How would mankind interact with, or even recognize, an alien intelligence? Would our effort to understand them lead to peaceful contact? Are confrontation and conflict inevitable? These are some of the central questions raised by Phase IV. The film is the only feature-length directorial effort by Saul Bass, a graphic artist who is best known for his design work on title sequences for numerous films, including Psycho, Spartacus and Alien. He turned his keen visual sense to telling a thematically complex film through innovative and provocative imagery.
“That spring we were all watching the events in space and all wondering what the final effect would be. Astronomers argued over theory, while engineers got pretty excited about variables in magnetic fields. Mystics predicted earthquakes and the end of life as we knew it. When the effect came, it was almost unnoticed because it happened to such a small and insignificant form of life.” - Opening Narration by Jim Lesko (Michael Murphy)
A mysterious cosmic phenomenon is detected. Its effect is to cause ants to form a group intelligence in a remote area of Arizona. The changes in behavior are noticed by biologist Ernest Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) who persuades the government to set up a small, high-technology research station to determine what is happening and how to cope with the potential “biological imbalance.” With him is computer scientist/linguist Jim Lesko. After a few weeks of observation and under pressure to get results or shut down the project, Hubbs destroys a number of massive towers built by the ants. This precipitates a back and forth struggle between man and ant. The two men are joined by Kendra (Lynne Frederick), the only survivor of a small farm family that is accidentally killed when they are caught in a cloud of pesticides. The humans find themselves increasingly unable to cope with the ants, who prove to be potentially more intelligent than mankind. In the end, Hubbs is killed by the ants, Kendra has been absorbed into the hive mind, and Lesko appears to have accepted that a new hybrid society is the inevitable outcome, one that will see mankind in a subordinate role to the new rulers of the Earth, the meekest of the meek.
“We are faced with a power that has appeared and is exerting itself. We have the opportunity to study it, to learn from it, to teach it its limitations. We can, in a word, educate it. ” - Ernest Hubbs
Phase IV was released in the midst of a wave of ‘revenge of nature’ films. The Seventies saw the rapid growth of the environmentalist movement, as people began to become fully aware of the cost of modern civilization. It also reflected a growing disillusionment with the hubristic view of mankind at the top of the food chain, a species apart from nature. Movies as varied as Frogs (1972), Night of the Lepus (1972), Jaws (1975), Bug (1975), Food of the Gods (1976), and Prophecy (1979) all showed mankind being assaulted by the natural world. In many of these films, humanity’s abuse of nature is a causal agent for the calamities that befall him. In others, mankind finds that for all his technology and intelligence, he is still at the mercy of natural, red in tooth and claw.
In Phase IV, the human race is confronted with an intelligence every bit as complex and capable as its own. How this new form of intelligence arose isn’t clear. There is some evidence that the ants have achieved a hive mind due to an extraterrestrial intelligence coming to Earth. However, it is just as valid to interpret the plot as charting the rise of an intelligence in response to mankind’s treatment of the world. It is no accident that the film is set in an abandoned housing development in the middle of the desert, an attempt to impose one kind of ecosystem into an area unsuited for it.
“Human beings can exist in temperatures of 120 degrees or higher, but our computer shuts down at 90.” - Ernest Hubbs
All of mankind’s technology is shown to be vulnerable to the ant’s harnessing of more ‘natural’ forces. The ants overcome the high-tech devices in the research station by using their bodies to short out critical machinery and constructing reflective towers around the lab, focusing the rays of the desert sun on the building. They become immune to the pesticides Hubbs uses against them by changing their genetic structure. Mankind's reliance on complex and fragile technology becomes a weakness the ants exploit.
What mankind’s technology does enable is for Lesko to learn the language of the ants and open up an interspecies dialogue. This leads to the conclusion that the ants have been observing and experimenting on the scientists, just as the scientist have been observing them. However, while Hubbs, representing a brute-force materialistic view of the world, uses various forms of coercion to try and teach the hive mind its limitations, the ants have a larger goal in mind—the merging of the two species. Kendra is eventually absorbed into the hive mind, becoming a human ‘queen’ and mating with Lesko. In a scene cut from the theatrical release, the film ends with a glimpse of the future. There is a hybrid society, one of stark geometric structures, humans living in a fashion reminiscent of how we’ve seen the intelligent ants living, using unfathomable technology, perhaps to create an artificial version of the hive mind and, finally, images that could be interpreted as showing a transcendent state for mankind. This is Saul Bass’s preferred ending1; the theatrical release ends with Kendra emerging from the sand inside of a giant anthill and embracing Lesko, some abstract imagery and Lesko saying, “We knew then, we were being changed and made part of their world. We didn’t know for what purpose, but we knew we would be told.”
While it would be inaccurate to say the film is purely an example of visual storytelling—important information is conveyed by the dialogue between Davenport and Murphy—there are long sequences detailing the actions of the ant society that are backed up only by the discordant soundtrack. It is one of cinema’s most ambitious attempts to build an alien culture based solely on images and actions. Ken Middleham provided the spectacular insect photography2. The viewer is given a sense of how the ant society works, how they are organized, and even how they mourn their dead. The work by Bass and Director of Photography Dick Bush (Tommy, Crimes of Passion) is also noteworthy, capturing the claustrophobic confines of the research station and paralleling it with the tunnels and chambers of the ant colony.
The film benefits from the performances of Davenport and Murphy. Davenport ably conveys the monomaniacal Hubbs as he slips from a rational concern over what the growing ant intelligence represents to an obsession with “teaching” them their limits and the supremacy of the human intellect. Murphy is a nice compliment to Davenport’s intense performance, portraying Lesko as having a healthy balance between curiosity over the ants and a concern for his safety, as well as that of Kendra and Hubbs. He clearly sees that confrontation won’t work; only by communicating with the ants can some kind of understanding be reached.
“They’re not individuals, they’re individual cells, tiny functioning parts of the whole. Think of the society…with perfect harmony, perfect altruism and self-sacrifice.” - Ernest Hubbs
The film does have problems. While elements of the plot—like the exact nature of the emerging intelligence—can remain opaque without harming the story, other elements are legitimately holes. It is unclear why Hubbs, who has sufficient evidence of what mankind is facing early on, refuses to contact the outside world and alert them to the danger. He is presented as switching from rational to obsessed with little transition. It is never made clear how the ants know which pieces of equipment to sabotage (a point brought up in the dialogue); while this lends some credence to the idea that the ants have been taken over by an extraterrestrial intelligence, it is never made clear that this is the case. And the finale, whether the one from the theatrical release or Bass’s original ending, doesn’t make much sense. While it is clear what it is happening—Kendra and Jim have become part of the hive mind—it is not clear how this is taking place. Kendra emerges from the sand, hugs Jim, and he gives his last line, and either the film ends or, in the original ending, plays out for a few more minutes with a lot of interesting images, none of which are explained. It’s basically a less comprehensible version of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
While both Davenport and Murphy are good in their roles, Frederick is not. She is a consistently weak and impassive actress (see No Blade of Grass and Vampire Circus for more examples of her aggressive blandness) whose one facial expression seems to indicate constant boredom. It doesn’t help that she serves more as plot point than as a character. It is clear that little thought was given to developing her.
Phase IV is not a perfect film. What it gets right, however, far outweighs what it gets wrong. The portrayal of a truly inhuman intelligence, the documentary feel of the attempt to communicate, the beautiful visuals and the thoughtful look at how mankind would react to superior intelligence makes this film worth seeking out.
Recommended.
Notes
1. A clip of the original ending can be found on my YouTube channel.
2. Cinefex, Issue 3 from December, 1980 has an in-depth interview with Ken Middleham about the making of the film’s microphotography. For anyone with an interest in visual effects or cinematography, it is worth tracking down the issue.
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