Syl Nigel Davenport should have knighted for his services to drama. In this film, he plays a scientist out to study ants in the Arizona desert. Michael Murphy is great as the reasonable voice. Lynne Frederick's Kendra is never fully explained in the movie. I caught this film a few times but still have questions about it. The director and cinematographer did an excellent job. It's not your average thriller with cheap shots! In fact, the cast is concise where all the characters serve a purpose. The desert ants have a mind of their own and are more evolved and intelligent! I still don't get how they dominate the humans. We only know the three phases but not the fourth. The ending is never fully explained.

AaronCapenBanner Michael Murphy and Nigel Davenport play two scientists studying the recent peculiar behavior of ants after a strange outer space phenomenon has occurred. They rescue a young woman(played by Lynne Frederick) who has survived an ant attack that destroyed her family and farm. Seems the(normal) sized ants have evolved into a collective intelligence, and are studying them as well, in the next step of mutual evolution...Weird(to say the least)film is nonetheless quite original and intelligent; seems to be partially inspired by "2001: A Space Odyssey", and though not a masterpiece, still contains some quite striking visual imagination and ambition(courtesy of director Saul Bass) and a mind-bending ending that gives much to ponder. A thought-provoking Sci-Fi film that deserves to be better known.

lemon_magic While it's true that "Phase IV" is rather slow moving in spots, and that the human characters are ciphers with no real depth to speak of, "Phase IV" is a nice sally at an experimental science fiction film that emphasizes mood and dread over action and character development.I had the good fortune to watch this on a really large flat screen TV, and the amazing insect photography (major kudos to the editor who managed to integrate it so completely into the story!) and dissonant synthesizer laden sound track come through nicely with good viewing equipment - they add the proper utterly alien and inhuman feel to the movie and turn something pretty good into something really creep and spooky.Although the characters are admittedly pretty flat, that's undoubtedly on purpose. "Phase IV" is all about the subjection of the human characters to the overwhelming power of a hive mind where "personality" is besides the point. Even so, Nigel Davenport brings the good stuff to his role as the biologist trying to contain the ants, and you both know everything you need to know and everything you'll ever know about in the first five minutes...without ever knowing him at all.An ambiguous and otherworldly/mystical ending might not sit well with a lot of viewers who like their science fiction movies to wrap things up by the end. And, OK, the goofy little montage at the end with the mathematician and the gamin doesn't really match the quality of the hallucinatory insect footage that preceded it.Still, Saul Bass knew how to present an otherworldly, truly alien experience, but he was probably just too far ahead of his time.A classic of sorts.

irearly One of the spate of "environmental" sci-fi movies that came out in the wake of 2001, SILENT RUNNING comes to mind as well as the superficially similar (to PHASE IV) THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE, this movie has the benefit of some good macro photography of various ants (and, if I remember my days in California, a blue-black wasp with orange feelers and wings known as a "tarantula hawk"). I saw it again last night on the final day of SIFF. Included was the "long lost" alternate ending which was influenced (obviously) by 2001 and some other obscure films like THE MASK (Julian Roffman's 1961 3-D extravaganza) and William Cameron Menzie's, also a noted designer, THE MAZE.The movie is a bit dated and clearly "hooie" although I remember it as being a bit more convincing when I saw it in a theater in 1974. The alternate ending would have made it a better movie experience although it resolved nothing and is basically a montage of surreal, suggestive imagery.Will anyone ever get a chance to see this? Some have. You might. Do it if you can.