants, you might try John Sturges THE SATAN BUG/’65 or Robert Wise THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN/’71.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-satan-bug-1965.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-andromeda-strain-1971.html

CONTEST:  Beware!  SPOILER embedded in this Contest Question.  PHASE IV’S outcome involves the evolution of a hybrid creature combining ant and human elements.  It’s not all that far from the précis of a faux trailer seen in a comic movie about the film biz.  Name the Faux Feature title and the film the trailer comes from to win our usual prize, a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.