“We knew then, that we were being changed... and made part of their world. We didn't know for what purpose... but we knew, we would be told.”
-James R. Lesko (Michael Murphy)

Phase IV is the sole film from graphic artist and title designer Saul Bass. During his 40 year career, Bass created many vividly memorable title sequences, such as those of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Psycho, Anatomy of a Murder, GoodFellas and Casino. He also crafted many infamous movie posters, such as Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm and even The Shining.

Why do I know this? Well only really because I studied his work during Art at Sixth Form last year. Learnt something at least. So yeah,…

Note: This rating applies to the version of this movie that exists in my mind with its originally intended "psychedelic" ending, which I was lucky enough to see right after the closing credits at tonight's screening, intact. The actual released version just kind of stops, I can definitely see why people were unsatisfied with it.

Anyway - pretty cool movie! Saul Bass's famous minimalist/abstract visual aesthetic manifests itself in some pretty interesting ways, like an emphasis on mechanics (both human-built technology and gobs of ants) and striking images throughout. I couldn't help but wonder how a more traditional genre stylist like, say, George Romero or John Carpenter would have handled this material - they probably would have produced a more…

When I was a kid, I watched a movie about intelligent killer ants. I knew it affectionately (or perhaps not so affectionately) as "The scary ant movie". That's literally what was written on the VHS that we had recorded off TV. It was a running joke as a child that if I got out of line, my dad would threaten to put in "the scary ant movie." "No!" I'd reply, "Not that!" It wasn't until the last five years or so that I found out that the movie was actually titled Phase IV.

Phase IV begins with some unexplained cosmic event that has the largely unobserved effect of granting super-intelligence to Earth's ant population. Things are changing - the ants…

Es gab eine Zeit, da dürften Tierhorrorfilme noch ausgefallen sein.

Auf Phase IV war ich schon länger neugierig gewesen und als er eines nachts im Fernsehen lief, habe ich ihn mir endlich angesehen. Ameisen entwickeln durch kosmische Veränderungen eine außergewöhnliche Intelligenz. Zwei Wissenschaftler erforschen sie und müssen dabei feststellen, dass die Tiere ihnen sogar überlegen sind: Sie sabotieren technische Geräte und sind anscheinend sogar dazu fähig, mit den Menschen zu kommunizieren.

Klingt albern, aber im Vergleich zu anderen Tierhorrorfilmen hat mich Phase IV sehr überrascht. Zum einen ist es ein wirklich ernster Film, wenn man die seltsame Ausgangssituation hinnehmen kann. Zum anderen inszeniert er die Gefahr sehr interessant, weil man viele gelungene Nahaufnahmen von echten Ameisen zu sehen bekommt. Blutiges…