Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Phase IV

What happens when a solar conjunction allows all ant species to unite against their enemies? Find out as Rob and Joe discuss the delightfully weird 1974 film “Phase IV.” (originally published 01/28/2022) 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob Lamb. Hey, we have a really fun one for
you here today. This is an episode that originally published
in January of twenty twenty two, concerning the nineteen seventy
four film Phase four. Yes, this is an ANT movie,
but it also might be the trippiest mind blowing ant
movie of all time. It's a lot of fun. Really

(00:26):
enjoyed watching this one and then chatting with Joe about it.
So let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
And today we are discussing We're not only discussing an
ant movie, which of course is a subset of killer
bug movies in general. We are discussing what my be
the ant movie, the most ambitious ANT movie in many ways,
the most perplexing and thought provoking ANT movie. I'm super
excited to talk about it. Actually just had as a

(01:12):
pre recording snack a couple of ants on a log
I got off the the celery and peanut butter and
the raisins It just felt appropriate.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
You know, I feel like that reflects our higher ant
consciousness now, because the important thing to understand about ants
is they don't even mind if you eat a few
of them.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
That's sort of like the it's like the skin cells
that you would scrape off of somebody's hand while hugging them.
You know, it just like doesn't bother the colony as
a whole. And I would say that's actually reflective of
the movie we're talking about today overall. The movie is
the nineteen seventies sci fi ant flick Phase Four, which

(01:51):
we alluded to possibly doing an episode in our Core
episode about ants building traps. We talked about some biology
papers about ant behaviors, whether whether these structures ants build
should be understood as traps or not. But this movie
came up because we were talking about ant movies and
I said, you know, there's this ant movie I've been

(02:12):
looking at in the video store for years, just based
on the DVD cover. It's called Phase four. The cover
is like this kind of cool design, but it's got
ants crawling out of a hole in somebody's hand. Never
seen it, and we went in just based on the
DVD cover. I'd say this was a hit.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah, after we had we had already decided this
is the one. I actually received word from someone on
the stuff to blow your mind. Discord email us if
you want to invite to that who They were like, yeah,
this is this one's good. You're going to want to
cover this one for a weird house. I also have,
of course, looked it up when we were talking about it.
I looked it up in Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia film

(02:51):
in which he called it quote a great science fiction
thriller starring countless real ants. Yeah, so that was a
solid endorsement, but it still was able to prepare me
for all that was to come.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, So, when I look at the other side of
the critical response to this movie, I think some people
have been kind of critical of it lacking in human depth.
And I'll say, okay, I'm with them there. I mean
that this is not really a humans movie, and the
human characters there are few of them, and the ones
that are there, we don't learn much about them, and

(03:23):
they're not super dimensional. But I think that's okay because
this is a movie that encourages you to also see
humans as sort of just sells on the whole body
of the human species.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, and in very delightful ways. It is. It
is a movie almost by ants for ants. It is
a movie that is one fresh on ant rotten tomatoes.
It is. It is such an interesting film in so
many ways, like it's going to be fun to discuss everything.

(03:58):
I'm almost not sure where to art here.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
You know, the funny thing about ant Rotten Tomatoes is
there are no in between scores. It's either one hundred
percent or zero percent every.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Time they're unified.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well, maybe we should talk about ant movies more generally,
because this is, of course not the only one. In fact,
I had a very powerful, vivid memory that came rushing
back to me just the other day when when I
started trying to recall if I'd seen other ant movies before,
and it was a memory of being about twelve years
old and watching this terrible made for TV killer ant

(04:33):
movie that I think was on the Fox network or
one of those you know, it was one of those
made for TV movies that they used to advertise in
the weeks leading up to it, so they'd have a
commercial with you know, Don la Fontaine or somebody on
there saying this Sunday at eight nine Central, you will
learn the true meaning of terror ants and you'd get

(04:54):
a music sting and man that I don't know if
they focus group tested that or whatever, but that worked
on my twelve year old brain. That was like, I
had to make an appointment to watch a movie that
I went back and looked up and I found out
it is called Marra Bunta Colon Legion of Fire, and
I rewatched the trailer and ooh, this looks stinky. It

(05:16):
looks like it is no good. It has some absolutely
atrocious CGI ants, stripping a moose clean down to the
bone like piranhas on Land. It does have Mitch Poleggi
from the X Files and Shocker, and it also has
something that's common to some of these ant movies where
there are scenes of columns of army ants that are

(05:38):
treated like rivers of molten lava and a volcano movie.
So you get, I don't know, a kid stranded up
on top of a crate and then on all sides
of them, the ants are just flowing and they've got
to jump over them to get to safety or something.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
What is it with Shocker connections? We're gonna have another
one of those coming out, that's right. So I guess
when I think of ANT movies that I saw as
a kid, I my mind probably goes to nineteen fifty
four as them because this one was in I think
it was in pretty tight rotation on like the turner
stations back in the day, like there was a pretty

(06:12):
good chance you're going to catch part of them, you know,
especially on like a Sunday afternoon. But other notable ANT
movies include nineteen seventy seven's Empire of the Ants. There's
also nineteen seventy seven's TV movie Ants with an exclamation Point,
starring everyone's favorite work bist Robert Foxworth of what was it?

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Can't you remember the name of that movie?

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Death Moon or deth Moon Death Moon Fame, But that
one also starred Suzanne Summers, Brian Denahey, Anita Gillette. This
is the actor who played Liz Lemon's mom on thirty Rock,
and also Bernie Casey.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
So does Foxworth play another work beast in this movie?

Speaker 4 (06:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
I'm guessing, like, yeah, maybe a laid back work beast
that has to go up against in this case. Ants.
I haven't seen it, but oh, okay, it sounds good.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
A question about them though. Them is a movie not
with regular ants, but with big ants, right, It's like
an atomic age mutation movie.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Correct. Correct? And I think that leads into our next
major distinction to make here. When we're talking about ant movies,
you're gonna either deal with giant ant movies or you're
gonna deal with normal sized ants. So it's either going
to be a giant bug feature or it's going to
be a swarm feature. And what's interesting about that is
when you have the giant ant, it's going to be

(07:35):
more about individual ants. That's the spectacle of it, right.
This generally you're doing a lot to get one giant
ant on the screen, But when you're dealing with the swarm,
of course, you have this more accurate reflection of what
ants are. They are not the individual, they are the group.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, I think that's right, and I would say broadly,
I think i'd break ant movies into three category. So
you've got your giant ant movies, in which case the
ant is not really important. It's not important that it's
an ant. It's just a giant bug, and it could
be any bug, could be a giant praying mannis giant
spider is just a giant bug that attacks. So I
think that's probably going to be my least favorite kind overall,

(08:15):
because that you lose the essential antiness, you know, the
form the formic aromas of the premise is just like
any giant bug will do, because they're just big and
they'll tear you apart.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, might as well go with a more interesting solitary bug,
you know, insect or rachnet, like a scorpion for example.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Sure, giant scorpion, that'd be great.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Giant spider obviously, okay, but then.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
When you break it down, you keep the ants small.
I think they're basically two ways you can go. One
is the just ants as ants, like, you know, they're
kind of an environmental threat almost. This comes back to
the like they're like rivers of molten lava in a
volcano movie. You know, they're just like as the floor
is lava, except instead of lava, it's ants. But then

(08:59):
the other way to go is to think about ants
as a sort of organization principle and have the horror
lie there. And that's actually where Phase four goes, which
I think is interesting to think about ants not just
as something that turns the floor into lava, but something
that has has organized behaviors that can surprise you and

(09:20):
make you afraid.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah. Yeah, and that's definitely the realm that we're going
to be venturing into with phase four here.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
I guess the real distinction there is that, like, does
the danger of the ants lie in their in their
numbers alone or in their use sociality? And Phase four
it's in their use sociality.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, And this is we have to drive home. This
is definitely one of the more, if not the most
ambitious ant movies and intelligent ant movies, Like they really
went for it with this particular film, trying to use
ants to their full potential cinematically. So it's a rare beast.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
I think it's a work beast in many ways, because
I would say this is also a highly technical film.
As we've already said, it may be lacking in some
human depth, but as a sort of visual art project,
I'd say this movie is a home run. I mean
it is a beautiful, weird celebration of geometry of like

(10:22):
colors and lines and angles and close up photography of ants,
and I would say very good special effects. There were
parts where the ant puppetry is so good. I sometimes
couldn't tell if I was looking at you know, microphotography
of real ants or if it was one of the puppets.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah. Yeah, it was very difficult to tell. And I
should also throw in that not only are the visuals great,
but the sound design and music is also really noteworthy,
and we'll touch on that as we go.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Now, Phase four was was something of a flop at
the time, apparently maybe it was ahead of its time,
but over the years it's been particularly influential on various
visionary filmmakers. Apparently, I know it's Michael Weldon liked it.
I've read that Panos Cosmntos was a fan of it.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, apparently inspired Beyond the Black Rainbow, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, which is a film I have a lot of
admiration for, and certainly having seen Phase four now I
can I can definitely see where those inspiration points are.
Apparently apparently as well, this was also a film that
was riffed in the KTMA, like basically proto season of

(11:36):
Mystery Science Theater three thousand and that's an episode you
can actually find places, you know, uploaded on video servers
and all. I've never watched it because the KTMA episodes are.
You know, it's a different beast it was the first season.
It's not quite like watching a full blown MST three
K episode.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, I would say in general, they're not as engaging,
not as good. And the weird thing about it is,
I recall some of the movies, so this is like
when they were a public access show in Minnesota or
wherever it was before they got syndicated became a national show.
But the weird thing about that early season is I
haven't seen a lot of them, but I know they
do some movies that are kind of seems like higher

(12:14):
budget maybe better movies than they do in the later seasons. Actually,
like I think they end up doing The Green Slime,
which is a movie we may come back to on
Weird House Cinema someday, especially because it's got its own
really groovy rock theme song.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't think they'd quite calibrated what was
an MST three K film at that point. So at
any rate, if our discussion here perks your interest and
you're not quite ready to watch it without some sort
of riffing structure in place, then I guess you could
check out that Katma episode. But for the most part.
I think this is a film that stands on its

(12:48):
own and is richly enjoyable on its own, and more
to the point, in high visual quality that you're not
going to get with the rip of an old public
access television broadcast.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Now, while we're talking talking about looking up this movie,
I got to say, also is a bizarre coincidence. As
weird of a name as Phase four with the Roman
numeral for ivy is for a movie, there is actually
a totally unrelated other movie called Phase four that came
out in the early two thousands. It looks like some
kind of Dean Caane conspiracy action thriller.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So word of warning, don't get into
much for a hurry when you're saying this, when you
don't want to wind up with the Brian Bosworth film.
If you watch a Brian Bosworth film, you want to
watch Stone Cold from nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
So I've never seen that one, But while we were
chatting about this, you got me to look up stills
from it and Brian Bosworth and Stone Cold is fresh.
I mean, like, God, look at his hair at the sunglasses.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, it's ridiculous. That was and I remember it being
a fun action B movie because you have Lance Hendrickson's
in it. William Forsyth is in it, so it's yeah, yeah,
it's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
It's like a biker fighting movie or something. Okay, Okay,
give me the elevator pitch on phase four before we
hit the trailer audio.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Okay, So what if there was some sort of a
solar conjunction and it caused all ants to suddenly declare
a peace treaty and turn their attention on other species
on the rest of the world. So basically a nature
strikes back, but this time it strikes smart and with
you social precision.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Great premise. Let's hear some audio.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
In the next few moments. We will try to give
you an impression of a new kind of film experience.
If your curiosity is aroused, you are ready for phase four.
How do you fight a force that knows what your
next move will be before you think of it?

Speaker 1 (15:11):
All right, that's a solid trailer right there.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
I agree. And now one of the things we've already
talked about is that, you know, I've had my theory
that really the star of this movie if it is
not ants, you could say it's ants, But if it's
not ants, it's still not humans. It is visual geometry.
It's colors and lines and shapes and design. And I
think that totally makes sense once you realize who the

(15:34):
director of this film was, because I think the director,
Saul Bass, this was his only movie. Am I right
about that?

Speaker 1 (15:40):
This was his only feature length film. Yeah, he did
some other short films and experimental films and some you know,
sort of documentary style shorts, but this is the only
full length film he did.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
And it seems to me very much a graphic designers
or art director's kind of films. It's not really an
actor's film. It's not really very script driven. It's a
movie about showing you pictures. And the style of those
pictures reads very much to me is that mid century
modern design style, the kind of thing that you see

(16:14):
a lot on mad Men or whatever. And I think
that makes sense because I've read that mad Men was
in many ways trying to copy the style of the
director of this film, Saul Bass.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah. Casaal Bass is something of a legend, certainly in
the graphic design field here. He lived nineteen twenty through
nineteen ninety six, and he was for Starters. The title sequence,
title design guy of the day. He crafted title sequences
for major films from the mid nineteen fifties all the

(16:47):
way through the mid nineties. We're talking about the likes
of The Seven Year Itch, Vertico, Psycho, Spartacus, West Side, Story, Seconds,
Broadcast News, Big Good Fellas, Kate, Fear, and Case. I
should also note that, in addition to directing Phase four,
he of course did the title design. You're not gonna

(17:07):
You're not. If you're Saubash, You're not gonna trust that
to anybody else. This is your baby.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
You're doing the titles, and the title design is great.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
It is like you said. The Mad Men is often
credited as kind of an homage to his work and
some of the visual elements there. He did logos as
well for a number of big name companies throughout the sixties, seventies,
and eighties, and I was reading something too about the
longevity of his designs on that front. He also did

(17:34):
some pretty famous movie posters, including the aforementioned films, but
also Stanley Kubrick's The Shining Oh.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
That's interesting. Did Saul Bass do the credit sequence for
Doctor No, the first James Bond movie?

Speaker 1 (17:49):
That's I think he had some connection with the Bond film.
I didn't put it in my notes, but that sounds right,
if not Doctor No. One of the Bond films he
has connections to.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
It seems to kind of fit into his design and Clay.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
I was looking at some of the rejected poster designs
that he did for the Shining stuff, Like he had
one that heavily featured the Hedge Labyrinth the Hedge Maze,
and Kubrick had rejected that one because he didn't want
too much focus to be put on that. But I
was reading a post about this at Farout Magazine dot
co dot uk and it had images from the original

(18:24):
correspondence between Bass and Kubrick, and you can see that
Saul Bass has has signed like the cover letter here,
and he includes this wonderful It's either an illustration or
a stamp of himself as a fish. So it's like
his sort of mild mannered, mustached, bespeckled face here on

(18:48):
a fish's body. It's pretty amusing.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Is that a joke on him being a Bass?

Speaker 1 (18:53):
I guess so. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
His Shining poster is worth looking up because I love
the design. It's like it's just three sort of silhouettes
heading into the opening of a maze, and part of
me wonders if did Kubrick reject this just because he
was in a bad mood and he was being difficult.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Or yeah, maybe so because it's a great poster, like
we said. Phase four was Bess's only full length film,
though he made six other short films, including Why Man
Creates from nineteen sixty eight, which won an Academy Award
for Best Documentary Short Subject. His other films include the
nineteen eighty Robert Redford produced the Solar film promoting solar

(19:33):
energy over fossil fuels. He also made a very interesting
looking nineteen eighty four short titled Quest, based on the
Ray Bradbury story Frost and Fire. I look this one up.
I found like a rip of it on one of
the video streaming sites, but I didn't watch it because
part in part it looks too interesting. I feel like

(19:56):
I need to see this in a like a higher
visual format or something.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
I wonder iful that a disc out there that collects
his smaller works or something.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
I would hope, say how or perhaps there's one of
the blu rays that we allude to later on. For
this film has some extras like that. But it looks
very cool and definitely has that the sort of the
sci fi visual sensibilities that we'll discuss in relation to
this film. I also want to point out that he
often worked with his wife and creative partner, Elaine Bass

(20:26):
on these projects.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Right, So if you've heard us talk in the past
about rub the Fur movies, I would say this is
a really excellent example of one of those. This is
a design first movie, and the pleasure of it is
almost all about texture. It is a celebration of surfaces.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Now, it did have a writer, Mayo Simon born nineteen
twenty eight. This is the screenwriter who wrote the West
World sequel Future World in seventy six. This had Peter
Fonda and Yu'll Brenner in it. Also the nineteen sixty
nine film Marooned starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman. That
one won an Academy Award for Visual Effects. But Simon

(21:07):
went on to create the NBC TV show Man from Atlantis,
which I'd never heard of before, starring Patrick Duffy of
Dallas Fame and Belinda Montgomery, who some of you might
remember as being Doogie Howser's mom.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
I do not remember.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
It looks very fun in a mid like mid seventies
TV sci fi sort of way.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Now we've already said that this is not really an
actor's film. In fact, it's not even really a very
human film. But I guess we should mention some of
the cast members.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Right first and foremost, we have Nigel Davenport playing doctor
Ernest D. Hubbs now Davenport lived nineteen twenty eight through
twenty thirteen, English actor known for nineteen sixty six is
a Man for All Seasons, in which he played the
Duke of Norfolk, and nineteen eighty one's Chariots of Fire,

(22:05):
in which he played Lord Birkenhead. That one had. I've
only seen parts of Chariots of Fire and it was
many years ago. It's got a pretty extensive cast, so
I don't specifically remember where he fit into that, but
of course it's it's a famous movie and has a
tremendous score by evangelists.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Nigel Davenport seems like an actor you call in for gravitos.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
He has a great presence and a great presence in
this where he plays the determined and at times reckless
at times later on the film he basically becomes kind
of an ant focused captain a hab in any ways.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
So he has just a terrible case of mad scientist disease.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yes, so he's perfect casting for this. I can't imagine
anyone else here. He was also in the nineteen seventy
seven adaptation of H. G. Wells The Island of Doctor Moreau.
This is one I fondly remember from catching on TBS
or TNT back in the day. This one started Burt
Lancaster and Michael Yorke. He apparently plays Scrooge's dad in

(23:10):
the nineteen eighty four George C. Scott adaptation of a
Christmas Carol, and he's also in nineteen eighty four's Gray Stoke,
The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, starring Christopher Lambert.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Oh wow, Well who is he? And Greystoke? Is he?
Is he? Is he Tarzan's dad or something?

Speaker 4 (23:28):
You know?

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Gray Stoke is another one that I've only seen parts
of on TV when I was much younger. I've not
I don't think i've watched it in full. I'm I
believe he plays one of the grumpy British guys like generally.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
That's Oh, I think there are a few of Thosese.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, that's generally you're casting for Davenport.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Well, all right, So basically, the two main characters of
this movie are the two scientists who go in to
investigate the ant phenomenon, and so Davenport plays one of them,
he plays Hubs, and then the other scientist is one
named LESCo, who is played by the actor Michael Murphy.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
That's right. A born nineteen thirty eight American actor, best
known for his work with Robert Altman. He did seven
pictures for Altman. They include the likes of Countdown, The
Cold Day in the Park, mash The Original film, Brewster,
McLeod McCabe, and Missus Miller Nashville Kansas City. He also
appeared in Woody Allen's Manhattan, Peter Weir's The Year of

(24:23):
Living Dangerously, and Oliver Stone Salvador. He also worked with
John Sayalis Silver City. He was in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia,
and of course he was in He was in Tim
Burton's Batman Returns. He also mayor. Oh yeah, yeah, he's
the mayor of Gotham City. There. I guess he was
only one term, because I don't think he pops up

(24:44):
to another Batman film. But he was also in a
movie called count yorga vampire. And this is our other
Shocker connection because he was in Wes Craven Shocker.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
He plays Peter Berg's dad in Shocker. He's like a
detect who's on the case trying to chase down Mitch Pelegi.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, so Murphy, Murphy's fine in this. You know, he's
a you know, far younger than many of these other
film appearances that we noted, but yeah, he's he's he's
a numbers guy. He plays what he's a game theorist
and mathematician. Mathematician, Yeah, doesn't really know or care anything

(25:25):
about ants, but it is ultimately like the younger, more
compassionate of the duo here, right.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
I think they do a kind of strange thing where
they have two scientists. One is a like entomologist who
cares deeply about ants, and the other is a mathematician
who doesn't care about ants. And so you would think
that the one who goes ahab and just wants to
destroy all of ants would be the mathematician, but no,
they switch them. It's kind of counterintuitive.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, but if if the other guy, if Davenport's hubs
is Captain a hab Then Murphy's less go is.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, he's kind of along for the ride. Yeah he
decided well. In fact, he even says he was like,
I just wanted to get away for a few weeks.
That's why I took this job. So it's like he
wanted to go see the watery part of.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
The world, all right. We ultimately have a very small
human cast in This is one thing I noticed before
we even watched the film, and has like five or
six people are credited, and the two we covered have
most of the screen time, but there is another there's
a third human character that plays a I don't want
to I guess a crucial role. It's not a great

(26:31):
part because he's kind of a damsel in distress for
a lot of it. But we have the actor Lynn
Frederick playing Kindra Eldridge. Now. Frederick lived nineteen fifty four
through nineteen ninety four, British actor of the seventies who
had a really promising career going died too young. Known
for roles in The Amazing Mister Blunden, Nicholas and Alexandria,

(26:54):
and The Prisoner of Zenda. She was also in the
nineteen seventy two horror film Vampire Circus.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
I didn't realize she was in Nicholas and Alexandra. I
got to look that up. I see she was in.
That's a movie where I also very much appreciate the textures.
There's some really good sets and locations in it.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, I've heard you talk about that one before. Basically,
she is what we'll discuss like. She's an innocent human
who gets swept into this ant takeover drama. She has
a couple of grandparents that are are doomed, and we'll
discuss their doom in a bit. But the actor who

(27:31):
plays Grandma Grandma Eldridge in this is the actor Helen Horton,
who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand and seven.
She pops up in Superman three, did a lot of
TV work. But she's also the voice of Mother from
nineteen seventy nine's Alien.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Now, this is funny because I didn't remember Mother in Alien.
This is the name of the computer. Is the computer
that controls everything. I only remember Dallas communicating with Mother
through like a command line on a computer screen, though
maybe Mother has a voice. When there's like a self
destruct countdown on the ship or something.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
I think that is it. Yeah, okay, where Mother's given
the countdown and Ripley is trying to get out of
there with.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
A cat, right right, But I don't know. Maybe next
time I watch Alien, I'll got to keep I'll keep
an ear out for Helen Horton, who in this movie
just plays like suspicious Grandma. It's Mildred is just not
very happy about the government telling them that they need
to flee the ant menace.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
All right, let's talk a little bit about the music
on this one. Normally we highlight a single individual that's involved,
but this time, like three different individuals at least are
worth noting here. So, first of all, Brian Gascoigne is
credited with the music. Born nineteen forty three, British composer
and musician who also scored the Emerald Forrest in nineteen

(28:47):
eighty five and worked in the music department on such
films as Godsford Park. He did piano on that, Harry
Potter and The Goblet of Fire. He did keyboards and
synthesizer on that. He did synthesizers on Cherry two thousand
and most exciting of all, at least to me, he
was also in the music department on Jim Henson's nineteen

(29:08):
eighty two masterpiece The Dark Crystal. I'm a huge fan
of that film, and I think the music for that
movie is tremendous. The score was composed by Trevor Jones,
but Gascoyinn provided quote synthesized electronic sounds. So I'm guessing
it was like, Okay, the crystal's doing something. We need
to get gas coin in here to start tickling the synth.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
What is the sound of draining essence?

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Now we also have Desmond brisco on this who lived
nineteen twenty five through two thousand and six. He's credited
as Composer Additional Electronic Music, a British composer and sound engineer,
co founder of the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Now this
is the group that included pioneering electronic artist Delia Derbyshire,

(29:54):
who lived nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and one.
Oh yeah, yeah, She's the one who provided the electronic
arrangement of the original Doctor Who theme and ultimately influenced
many future big names and electronic music.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
So I've said on the show before that I am
not a hoovey and I don't really know much Doctor Who,
but when I did very first try to watch a
few episodes, the main thing that actually hooked me about
it more than the show itself was the theme song.
I got briefly obsessed with the theme music and with
the different versions of it from over the years, and
ended up going on the steep dive about Delia Derbyshire

(30:28):
and like how she created it with I guess it
was analog tape effects at the time, right, Yeah, yeah,
I mean this, yeah, digital manipulation, and yeah, what a
great piece of classic electronic and tape effects music.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
And then on one more individual I want to mention
in reference to Phase four, and that is Stomu Yamashta,
who is credited with composer Montage Music. Born nineteen forty
seven Japanese percussionist, keyboardist and composer known for helping to
fuse traditional Japanese percuss of music with Western prog rock.

(31:02):
In the sixties and seventies. He was a member of
the supergroup Go alongside such names as Steve Winwood, best
known for the track Higher Love, but also German electronic
music pioneer Klaus Schultz, of whom I'm a big fan.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Oh I don't know if I know him.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Oh, you would dig out. I'll have to send you
some stuff after we record, because Claus Schultz put out
some wonderful material. Now, Yamashta, on his own scored the
nineteen seventy six David Bowie sci fi film The Man
Who Fell to Earth, as well as nineteen eighty two's Tempest,
starring John Cassavetti's Susan Sarandon, Molly Ringwald, and Roald Julia.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Now this is a movie where I don't think there
was ever like a melody from the score that stuck
with me. But in general I loved the sound design
and the ambient electronic music.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, this is a film that's very concerned with computers
and computer technology and all that computer technology is also
scene is and very much plot wise as a way
of translating the way of the ant in a way
that ants and humans might communicate. So it uses electronic
music well in providing a sense of the cosmic and
other worldly and even like the sense of the cosmic

(32:14):
and other worldly to be found in the mind of
the ants. There are a few places where it gets
a little melodic and traditional, almost as if somebody like
the producers were like, hey, what are you doing here?
Saw this is a human movie for humans, and this
scene has humans doing human stuff. Let's get some human
music in here. But otherwise, yeah, it's pretty great. Lots

(32:37):
of electronic touches. There are stretches without music, but those
tend to revolve around one of two soundscapes I found,
either windswept desert or the insides of their spaceship like
research station that also has a supercomputer. There, so lots
of computer noises.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
Oh, in fair warning, I wouldn't normally mention this, but
there was one part of like, if you're listening with
like loud headphones or something, there is one segment of
this movie where for like several minutes they start making
this excruciating high pitch noise. Yeah, I imagine. Do you
know the part I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Rob Yes, yeah, absolutely, Because I was watching it with
the sound up, part of it with the sound up
while my wife was trying to work like the next dream,
and I was a little I was like, oh, this
is getting a bit much. I have to plug in
the headphones for this.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yeah. So if you go watch it yourself, just be wary,
keep your finger on the volume button.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
All right, let's get into the plot of this baby.
We have to mention this is a movie that is
not afraid to narrate.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
No, no, Yeah, there is plenty of voiceover narrate near
In fact, I wonder if there is just if you
go by word count, I wonder if there's more voiceover
narration than there is dialogue.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Probably, So you know, I have to be one. Anytime
I think about narration and film, I always go back
to like various threads I would read and arguments about
really Scott's Blade Runner, where people are like, get that
narration out of here, narration in a film by god,
And I was always like, I kind of like the narration.
What's wrong with the narration? Give me that?

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah. I don't have strong general feelings about it one
way or another. You know, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Yeah, it can be good, it can be bad. It
can also help along a movie that maybe you know,
it just needs a little narration help and letting you
know what's supposed to be going on.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
Well. Yeah, And also in this movie, without the narration,
you would either need to make it way more dialogue
heavy and add totally different types of characters and stuff,
or you just got to have the narration in there,
because they begin by explaining the whole situation. The opening
narration includes shots of space where you're seeing these planets

(34:47):
and stars, apparently a line that they're very vague about
what's going on, but in a way that I found
pleasing rather than frustrating. I think some people might be
more frustrated, but they don't say exactly what's going on.
But there's so some kind of weird astronomical event, and
this astronomical event gets scientists and mystics alike very excited,

(35:08):
but nobody knows what it means except you are told
that there's a researcher named Ernest Hubbs who documents that
right after this astronomical event, ants around the world start
doing things that ants don't do. It says that they're meeting, communicating,
making decisions, again being very vague about what that means,

(35:30):
but I guess we'll find out more as the movie
goes on. And while the narration explains the situation, we
get to watch this beautiful ballet of ants running around
in tunnels, fighting, reproducing, doing all kinds of things. And
I want to say, also that the effects and photography
in this opening ant ballet are just wonderful. There were

(35:51):
plenty of parts where I couldn't tell if I was
looking at real ants or at special effects. Even some
of the close ups that were obviously puppets look very good.
Of the textured surfaces, the exoskeleton, the eye, the sand grains,
the antennae. At this point I immediately felt like we
were in very good hands as far as the look
and design of the movie was going. Absolutely but then

(36:14):
we get tons more voice over narration. I started transcribing it,
but I think later on I realized, like, I don't
need to read all of this verbatim, but essentially there
is a different voice coming in that we will later
find out as doctor Hubbs, and he's dictating some kind
of government memorandum. He's issuing a MIMO to like the
biocontrol division of some kind of agency, and he is

(36:37):
explaining alarming reports of something going on in the American Southwest.
He says that the traditional antagonisms between different ant species
have come to a dramatic halt, and he says, at
the same time, there has been an apparent disappearance of
those insects which prey on ants, specifically mantises, beetles, millipedes,

(36:58):
and spiders. And he says that if this goes on,
we're going to see some real booms in ant populations.
And then meanwhile, we see beautiful time lapse footage of
ants swarming over and devouring a big tarantula, and he
ends up offering in this MIMO a proposal. He's like, look,
what we've got to do is a full scale attack

(37:19):
on the ants, otherwise they're going to represent a threat
to all other life forms in the area. So we
need to build an experiment station out near ant ground zero.
And he says he needs more personnel and needs another
researcher to join him. So the leader here is going
to be this ant researcher Hubs, but he also requests
somebody named j. R. LESCo, who is a senior scientist

(37:44):
who is a qualified information specialist with cryptological background.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, and so we're already getting the idea that there's
going to be some sort of communication aspect to this study,
this project, which again seems to be a out understanding
and combating ants who have declared like an ant wide
peace treaty and are turning their attention to other things

(38:10):
in a way that makes us feel threatened. And it
seems like Hubbs has just been granted an enormous budget
for this project, but also, as we'll find out, a
very limited window in which to operate.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, it's funny. So they build him a geodesic dome
out in the desert that's full of the world's most
sophisticated technology, and it's got supercomputers and stuff in in
nineteen seventy four. But he's also constantly getting calls on
the radio that are like, they're like, can you hurry
this up? You know, we don't have enough budget to
fund you for two more days.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, well maybe, I mean, maybe it's on hubs, Like,
maybe you should have scaled down on the facilities here.
Maybe you didn't need this what seems like a spaceship,
you know, it feels like it should be on the
surface of Mars, not in the wedd of the Arizona desert.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
We've only got these super computers rented through Friday. After
that there are late fees. Well anyway, so that's the setup,
and then we get to the actual narrative part of
the film. So we see a car blasting through the desert,
kicking up clouds of dust from the road, and it
goes past signs for a golf course and a country club,
and then a sign that says welcome to Paradise City.

(39:20):
But it's one of those comedic, ironic reveals because when
you peel back from all those signs, it's just a
cursed land of emptiness and dust.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah. I think they refer to it as another desert
development that didn't develop.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Right. It's some half built houses and a grid of
dirt roads. But when they go down to the end
of the longest of the dirt roads, we see something
very strange. And in the middle of the nothingness there
is this grove of seven pillars, just pillars reaching straight
up out of the ground like Greek columns. And so

(39:56):
they drive up and park the car and out hop
a couple of guys. These would be our protagonist again.
This is Nigel Davenport is doctor Hubbs and Michael Murphy
is doctor LESCo. And I immediately noticed some very interesting
color coating. This was another thing that tipped me off
early how sort of visual and design oriented this movie
would be. Because Rob, I don't know if you noticed

(40:18):
the same thing, but The color coating of the wardrobes
of the two actors is so starkly different. LESCo is
just blue, blue blue. He's blue jeans, blue shirt, blue jacket,
and blue hat, whereas Hubbs is all these earth tones
and earth energy. So he's wearing khaki pants, a brown jacket,

(40:39):
he's got long hair and a dark beard, and he's
carrying a staff or stick of some kind. Yeah, so
I was immediately wondering what's going on with this? It
again seems like a graphic designer's touch. But is LESCo
supposed to be the sky while Hubbs is the earth?
Or is it a blue wizard in ratagas the brown thing.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
I really noticed this as much when I was watching it,
but I guess I was focusing more on the environment
they're in, which is pretty brilliant, because this is the
place where where human organization and human development has the
wave has crashed and fallen back. It is where human
development has failed, but it is where this new sign

(41:21):
of ant civilization has sprung forth right.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
And so they walk around in these half built or
abandoned houses, and LESCo asks if there are any dead
bodies out here, and Nigel Davenport says, no, the population
moved itself out days ago. And then they start talking
about their background, and we learned that LESCo has achieved
scientific fame by applying game theory to the language of

(41:47):
killer whales, and Hubs is very intrigued by this. He
wants to know, did you ever actually make contact with
a whale? And LESCo says, only with the emotionally disturbed ones.
And Hub is like, well, how did you determine that?
And LESCo says, well, we talked. I think he's supposed
to be kidding, but they never clarify this.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah, I think it's math nerdery. And also, this is
the point in the movie where if you don't know
anything about it, you can easily imagine we're going in
the direction of like a computer literally translates what ants
are saying in some sort of a computer voice, in
the same way that you have films where this is
happening with dolphins and other creatures. But and this is

(42:28):
a film that is about communication or attempts at communication
between two drastically different intelligent species. But it does so
in very clever ways that I think really like takes
the question seriously and takes the you know, the gulf
between different you know, possibly evolved intelligences, the gulf between them,

(42:51):
and how difficult it would be like for one side
to even realize the other side is intelligent.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah, that's something I really liked about this movie is
that it it takes the confusing nature of cross species
communication seriously. Like there's a great scene I want to
talk about later that involves communication between humans and ants
and how it's hard to understand what it means. But anyway,

(43:22):
here at the beginning, it's clear that LESCo does not
see himself as a biologist or a zoologist or somebody
who cares about or understands animals. He says, I'm strictly
a pencil and paper guy. The two scientists approach the
Seven Pillars and Rob, how would you describe these pillars?
I love this feature of the movie. And they won't
be the last pillars we see.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yeah, they're pretty great because they're monolithic, but they don't
you know, they're not as perfect as say the monolith
from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey, though you
can't help but imagine some of that DNA is present there.
I mean, certainly the this is a film that exists,
you know, in the ultimately in the very long shadow

(44:06):
of two thousand and one, a space Odyssey. But these
feel they feel very organic. They're reminiscent of termite mound
cooling towers. They have these little crevices towards the top
that feel like they're intended to do something with the air.
It's the kind of thing that you'd think an ant
researcher would be very interested in, but they ultimately don't

(44:26):
seem to investigate that much. But yeah, they feel like
they are at this place where where organic animal construction
and human construction meets and the distinction becomes blurred, right.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
I mean it's the angles I think that make them unusual.
I mean, if they were just sort of rounded pillars,
you might think, well, those are very tall and strange,
but they're more like termite mounds. It's the fact that
they have like a diamond shape with sharp angles that
makes it look like, oh, this shouldn't be something ants
are doing.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, it looks very alien and cool.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Oh and of course we see in close ups that
ants are looking looking out the scientists through crevices in
the pillars. So anyway, after this, they go to a
farm where they find some dead sheep, and there are
shots of them walking through the tall grass that's rippling
in the wind. It's very elegant. But they eventually come
across a crop circle with geometric designs inside it.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
There's like a.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Diamond in the middle and then a ring around the outside,
and Hubs is talking about how there are some ant
species that will attack anything that threatens their food supply,
and so what do these patterns in the field represent. Well,
it's not clear yet, and in fact, I don't know
if it ever becomes clear. It's just like the ants
make this pattern in the field for some reason, and.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
I don't even think our characters perhaps realize that pattern
is there. This is like the privileged information that is
for the viewer. Yeah, there's no indication that they notice
that they are standing in the midst of this strange
crop circle. Right.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
And I will say, by the way, I don't know
if this is true, but I just read briefly on
the internet some people alleging that this film may have
inspired some of the people who made crop circles, and
then said that they were made by aliens because apparently
this pre date some of the big crop circle craze.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Huh, I didn't realize that. I did read somewhere that
this is arguably the first appearance of a crop circle
in a film, But that would be interesting, and certainly
it would match up with what we know about about
crop circles in there. They're very human origin.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah, apparently there are a few reports of things sort
of like crop circles that date to before the seventies,
but I think the real crop circle craze started sometime
in the mid to late seventies. That's when it really
took off. Well anyway. So they're going around this farm
that still does have a few people in it, and
we meet a farmer named mister Eldridge. I don't think

(46:46):
we ever learned his first name, and he's explaining a
fuel ditch trap for ants, Like they dig a big
moat around the farmhouse and fill it with gasoline or something.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a crazy sounding planned. They're like, yeah,
if they aunt get across the water, we'll just light
this troth of a fuel on fire and then that'll
do him, and then we'll just keep this troth of
fire going for the rest of our lives.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
Yeah. So the family is mister Eldridge, and then his
wife Mildred Eldridge, who is skeptical of these scientists who
have arrived to tell them they're in danger. And their
granddaughter Kendra Eldridge, who she kind of rides horses and waves.
And then there's another guy named Cleat, who I guess
is their aunt burning guy. It's like, oh, you got

(47:37):
an aunt burning guy. Yeah, his name's Cleat. Yeah, I'll
put you in touch.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah. But Kindra is the main character again, this is
the character played by Lynn Frederick spoiler. She's the only
one that is going to survive for any length of
time here.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Right, But anyway, Hubbs tells them they're going to have
to evacuate in a few days for their own protection.
Mildred is not happy about that, but strangely, mister Eldridge
is like, hey, listen to them, it's for our own protection.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
So that was Phase one, and then we get a
transition where we see phase two. It's not clear what
has changed, but that's what we get.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, And that's the interesting thing about this film, Like
the title phase four is not referring to most of
the film, Like Phase four is the place we are
going to arrive at at the end of the film.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Right, So the next thing we do is we go
to the two scientists in their self contained research facility,
which is a geodesic dome with an antenna tower next
to it and then a bunch of little nodes coming
off of it, like these pipes leading out to these
little spheres planted out in the perimeter around the geodesic dome,
which we later learned are for spraying beautiful poison.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yes, of which they have. Do they have just two
colors or are there three colors?

Speaker 3 (48:49):
There are only two we learn about that there may
be others.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
There's yellow and there's blood.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
So the scientists are inside doing experiments. There are lots
of machines that make beeping and worrying noises, sometimes a
big air pressure hiss as well. And this might sound
kind of hard to believe, but I believe. I think
there are several just extremely pleasurable shots of Michael Murphy
just flipping lots of switches.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Yeah, yeah, we're not exactly sure what he's doing here necessarily,
but you have that nice computer electronic ambiance going on
in the background, and he's very chill about this. Yeah,
it's a nice vibe. Now, I love, love, love this
research facility they have here. In general, I love it
when researchers and or adventurers in a film are just

(49:34):
drastically technologically over prepared for a mission, overfunded as well,
perhaps here. I love it when it's as simple as
an antarctic research facility or an underwater station that just
happens to have a flamethrower on hand. I also love
it when it's an eight mission into the jungle and
you bring along tripod, gun drones and your own talking

(49:56):
techno ape.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
It's congo.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
You have congo, And I guess that's the thing too.
It's like, you know, it's very criteny, and this film
does feel very Crichtony in many respects. Well, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Don't want to say it's ripping it off, but I
say I think there are some very clear parallels between
this movie and the Andrama to Strain, Michael Crichton's first
big novel, which is also about a group of scientists
that go into a self contained facility in the American
Southwest in order to fight some kind of novel biological
menace that has been caused by an astronomical event. So

(50:29):
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit of inspiration.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Going on there that would make sense. Yeah, but again,
what we have here is a weird station that seems
like it's built for the surface of Mars, full of supercomputers,
NASA style living conditions, you know, like this wonderful scene
where they're picking out what kind of food they're going
to eat, or they're getting some coffee or something, and
it's like a spaceship, but not only a spaceship. A

(50:52):
spaceship that has been engineered to stand is like the
last redoubt against the ant onslaught, and yet it is
not one hundred percent ant proof, though there seem to
be measures taken to try and make it so. Like
there's essentially like a decontamination airlock that you have to
get nude for. They're the poison sprayers with two different

(51:13):
flavors that we mentioned.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
It's great, and there's some drama inside about cost overruns
that we alluded to earlier, Like there's a guy on
the radio who's calling hubs and being like, hey, you
got to speed up your research. We're running out of
money here.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
And I guess this is important too, to not like
one of the things that they keep driving home. I
think with the human interaction is that ants have it
all together. Not only previously they did, you know, species
to species, or a colony to colony in some cases,
and super colonies. But now all ant kind is one
is on the same page. They are working in unison. Meanwhile,

(51:50):
none of our humans can get along completely. They all
have different ideas and different views. You know, our two
researchers are arguing with each other. They're having conflicts ultimately
with the other human character and with these people on
the phone, right.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
But the way they come up with to speed up
the research, by the way, is hilarious because what it
means is, Okay, we got to get the ants to
do something. So Hubbs is like, well, I guess I'll
go blow up these towers in the desert with a
handheld grenade launcher.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yes, and yeah, we have to stress that we're talking again,
like a handheld grenade launcher like the one Arnold has
in Terminator too. He just casually uses it to blow
up all the ant monoliths that are there, which which
which is interesting too because later on, like the voice

(52:39):
on the phone is like, you should try destroying one
of the monoliths to see if you can provoke a reaction.
He didn't. He didn't mess around. He just blows them
all up. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Well, I think he's already done it. When they suggest that,
he's like, oh, I'll think about it, okay.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
Uh yeah, And I just again it comes back to
the fact that this grenade launcher I'm I'm assuming or
hoping it is Slash, was illegal to actually own one
of these that fires actual grenades and not flares. So
I guess it is part of the specialized kit that
he requested and was approved for use in this research experiment.

(53:14):
So that means it has its like its own shelf
in the in the research station, or maybe it's in
as it's mounted behind glass with a sign that reads
break if studied. Dandelion is rapidly approaching.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yeah, but we just see him out there in the
middle of the road. He's standing there like like Mill
Gibson and the Road Warrior poster with the thing. He's
just shooting these ant colonies.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Yeah, he's got a whole ammunition box of grenades and
he's just letting it, letting the monolithts happen.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
But anyway, so from this they do learn some things
because LESCo figures out that the ants are communicating by
sound that he's like, they're talking to each other, and
he starts recording the sounds they're making and trying to
decode it and understand their language in anyway, so we
knew this was coming. Later that night, the ants apparently
attack the Eldridge farm. They're the only other humans left around,

(54:06):
and the ants set upon them. So they start attacking
the horse out in the field, and then the fire
trap is triggered, and then the ants swarm the house
and then the humans have to flee in a truck,
and Mildred is all like they warned us, and then
I think ants attack the truck and attack inside the truck.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Yeah, yeah, they're they're They're suddenly inside they're crawling in
Grandpa's hair. There's the results in a wreck, and so
they're fleeing on foot at this point towards the research
facility and towards the buildings, you know, the remains of
this housing development.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
They're still there, right, So they basically get to the
research facility, but they're attacked by ants when they get
out of the truck, and at the same time LESCo
is showing off his work to Hubs on decoding the
ant language. And while he's doing that, ants cut the
power to the facility. They cut the power, man, how

(55:00):
can they cut the power? They're animals, but they do,
and the so Hubs responds by spraying the ants outside
with this gorgeous yellow poison that it's like coming out
of these spheres. It's weird to say it's beautiful, but
it is beautiful. And they call the poison yellow. It's
just called the yellow. Yes, And I think again, it

(55:20):
makes a lot of sense for this movie to call
its poison, to not have a chemical name, to not
let it have a brand name. It's just the yellow,
and that indicates like that color and lines reign supreme
in the world A phase four.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Yeah, absolutely, But the poison defense here it seems to work.
In fact, it works a little too well.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
Right, So it kills most of the ants, though some
ants get away, and then meanwhile they come out the
next morning, and so the two scientists are in these
environment suits they look like they're like, you know, like
eva suits in space, and they go out to see
that they're spraying of the poison has killed the people
who came from the farm. It killed Mildred and mister

(56:01):
Eldridge and Cleat.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, it killed grandma and grandpa. But as it turns out,
as we find out in a bit, Kindre is fine.
She was actually in the basement of one of those houses.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Right, she hid in the cellar.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
But also there you start getting some hints that things
are going in a weird direction because Hubbs is trying
to figure out what the ants did to sabotage their
generator in the truck, and meanwhile less Goo's like, there
are dead people, and then Hubbs is like, oh, yes,
a tragedy. But he so you're starting to get the

(56:40):
sense that maybe he's a little disconnected from the value
of human life. But anyway, he says, okay, so I
think the yellow should hold its potency for three or
four days, which was a great phrase. I thought, Oh,
but then there's something very rare. So when they find Cleat,
remember the ant burning guy. So they find Cleat and
his hand is tightly closed and they pry it open

(57:02):
with a metal rod, and it has three symmetrical holes
in the palm of the hand like dots, and then
we see ants crawling out of the holes.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah, this is This really gave me the willies watching this.
This is how you know. The makeup effects that they
did on this are are really convincing. They really feel
like they are holes in a hand, and we get
close ups and usually like an extreme close up on
an effect like this will reveal the flaws and the design,
but this one just makes me feel more and more

(57:33):
like I'm looking at three holes in a human hand
with an ant crawling out of it. So yeah, if
you have the if you have the fear of holes,
I would maybe make sure you're ready to fast forward
through this scene. There's also an earlier scene where they're
looking at a hole in like the neck of a sheep.
She that also gave me the willies.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Agreed, and again the effects look great. Oh but also,
like we said, they discovered that Kindra survived with the storm,
so she takes refuge with the scientists inside the geodesic
dome and we get a scene where Hubbs is explaining
the beauty of ants. He's like, so defenseless in the individual,
so powerful in the mass. But here we start getting

(58:10):
some real conflict between LESCo and Hubbs, because LESCo quite
sensibly wants to call a helicopter to evacuate Kindre to
safety while they keep fighting the ant menace, and Hubbs
is against it. He's like, I think the bureaucrats would
be rather unhappy to learn of our casualties.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Yeah, because I mean to to Lesco's point, two people
have died. Three people have died. Two of them were
killed seemingly by the experiment itself. Now they have this
poor woman who needs to be taken to safety. Yeah,
but Hubbs is like, I don't know if we want
to really mess up the experiment for this.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
We don't want to ask you exactly. Yeah. So Hubbs
is he's trending into mad scientist mode, and it helps
that while saying all this stuff, he's in the middle
of staging an experiment where he puts ants in a
maze with a bunch of praying mantises, and eventually he's
LESCo gets him to promise that he will call the
helicopter to come collect Kindra, but he's obviously lying.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Yeah there is. There are no helicopters in this movie,
never show uh.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
But then at some point Kendrick gets mad while staring
at an ant. She's like, ants killed my horse, and
she smashes a bunch of the glass lab equipment, which
sends ants everywhere inside the lab. Hubbs gets bitten by
one of them before he can seal the room and
gass it to kill all the ants.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, this is another one of those scenes. It really
feels like it was. It was written and filmed by
ants like playing you know, okay, loose understanding of how
humans work in accurate.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Yes, the human motivations are Yeah. The ants are doing
most of the acting here, yes.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
But from there we move on to some ant business.
It's back to like basically, you know, this is a game.
It is one side moves in the on the other
side moves, and now it is the ant's turn.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Right, So what the ants do? I'm not sure I
understood this scene right. Maybe you can correct me if
you've got a different impression. What it looks like is
happening is that there's this sequence of ants repeatedly trying
to move a wod of some yellow white material through
the tunnels. And I think the wad is supposed to
be the poison, the yellow.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Yeah, yeah, and like one will die or become exhausted,
probably die, pass it on to another ant, and that
ant will keep journeying with the poison.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Right, so we see this handoff. It's a relay of
the poison kills one ant, the next ant takes it
along on the journey, eventually bringing it, I think, to
the queen, and then the queen like sniffs the poison
and breathes heavily while examining it, and then starts to
give birth to a yellow green object like strudes. It

(01:00:52):
seems to be an egg that has been infused with
the spirit of the yellow.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Yeah, and this is one of those scenes where, Yeah,
if you're going to come in and you're going to
be very critical about everything, you're going to say, is
this something ants can do? Is what's going on here?
And I think, you know, this is a movie that
is largely takes the viewpoint of like, Look, if I
explained it to you, I'd probably get it really wrong
and it would feel kind of dumb. But if you're
just viewing it, if you just kind of like breathe

(01:01:20):
it in, take in the colors, then everything's going to
be fine.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Right, So from here the arms race continues. The ants
after this build a series of geometric pillars right outside
the geodesic dome. And the scientists are like, what are
they doing? What is this? And we discovered that they
have built solar reflectors to direct beams of sunlight at
the dome and this immediately starts bringing up the temperature

(01:01:48):
in the lab above the level where the computers can
tolerate it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Yeah, I love it. They ants did it all in
one night, reflective monoliths to fry the humans and perhaps
more importantly, to overheat their their delicate thinking machine. It's
the sort of heat based warfare that is actually used specifically,
to my knowledge, by bees. Now, bees do not construct
monoliths to fry supercomputers, but they will swarm around an

(01:02:15):
invader and overheat it with their own their own body heat.
So it's that alone makes this feel like a I
mean a speculative leap, certainly, but kind of a believable
tactic that you might conceivably have some sort of advanced
ants us right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
Right, So that's their new offense, but also the ants
of a new defense, because the researchers see that, like,
the ants have started a new generation of workers that
are yellow like the poison and hubs says, we challenge
them with yellow chemistry, they respond with yellow creatures. So
it seems, you know, the ants are adapting to the
poisons they're using, and Hub says, we can try the blue,

(01:02:56):
of course, but they'd only adapt again. Yeah yeah, so
of course mad scientists progression. Hubs starts talking monologuing about
how he believes the ants or a new type of intelligence,
one that can be harnessed and educated by humans. Oh yeah,
and he's like, oh, yeah, I didn't call the helicopter,
so LESCo tries to call, but when he goes to

(01:03:17):
flip the switch on the radio, it shorts out, and
you know, sparks go all over the place, and we
find that the circuit board OHO is covered in ants
that have sacrificed their bodies to short out the electronics.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Yeah, and they managed to get in here.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Yeah, they've penetrated the perimeter. They're sabotaging equipment, and then
there's this ensuing battle. They're fighting a war over like
the air conditioning. The ants are trying to burn out
the lab computers and the humans are trying to keep
the environment cool. And so there's this cool great stuff,
like shots of an ant crawling all the way down
a spiraling copper coil inside the air conditioning units and LESCo,

(01:03:53):
on the other hand, tries to create a sonic weapon
to broadcast at the ants, accepted as excruciating to humans
and cracks all the glass and the sonic weapon works.
It does shatter and crumble the pillars. But then we
also get ants attacking, continuing to attack the electric wires
inside the facility, and there's a great scene of ant revenge.

(01:04:15):
I mean, this movie really does kind of have ant characters,
Like you can see them fighting their side of the
battle too, because like some of the mantises from the
experiments have gotten loose and they're trying to prey on
ants as they're doing their business. But there's some ant
revenge when an ant grabs a praying mantis's leg and
pulls it into a circuit board and it is fried.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yeah. I mean, how often do you see a bug
movie with two bugs battling it out like actual bugs
in miniature in this artificial set like this must have
been quite a challenge to put together.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
Now, Hubbs is not doing well because of the venomous
ant bite on his hand, and we get some narration
where he says, I'm taking one of my less painful
moments to record these notes. Our equipment only functions for
a few hours at LESCo believes we're being allowed this
time for some purpose, a hypothesis I do not share.
If this were so, it would raise questions I had

(01:05:09):
not considered. And here's a really cool part where LESCo
tries sending a message to the ants. It's an audio message,
but he uses it to encode because he figures out
that the ants have a code that they communicate in
about directions, and so he can send them images. And
so he sends them an image of a square, reasoning

(01:05:29):
I didn't fully make the connection here, but I think
it's something about geometry. He says, like, mathematics is the
universal language among intelligent creatures. If there's intelligence there, I
want it to know there's intelligence here. So he sends
it a square.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Yeah. I love this because you know it's getting to
the I buy into this idea in mathematics is going
to be the universal language that on some level the
ants understand it, we understand it. And I really love
this idea that like, the ants might not realize that
we are intelligent two, you know, they could just be
blind to this fact. And how do we possibly communicate

(01:06:05):
with ants and let them know this, but things.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Get progressively worse inside the dome. There's a creepy scene
where Kendra is menaced by ants while she's sleeping. She
sees an ant on her pillow and says, go away,
please go away, and then hubbs, possibly because of his
venomous ant bite, or possibly from the interaction of that
bite with his pre existing mad scientist disease. He starts

(01:06:30):
going nuts and smashing things, trying to kill ants he
sees or believes he sees. He gets a really bad
case of I attached a picture for you to look
at here, Rob kind of mad scientist eyes like. He
looks like he's about to start talking about how he
should have won a Nobel prize but the narrow minded
academics stole it from him. And he thinks he kills

(01:06:51):
an ant, but I can't tell if he actually did.
He just sort of pulls back a bloody hand. I'm
not sure he had.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Here's some shattered glass on the floor and he manages
his hand up. We don't see an end. Hey, then
his Phase three buddy, Yeah, yep, We're getting down to
the final of the This is the pinultimate phase. Yeah.
Phase four is going to really blow you away. And
this is this is where we're getting there.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
So we see LESCo and Hubbs in their bunks, and
Lesco's wondering, why don't they kill us? You know, they
roast us in here all day and then they dare
us to come out at night. Why why do they
Why do they play these games? Why don't they just
kill us? Now? What do they want? And Hubbs talks
about ant specialization. He says, you know, ants are organized
into roles by the queen in order to keep her alive.

(01:07:34):
He says, she's at the center. It is she who
speaks if she were to die, and then they hash
out their different views about what should be done next,
how to proceed. Hubbs thinks, let's locate the queen and killer.
That's our only way, and LESCo says, ants have all
the cards. The only way to survive is to convince
them that we're worth keeping alive.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
M It is interesting here where you know Hubbs and
focusing more and more on the queen, and so he
ends up focusing more and more on the individual as
opposed to the group, whereas I think LESCo still seems
to be more of the mindset it's like a it's
the mass we need to communicate with. So I feel
like the focus on the individual is perhaps just more

(01:08:17):
a part of Hubbs's madness.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
Right, and oh and here's a scene I did love.
So the ants want to communicate that LESCo transmitted the
square to them earlier. They transmit back. They make vocalizations
that the computer can interpret and it prints what they say.
And what they say is in response to the square.
They say, a circle with a dot in it. What
does that mean?

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Yeah, they start to saying, well, maybe that's here. It's
a map. They want something in here. We should look
around and see if we find it. And that's pretty
great because Kindra is suddenly like, oh, they must mean me,
because I smashed an ant in the research room earlier.
I will go out into the wild without my shoes on, rightady,
to sacrifice herself for these scientists.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Yes, She's like, the ants want me, and if I go,
I commit aunt suicide. Then the scientists will get away,
all right, rub there's a picture I included here, not
because anything interesting is going on. It's just Hubbs sitting
at a desk. But I included it because I don't
know what these boxes are, but it looks like he
has several sticks of butter sitting on the console in

(01:09:22):
front of him.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
It does look like it. There's also a scene where
he because basically he's convinced, I got to go out
and kill the queen. They I what they where? They
think the mound is where the queen can be found.
And he goes to get the grenade launcher out again,
but there are no grenades left because he used all
of them to blow up the monoliths earlier.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Why why, buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
So he's gonna have to do it the old fashioned way.
He's gonna have to take a canister of the blue
out there and poison his way across there the ant
dominated waste plant and make his way to the queen
and try and poison her there. That seems to be
the plan.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
But Hubbs goes out to attack the queen, and so
Kindra has already gone out to sacrifice herself to the ants,
and we see her just sort of disappear. Hubbs goes
out and falls into a pit trap. The ants construct
a pit trap. This is amazing connection to the core
episode we did.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Yeah, yeah, we were talking about pit traps and why
we don't like studies about why we don't see more
pit traps in nature. You know, how about how ultimately
a pit trap is is easy to build, it doesn't
require that much energy. And we talk about ants potentially
building traps as well. And so because of all that,
and then having sort of developed a vague interest in

(01:10:36):
this film based on our previous episode about ants potentially
building traps, to suddenly be hit with this scene, I
think I exclaimed aloud. It was just it's such a shock.
It's a great sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
Yeah, it is. And of course he's immediately swarmed by ants.
He gets landed puranaed by the ant, and so now
it's just down to LESCo Is Michael Murphy. He's like,
I gotta do it. So he delivers this model that's
full of regret. He says, like, I would still like
to believe that if we'd had more time, we could
have come to an understanding, some rational accommodation of interest,

(01:11:08):
some agreement. But that's not the way it's going to be.
So he suits up, just starts spraying the blue everywhere,
and finally he's come around to Hub's position. He's like,
we only have one chance. We got to assassinate the queen.
So he goes up to the mound where the queen
is supposed to be. But then I guess there's sort
of another pit trap because he's as he's trying to

(01:11:28):
go in, he ends up sliding and he falls in.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Oh but then we should mention on the way to
the mound, like he's having all sorts of mishaps. He
starts out in his full protective suit, but oh right,
he like falls and breaks the glass. Ants get into
the mask and are biting his face, and so by
the time he gets here he has no protective gear
on it all, he has no shoes on it. All right,
it's and we have the narration of, you know, of

(01:11:53):
just how worn out and on the end of things
he is.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
But then here we get to the ending, and the
ending is so weird, and I love this, and there
are a couple of things I think we can say
about what the ending could have been also. But in
the end he goes down in to find the queen,
and instead of finding the queen, he finds a room
with a with a like a rectangular doorway as if
it was built for humans inside the ant mound, and

(01:12:20):
inside this room Buried underneath the sand is Kendra, who
appears to be maybe still alive or in some suspended
animation state, and Michael Murphy sort of surrenders to the
ants and he knows that the ants have won and
they're going to keep winning, and essentially that the ants
are going to be the new rulers of the Earth,

(01:12:41):
but they're not going to be killed. The ants have
some kind of plans for them, and he's just ready
to obey.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Yeah, it is a it's a great like suddenly just
very trippy and psychedelic sequence, you know, with images of
a setting a rising sun. I guess ultimately it's supposed
to be rising the I feel like they might have
filmed a setting sun and then reversed it or something.
But very very orange, very very warming, beautiful sequence that

(01:13:13):
again just really kicks the film into high gear, like
suddenly we're in pure visionary filmmaking mode and we're gazing
into the future. These two have been chosen by the ants.
They don't know what their purpose is going to be
or what this new world is going to consist of,
but there I guess they're going to be the profits
of the New Age or the spokespeople of the ants

(01:13:33):
or anabassadors.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
They're like the Yeah, I was thinking, are they going
to be used as the ambassadors to the rest of
humanity to like explain to them that the ants are
in charge? Now, that's sort of the idea I got.
They're the I for one, welcome our new aunt overlords.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
Yeah, exactly. It's also hinted like maybe they're gonna it's
gonna be the beginning of a new species. They're like that,
the Adam and Eve of the New Ant World.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
But so the version of the movie I saw had
shorter ending, but there actually is an alternate ending.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Yes, now this one. According to Michael Weldon, this one
was cut at the request of the studio because the
lost ending the original ending is even more nut so psychedelic.
It reminds me a lot of how Disney's The Black
Hole from nineteen seventy nine also originally had a far trippier,
weirder like quasi religious ending with our characters emerging in

(01:14:27):
the afterlife and humans and robots merging together, and then
like the studio apparently it's like that is too weird.
This is a mainstream motion picture. But yeah, similar thing
going here because the Lost ending, like the actual ending
that we get in the theatrical cut of the film,
is very satisfying, very trippy, very visual. But the Lost

(01:14:48):
ending is just an absolute heroic dose of cinematic surrealism.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
So this ending is even longer. I think it's like
seven or eight minutes total, and it gives us this
sort of muadib fever dream vision of a future world
in which ant civilization dominates humans. And all of this
is presented very you know, surreally and abstractly, with visual
flashes and confuse occasionally, like confusing number tags. We see

(01:15:16):
flashes of ant mega projects and human scampering across them
like ants. We see visions of human beings I guess
in servitude to ants, strangers with magnifying loops on their heads,
you know, magnification devices over their eyes, so I guess
they can see their masters better. There's a faceless human
that pops up, perhaps the result of some sort of

(01:15:39):
ant derived human, you know, he's like a drone or something.
We see James and Kindred's faces becoming one. There's you know,
some sort of erotic flashes of human bodies. There's oh,
and there's just so much going on that Like it's
it's like a crazy music video with all sorts of
strange surreal sek. There's a bald guy buried in the

(01:16:02):
sand with a hole in his head and ants come
crawling out the hole.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
It's just eleven thirty eight.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's like it just goes into like
just extreme visual mode. And and I think it works
into a large extent because it is it is the
ant future loosely translated into some sort of visual form
that the humans can understand.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
I would say actually that I think with the long ending,
the whole point of like that the abstract imagery and
stuff is is to say that we can't understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Yeah, yeah, when we can, we can we can sort
of glimpse it. Yeah, we can't fully understand like why
the ants have done this, that and the other. Like
what the full vision is here?

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
Yeah, that the future of humans under an earth controlled
by ants is going to be so bewildering and incomprehensible
to us. It would be like, you know, like what
we do with an experiment like ants trying to understand
why they're in a maze in a laboratory. It just
doesn't make any sense to them.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Yeah, and in this extended you know, ultimately rejected ending,
I think it also it it's beautiful but also horrifying
at times, like the dude with no face. There's another
guy with like some sort of weird implants in his head,
Like you get the sense that, yeah, an ant dominated
world in which humans still have a role, it's going

(01:17:21):
to be very different. It's not going to be altogether pleasant.
It's it's yeah, this is a strange ending. It is
a strange message to potentially hit the viewer with. And
I have to say I understand. I understand why the
studio probably came in and they're like, Saul, Saul, what
are you doing? What are you doing with this? You know,

(01:17:41):
we can't do this ending? You know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
I like it. I like the long, weird ending. I
like the part where the at least humans are up
on like a zigarot. That's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
No, I love everything about the extended ending. And I
think if you go out and watch this film, you
need to make sure you get to see the extended
ending as well, and you can choose which one you prefer.
But I totally get why the studio was like, you
can't do this, No, No, you've got to scale back
on this. This is too weird.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
Well, I guess that's it. Phase four an ode to
our future use social overlords. That's A. That's a. That's
a pretty great ant movie.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
This is the best ant movie I've ever seen. This
may be the best. I don't know if it's the
best animal tack movies I've seen. It's certainly an animal
tack movie where the animals have the best strategy. They're
not just swarming us, they're out thinking us. So, hey,
you want to watch phase four as well? You want
to reach phase four? Well, you can watch this film
pretty much wherever you rent or purchase digital movies. All

(01:18:39):
of Films put out of what seems like a nice
blu ray of it in the US not too long ago.
One oh one Films put out a really nice blue
ray in the UK, and I believe they also put
one out in the US as well. I highly recommend
you find a version that includes the original ending as
an extra. Sometimes you might be able to find that extra,
you know, floating around online, but that's not really and ultimately,

(01:19:01):
you want high quality for this. So I know the
one oh one Films Blue has the extended ending as
an extra, and if you purchase the movie but not
rent it on Apple TV, then you get access to
this extra, but you do have to purchase it through there.
Otherwise you just rent it and you get the theatrical ending.

(01:19:21):
Oh and as for the soundtrack, Waxwork Records put out
a really beautiful yellow vinyl of this with stunning jacket design,
full of production art by Saul bass, stills from that
lost ending, and expansive liner note. So this is really
cool work looking. If you're a if you collect vinyl
and this kind of soundtrack is your thing, you should

(01:19:42):
check this out. I think they might have put out
a CD release as well, but I couldn't find a
good place to just stream the soundtrack, you know, Like,
I don't think it's up on any of the streaming
sites at least as of this recording. All right, well,
we're going to go ahead and close it out then,
but we'd love to hear from everyone out there thoughts
on phase four having seen it recently, having seen it

(01:20:03):
back in the day, did you see it? Were you
one of the few people that apparently saw it in
theaters back in the nineteen seventies, whatever your answer is,
we'd love to hear from you. As always, Weird House
Cinema publishes every Friday. You can find it in the
Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a
science podcast, but you know, we like to set most
serious matters aside on Fridays and just discuss a strange

(01:20:24):
film and in this case, you know, sometimes it's a
film that ties in with recent serious episodes we've recorded.
If you want to follow Weird House Cinema on Instagram,
I created an Instagram for it. It's Weird House Cinema.
That's the name of the show. That's the name of
the Instagram account. And then also I put up blog
posts about these episodes at Simmuta music dot com. That's

(01:20:48):
a linked on the Instagram if you want to get there.
But whenever we refer to other pieces of media that
are related to it, other trailers, other bits of music.
That's often where I will stash that for your easy
case assumption.

Speaker 3 (01:21:00):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
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