Weirdhouse Cinema: Phase IV

about it. Actually just had as a as a pre recording snack a couple of ants on a log I got out there, the salary and butter and the raisins. It just felt appropriate, you know. I feel like that reflects our higher AUNT consciousness now, because the important thing to understand about ants is they don't even mind if

you eat a few of them. You know. But 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. Uh, the movie is the nineteen seventies sci fi ant flick Phase Four, which we alluded to possibly doing an episode on in our In our in our Core episode about ants building traps, we talked about some biology papers about about aunt behaviors, whether and 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 aunt movie I've been 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 and I'd say this was a hit. Yeah, yeah. After we had

we had, I decided this is the one. UM. I actually received word from someone on the stuff to blow your mind discord emails if you want to invite to that who They were like, yeah, this is this one's good. You're gonna want to cover this one for a weird house. UM. I also have, of course looked it up when we were talking about I looked up in Michael Weldon Psychotronic Encyclopedia film in which he called it quote a great

science fiction thriller starring countless real ants. So that that was a solid endorsement, but it still wasn't able to prepare me for all that was to come. Well, So when I look at the other side of the critical response to this movie, uh, 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 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 a sells on the whole body of the human species. Yeah. Yeah, and in very delightful ways. It is a It is a movie almost by ants, four ants. It is a movie that is

fresh on aunt Rotten Tomatoes. It is um it it is. It is such an interesting film in so many ways, like um, just it's it's gonna be fun to discuss everything. Um I'm almost not sure where to start here. You know, the funny thing about Aunt Rotten Tomatoes. Is there are no in between scores. It's either a dent or zero percent every time they're unified. 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 uh powerful, vivid memory that came rushing back to me just the other day when when I started trying to recual if I'd seen other AUNT movies before, and it was a memory of being about twelve years old and watching this terrible for TV killer ant movie that I think was on the Fox Network or one of those you know, um, it was one of those made for TV movies that they used to advertise in the weeks

leading up to it. So they 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 get a music sting and and man that I don't know if they focus group tested that or whatever, but that worked on my twelve year old brain I had That was like I had to make an appointment to watch a movie that that I went back and looked up and I found out it is called Marabunta Colon Legion of Fire,

and I rewatched the trailer and oh, this looks stinky. It looks like it is no good. It has some absolutely atrocious c g I ants stripping a moose clean down to the bone like piranhas on Land. Uh does have Mitch Peleggie 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 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. What is it with Shocker connections, We're gonna have another one of those coming up, that's right.

Uh So, I guess when I think of of ant movies that I saw as a kid, I I my mind probably goes to nineteen fifty four is them because this one was in I think it was in pretty pretty um tight rotation on like the Turner stations back in the day, Like there's a pretty good chance you're gonna catch part of them, uh, you know, especially on like a Sunday afternoon. But but other notable AUNT movies

include nineteen seventy seven's Empire of the Ants. Uh. There's also nineteen seventy seven's TV movie Ants with an exclamation point, starring everyone's favorite Brooke, Robert Foxworth of um of what was it? I can't remember the name of that movie death Moon or some Moon, Death Moon Faint, but that one also starred Suzanne Summers, Brian Dennah he uh, Anita Gillette. This is the actor who played Liz Lemon's mom on Dirty Rock, and also Bernie Casey. So does Foxworth play

another work beast in this movie? Um? I don't, and I don't know. 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 okay, it sounds good. Um. 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. Correct? Correct? And I think that 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 gonna be a giant bug feature or it's gonna be a swarm feature. And what's interesting about that is when you have the giant ant um, it's going to be more about individual ants. That's the spectacle of it, right. Uh 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. Yeah, I think that's right, and I would say broadly, I think i'd break ant movies into three categories. 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 manness, giant spider is just

a giant bug that attacks. So I think that's probably gonna be my least favorite kind overall, because that you lose the essential anti nous, you know, the formic the formic aromas of the premise is just like any giant bugle do because they're just big and they'll tear you apart. Might as well go with a more interesting solitary um a bug, you know, in like arachnet, like a scorpion

for example. Sure, giant scorpion would be great. Giant spider obviously, okay, but then when you break it down, you keep the ants small. I think they're basically two ways you can go. One is the um just ants as ants, like you know, they're kind of an environmental threat almost that this comes back to the like they're like rivers of molten lava and a volcano movie. You know, they're just like as the floor is lava, accept instead of lava, it's ants.

But then the other way to go is to think about ants as a sort of organization principle and 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 make you afraid. Yeah. Yeah, that And that's definitely the the realm that we're going to be venturing

into with Phase four. Here. I guess the real distinction there is that like it does the danger of the ants lie in their in their numbers alone or in their youth sociality. And phase four it's in their youth sociality. Yeah, and this is what we have to drive home. This is definitely one of the more, if not the most ambitious ANT movies and intelligent AUNT movies like there. They really went for it with this particular film, trying to

to to use ants to their their full potential cinematically. So, uh, it's it's a rare beast. I think it's a work beast in many ways, because I would say this is also a highly technical film as as we've already said, you know, it may be lacking in some human depth, but as a sort of visual art project, I'd say this movie is is a home run. I mean it is a a beautiful, weird celebration of geometry of like colors and lines and angles and close up photography of ants,

and I would say very good special effects. There are parts where the puppetry is so good. I sometimes couldn't tell if I was looking at uh, you know, micro photography of real ants or if it was one of the puppets. Yeah, it was very difficult to tell. And 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 we'll touch on that as we go. Yeah. Now, Phase four was something of a

flop at the time. Apparently maybe he was ahead of its time. Um, but over the years it's been particularly influential on various visionary filmmakers. Apparently, um, I know it's Michael Weldon liked it. I've read that um uh, Penas Cosmontos was a fan of it. Apparently inspired Beyond the Black Rainbow. Yeah, yeah, which is a film I have a lot of admiration for. Um and and certainly having seen Phase four now I can I can definitely see

where those inspiration points are. Um. Apparently apparently as well. Uh, this was also a film that was riffed in the kt m A like like basically proto uh season of Mystery Science Theater three thousand and uh. 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 kt M A episodes are, um, you know, it's a different beast. It was the first season. It's it's not

quite like watching a full blown MST. Three K episode. 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 movie, 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

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. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think they'd quite calibrated what was an in st three K

film at that point. Um So at any right, if if 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 you know, I guess you could check out that Katie and A episode. But for the most part, I think this is a film that stands on its 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. Now, while we're talking about looking up this movie, I gotta say, also, as 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 Cane conspiracy action thriller. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So word of warning, Uh, I don't get in too much for a hurry when you're buying and renting this when you don't want to wind up with the Brian boss Worth film. If you watch Brian Bobsworth film, you want to watch Stone Cold from So I've never seen that one, but while we were chatting about this, uh, you got me to look up stills from it and Brian Buzzworth and Stone Cold is fresh. I mean, like, God,

look at his hair at the sunglasses. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Uh, that was and I remember being a fun action B movie because you have Lance Hendrickson's in it. William Forsythes is in it. So it's a yeah, it's ridiculous. 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. Okay, So, um, 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. Great premise. Let's hear some audio 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 horse that knows what your next move will be before you think of it? All right, that's a solid trailer right there. 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 director of this film was, because I think the director, Saul Bass, this was his only movie. Am I right about that? 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 the only full length film he did. And it seems to me very much a graphic designers or

art director's kind of film. It's 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 that that mid century modern design style, the kind of thing that you see a lot on 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. Yeah, because Sall Bass is something of a legend um and certainly in the graphic design field here. Uh. He lived nineteen twenty through nineteen six and he was for Starters, the title sequence title design guy of the day. He crafted title sequences from for major films from the mid

nineteen fifties all the 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 Fellows, Cape, Fear, and Casino. UM. I should also note note that in addition to directing Phase four, he of course did the title design. You're not gonna You're not if you're Seal Bad, You're not gonna trust that to anybody else. This is your baby. You're doing the titles, and the title design

is great. It is um. Like you said, The The Madman 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 to about the longevity of his design lines on that front. He also did some pretty famous movie posters, including uh, the aforementioned films, but also Stanley Kubrick's The

Shining Oh that's interesting. Did did Saul Bass do the credit sequence for Doctor No? The first James Bond movie? Uh? 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 dr No one of the Bond films he

has connections to. It seems to kind of fit into his design clade that I was looking at some of the rejected poster designs that he did for the Shining uh stuff, Like he he had one that that heavily featured the 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 I was reading a post about this that far out magazine dot co dot uk, and it had images from the original 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, bespectacled uh face here on a fish's body. Uh. It's pretty amusing. Is that

a joke on him being a Bass? I guess? So Yeah, his Shining poster is worth looking up because I love

the design. It's like it shows just three sort of silhouettes heading into the opening of of a maze, and and part of me wonders if did Kubrick reject this just because he was in a bad mood and he was being difficult or yeah, maybe so because it's a great poster now, Like we said, Phase four was Bass is only full length film, though he made six other short films, including Why Man Creates, from 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 energy over fossil fuels. He also made a very interesting looking nine four short titled Quest, based on the Ray Bradberry story Frost and Fire. I was like, I looked this one up. I found a like a rip of it on one of the video streaming sides, but I didn't watch it because part in part it

it looks too interesting. I feel like I need to see this in a uh like a higher visual format or something I wonder discount there that collects his his smaller works, or something I would hope to say yea, or or perhaps there's one of the blue 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 will discuss in relation to this film. I also want to point out that he often worked with his wife and creative partner, Elaine Bass on these projects. Right, So, so if you've heard us talk in the past about Rubbed the Firm movie, 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. Now,

it did have a writer, um Mayo Simon Born. This is the screenwriter who wrote the West World sequel Future World in seventy six. This had Peter Fonda and youle Brenner in it. Also the nineteen sixty nine film Maroon starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman. That one won an Academy Award for Visual Effects. But Simon went on to create the NBC TV show Man from Atlantis, which I've 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, I do not remember. It looks very fun in a mid like mid seventies TV sci fi sort of way. Now, we 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 we I

guess we should mention some of the cast members. Right first and foremost, we have a Nigel Davenport playing Dr Ernest D. Hubbs Um now Davenport Live, two thousand and thirteen, English actor known for nineteen sixty six is a Man for All Seasons, in which he played the Duke of Norfolk, and es Chariots of Fire, in which he played Lord Birkenhead. Um that that one had. I've only seen parts of

Chariots of Fire and it was many years ago. Um. It's got a pretty extensive cast, so I I don't specifically remember where he fit into that, But of course it's a a famous movie, has a tremendous score by evangelist. Nigel Davenport seems like an actor you call in for gravitas. Yeah. Yeah, he has a great presence and a great presence in this where he plays the um determined and at times reckless at times later on the film he basically becomes kind of an ant focused captain ahab in anyways, so

he has just a terrible case of mad scientist disease. Yes, so he's He's perfect casting for this. I can't imagine anyone else here. Uh he was. He was also in the nineteen seventy seven adaptation of H. G. Wells The Island of Dr Moreau. This is when I fondly remember from catching on TBS or t n T back in the day this one started Burt Lancaster and Michael york Um.

He apparently plays Scrooge's dad in the nineteen eighty four George C. Scott adaptation of a Christmas Carol, And he's also in nineteen eighty four is Gray Stoke, the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Ape, starring Christopher Lambert. Oh wow, well, who is he in Gray Stoke? Is he? Is? He? Is he Tarzan's dad or something? Um? You know? Gray Stoke is another one that I've only seen parts of on TV when I was much younger. I'm not I

don't think I've watched it in full. Uh, I'm I believe he plays one of the the grumpy British guys generally that's all. I think there're a few of those. Yeah, yeah, that's that's generally you're casting for Davenport. Well, all right, So the 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 was played by the actor Michael Murphy. That's right, born American actor best known for his work with Robert Altman. Uh. He did seven pictures for Altman Um. They include the likes of Countdown, The Cold Day in the Park, mash the original film, Bruster, McLeod McCabe, and Mrs Miller Nashville, Kansas City. He also appeared in Woody Allen's Manhattan, Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously, and Oliver Stone's Salvador.

He also worked with John Saylis Silver City. He was in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnola Yea and of course he was in he was in Tim Burton's Batman returns Um. He also 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 something another Batman film, But he was also in a movie called count yorga vampire, and uh, this is our other Shocker connection because he was in West Craven Shocker. He plays Peter Bergh's dad in Shocker.

He's like a detective who's on the case trying to chase down Mitch Pelegi. Yeah, so Murphy. Murphy's fine in this. You know, he's uh, you know, far younger than many of these other film appearances that we noted. But yeah, he's a he's a he's a numbers guy. He plays um what, he's a game theorist and mathematician doesn't really know or care anything about ants. But it's ultimately like the younger, more compassionate of the duo here, right. I think they do a kind of strange thing where they

have to 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. Yeah, but if if if the other guy. If Davenport's Hubs is Captain Ahab, then Murphy's LESCo is Ishmael. 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 the world, all right. We UM. We ultimately

have a very small human cast. And this is one thing I noticed before we even watched the film, and it's like like five or six people are credited UM and the two we covered have most of the screen time, but there is another there's a third human character that plays a UM I don't want to I guess a crucial role. It's not a great part because she's kind of a damsel in distress for a lot of it. But we have uh. The the actor Lynn Frederick playing

Kindra Eldridge UM. Now Frederick lived ninety through British actor of the seventies who um had had a really promising career going died too young, known for roles in The Amazing Mr Blundin, Nicholas and Alexandria and the Prisoner of Zenda. She was also in the nineteen seventy two horror film Vampire Circus. I didn't realize she was in Nicholas and Alexandra. I gotta look that up and see what she was in. That's where I also very much appreciate the textures. There's

some really good sets and locations in it. Yeah, I've heard you. You talked about that one before. Basically, she is what we'll discussed like. She's a a an innocent human who gets uh swept into this aunt takeover drama. She has a has a couple of grandparents that are are doomed, and we'll discuss their doom in a bit. But the the actor who plays Emma Grandma Eldridge in this is the actor Helen Horton, who lived 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 n Alien. Now this is funny because I didn't remember Mother in Alien having this. 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. I think that is it. Yeah, okay, where mothers given the countdown and Ripley is trying to get

out of there with a cat right right. I don't know. Maybe next time I watch Alien, I'll gotta keep I'll keeping an ear out for Helen Horton, who in this movie just plays like a suspicious grandma. It's it's Mildred is just not very happy about the government telling them that they need to flee the ant menace. Alright, 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 they're worth noting here. So first of all, Brian gascoign Is is credited with the music. Born three British composer and musician who also scored The Emerald Forest in and worked in the music department on such films as Godsford Park. He did piano on that, Uh, Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. He did keyboards and synthesizer on that. He did synthesizers

on Cherry two thousand and uh. Most exciting of all, at least to me, He was also in the music department on Jim Henson's two masterpiece, The Dark Crystal. I'm a huge fan of that film and I think the music for that for that movie is tremendous. Um. The score was composed by Trevor Jones, but gascogn provided quote synthesized electronic sounds. So I'm guessing it was like, Okay, the Crystals doing something. We need to get gascoygn in here to start start tickling the synth. What is the

sound of draining essence? Now we also have Desmond Briscoe on this, who lived through two thousand and six. He's credited it as composer additional electronic music, 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 who lived ninety 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 uh and ultimately influenced many future big names and electronic music. So I've said on the show before that I am not a hoovie 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 and like how she created it with I guess it was analog tape effects that time, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, digital manipulation. Um, And you know what a great piece of classic electronic and tape effects music. And then one one more individual I want to mention in reference to Phase four, and that is u Stomu Yamashta,

who is credited with composer Montage Music. Born seven, Japanese percussionist, keyboardist and composer known for helping to fuse traditional Japanese percussive music with Western Prague rock. 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 Claus Schultz, of whom I'm I'm a big fan, oh I don't know if I know him. Oh you you would, you would dig.

I'll have to send you some stuff after we record, because Claus Shults put out some some some wonderful material. Now, yamashta On on his own scored the nineteen seventies six David Bowie sci fi film The Man Who Fell to Earth as well as Tempest, starring John Cassavetti's Susan Sarandon, Molly Ringwald and Ralph Julia. Now this is a movie where I don't think there was ever like a melody from the score that's stuck with me. But in general

I loved the sound design and the ambient electronic music. Yeah, this is a film that's very concerned with computers and computer technology. Uh, and and all that computer technology is also seen as a very much plot wise, is a way of translating the way of the ant in a way that ants and humans might communicate. So it uses electronic music well and providing a sense of the cosmic and other worldly and even like the sense of the cosmic and other worldly to be found in the mind

of of the ants. Uh. There are a few places where it gets a little uh melodic and traditional, almost as if somebody like the producers were like, hey, what are you doing here? So this is a human movie for humans, and this scene has humans doing human stuff. Let's get some human music in here. But but otherwise, yeah,

it's it's it's pretty great. Lots of electronic touches their stretches without music, but those tend to revolve around one of two soundscapes I found, either wind swept desert or the insides of their spaceship like research station that also has a supercomputer there. So lots of lots of computer noises.

Oh and 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, which I imagine do you know what the part I'm talking about? Rob? Yes, Yeah, absolutely,

because I was. 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 drame, and so I was a little I was like, oh, this is getting a bit much. I'll have to plug in the headphones for this. Yeah. So if you go watch it yourself, just be wary, keep keep your finger on the volume button. All right, let's get into the the plot of this baby. We we have to have to mention this is a movie that is not afraid to narrate. No, no, Yeah,

there's plenty of voice over narrat 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. Probably so I I 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, always I kind of like

the narration. What's what's wrong with the narration? Give me the narration? Yeah. I don't have strong general feelings about it one way or another. You know, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. Yeah, it can be good, it can be bad. Um. It can also help along a movie that maybe, um, you know, it just needs a little narration help and letting you know what's supposed to be

going on. Well, yeah. And also in this movie without the narration, you would either need to make it way more were dialogue heavy and add totally different types of characters and stuff, or you just gotta have the narration in there um because they begin by explaining the whole situation. The opening narration includes shots of space, uh, where you're seeing these planets 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 is but there's some kind of weird astronomical event and this this astronomical event gets scientists and mystics alike very excited, 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, but I guess we'll find out more. Is the Vivie goes on uh 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'm want to say also that the effects and photography in this opening ant

ballet are just wonderful. There were 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. I love the the textured surfaces, the exoskeleton, the eye, the sand grains, the antennae. Uh. 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 we get tons more voiceover 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 is doctor Hubbs. And he's dictating some kind of government memorandum. He's issuing a memo to like the bio Control division of some kind of agency, and he is 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 uh. And he says, at the same time, there has been an apparent disappearance of those insects which prey on ants, specifically mantis is, beetles, millipedes, and spiders. And he says that if this goes on, we're going to see some real booms and ant populations. And then meanwhile we we see beautiful time lapse footage of ants swarming over and

devouring a big tarantula. And he ends up offering in this memo a a proposal. He's like, look, what we've got to do is a full scale attack on 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 aunt 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 this ant researcher Hubs, but he also requests somebody named j. R. LESCo, who is a senior

scientist who is a qualified information specialist with cryptological background. Yeah, and so we're already getting getting the idea that there's going to be some sort of communication aspect to this, this study, this this project which which again seems to be about understanding and combating ants who have declared like an aunt wide peace treaty and are turning their attention

to other things in a way that makes us feel threatened. Uh. And it seems like HUBS 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. 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 off in nineteen four. But he's also constantly getting calls on the radio that are like

they're like, can you hurry this up? We you know, we don't have enough budget to fund you for two more days. 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. Uh. This what what seems like a spaceship, you know, it feels like it should be on the surface of Mars, uh, not in the wet of the Arizona Desert. We've only got these supercomputers

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. 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. Yeah. I think they refer to it as another desert development that didn't develop. 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 that this grove of seven pillars, just pillars reaching straight up out of the out of the ground like like Greek columns. And so they drive up and parked the car and out

hoop a couple of guys. These would be our protagonists again. This is Nigel Davenport is Dr Hubbs and Michael Murphy is Dr LESCo, and I immediately noticed some very interesting color coading. 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 the same thing, but the color coating of the wardrobes of the two actors is so starkly different. Let's Go

is just blue, blue blue. He's blue jeans, blue shirt, blue jacket, and blue hat, whereas Hubs is all, uh these earth tones and earth energy. So he's wearing khaki pants, a brown jacket, 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? So it again seems like a graphic designer's touch. But is Le's Go supposed to be the sky while Hubbs is the earth? Or is it a blue wizard and

radigas the brown thing. I didn't really notice this as much when I was watching it, but I guess I was focusing more on the the environment there in, which is pretty brilliant because this is the place where where human organization and human development has has uh, the wave is crashed and fallen back right. It is where human development has has failed, but it is where this new sign of of ant civilization has has sprung forth right.

And so they walk around in these half built or abandoned houses and Let's go asks if there are any dead bodies out here, and Nigel Nigel Davenport says, no, the people, the population moved itself out days ago. Um. 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 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 uh. And Hubbs is like, well, how did you determine that? And and LESCo says, well, we talked. I think he's supposed to be kidding, but they never clarified this. Yeah, I think

it's math nursery. Uh. And 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 of like a computer literally translates what ants are saying in some sort of computer voice, in the same way that you have films where this is happening with dolphins and other creatures. But and this is a film that is about communication, or at communication between two

drastically different intelligent species. But it it does so in very clever ways that I think really like takes the question seriously and takes the uh, you know, the gulf between different you know, possibly evolved intelligences. Uh, the gulf between them, and how difficult it would be like for one side to even realize the other side is intelligent. Yeah, that's something I really liked about this movie is that 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, here at the beginning, it's clear that LESCo does not see himself as a biologist or a zoologist or somebody who who cares about or understands animals. He says, is I'm strictly a pencil and paper guy. The two scientists approach the seven pillars, and uh, Rob, how would you describe

these pillars. I love this feature of the movie, and there won't be the last pillars we see. They Yeah, they're pretty great because they're they're monolithic, but they don't you know, they're not They're not as perfect, to say, the monolith from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey. Though. You know, you can't help but imagine some of that DNA is present there. I mean, certainly the uh this is a film that um that exists, you know, in the ultimately in the very long shadow of two thousand

and one A Space Odyssey. But but these feel they feel very organic. They're reminiscent of termite mound cooling towers. UM. They have these little crevices towards the top that feel like they're intended to do something with the air. Um. It's the kind of thing that you think in ant researcher would be very interested in, but they ultimately don't

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. 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 that 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. It looks very alien and cool. Oh, and of course we're see in close ups that ants are looking out at the scientists through crevices in the 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. There's like a diamond in the middle and then a ring around the outside. Um and uh and Hubs is talking about how there are some ant species that will attack anything that threatens their food supply, and so what are 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 I don't even think our characters perhaps realized that pattern is there. This is like

the privileged information that is, uh, that is for the viewer. Uh, there's no indication that they notice that they are standing in the midst of of this strange crop circle, right, And I will say, by the 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, uh, this pre date some of the big crop circle craze. Huh.

I didn't realize that. I did read somewhere that this is this is arguably the first appearance of a crop circle in a film, but that 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. 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 like really

took off. Well anyway, So they're going around this farm that still does have a few people in it, and we we meet a farmer named Mr. Eldridge. I don't think 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. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's it's kind of a

crazy sounding plan. They're like, yeah, for the aunt get across the water, we'll just we'll just light this trough of a fuel on fire and then that'll do him, and then we'll just keep this trough of fire going for the rest of our lives. Yeah. So the family is Mr. Eldridge and then his wife Mildred Eldridge, who is skeptical of the scientists who have arrived to tell them they're in danger. Uh. And their granddaughter Kendra Eldridge, who she she kind of rides horses and waves uh.

And then there's another guy named Cleat, who I guess is their their aunt burning guy. It's like, oh, you got an aunt burning guy. Yeah, his name's Cleat. Yeah, I'll put you in touch. Yeah. But but Kendra is the main character. Again, this is the character played by Lynn Frederick. Um spoiler, She's the only one that is going to survive for any length of time here, right, But anyway, Hubbs tells them they're gonna have to evacuate

in a few days for their own protection. Mildred is not happy about that, but strangely Mr. Eldridge is like, hey, listen to them, it's for our own protection. So that was Phase one, and then we get a transition where we see phase two and it's not clear what has changed, but that's that's what we get. And that's the interesting thing about this film, Like the title phase four is not referring to to most of the film, Like phase four is the place we are going to arrive at

at the end of the film, 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 within antenna tower next to it, and then um, 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. Yes, of which they have.

Do they have just two colors or are there three colors? Um, there are only two we learn about that there may be others. There's yellow and there's blur, 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. Yeah, yeah, we're not exactly sure what he's he's doing here necessarily, but you have you have that nice computer electronic ambiance going on in the background, and he's very chill about this, and yeah, it's a nice vibe. Now. I love, love, love this research facility they have here. In general, I love it when Reese matures and or adventurers in a film are just drastically technologically overprepared for

a mission, overfunded as well, perhaps here. Um. 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 techno ape uh congo, yeah, congo uh. And I and I guess that's the thing too. It's like, you know, it's very crighton me, and this

film does feel very crighton the in many respects. Well, yeah, I 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 Andromeda Strain, Michael Creighton'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 I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit of ins ration going on there, but that would make sense. Yeah.

But 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 they're picking out what kind of food they're gonna eat, or they're getting some coffee or something, and it's it's like a spaceship, but not only a spaceship, a spaceship that has been engineered to

stand is like the last redoubt against the ant on slot. Uh, and yet it is not ant proof, um, though there seemed 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. Um. They're the poison sprayers with two different flavors that we mentioned. Uh, it's 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. And I guess this is this is important to to know. 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 and previously they did, you know, species to species or 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, none of our humans can get along completely. They all have different ideas and different views. Uh. 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. But the way they come up with to speed up the research, by the way, is hilarious because what it means is, Okay, we gotta 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. Yes. Um, And you know we have the stress that we're talking again, like a handheld grenade launcher like the one Arnold has a

terminator to. 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 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. Um. Well, I think he's already done it.

When they suggest that, he's like, oh, I'll think about it, okay, 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. Um, so I guess it is part of the specialized kit that he he requested and was approved for use in this research experiment.

So that means it has it's like its own shelf in the in the research station, or maybe it's in a it's it's mounted behind glass with a sign that reads break if study. Dandelion is rapidly approaching. But we just see him out there in the middle of the road. He's standing there like like Mill Gibbs sin in the Road Warrior poster with the young and he's just shooting these ant colonies. Yeah, he's got a whole ammunition box of grenade and he's just letting it, letting the monolithts

have it. Um. 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 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 swarmed 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. Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're suddenly inside. They're crawling in Grandpa's hair. There's a results in a rack.

And so they're fleeing on foot at this point towards the research facility, um and towards the buildings that you know, the remains of this housing development. 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. Uh. 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 can they cut the

power their animals? But they do and uh and the so Hubs responds by spraying the ants outside with this gorgeous yellow poison. It's like coming out of these spheres. It's weird to say it's beautiful, but it is beautiful. And and they call the poison yellow. It's just called the yellow and I think again, it 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 that indicates like that that color and line reigned supreme in in the world of Phase four. Yeah. Absolutely, But the poison defense here it seems to work. In fact, it

works a little too well. 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 E v A 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 Mr Eldredge and and Cleat. Yeah,

it killed grandma and grandpa. Um. But but as it turns out, as we find out in a bit, Kindred is fine. She was actually in the basement of one of those houses, right, she hid in the cellar. Oh. But also there you start getting some hints that things are going in a weird direction because uh, Hubbs is trying to like figure out what the ants did to sabotage their generator in the truck, and meanwhile Less goes like there are dead people. And then Hubbs is like, um, yes,

a tragedy. Um but he uh so, you're starting to get the sense that maybe he's a little disconnected from from 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 weird. So when they find cleat,

remember the ant burning guy. Uh So they find cleat and his hand is tightly closed and they pry it open 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. Yeah, this is um. This really gave me the willies watching this. This is how you know. The makeup effects that they

did on this um 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 in the design, but this one just makes me feel more and more like I'm looking at three holes in a human hand with an ant crawling out of it. So, um, 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. Uh. There's also an earlier scene where they're looking at a hole in like the neck of a sheep. Sheep that also gave me the willies, agreed, And again the effects look great. Um. But also, like we said, they discovered that Kinder survived with a storm, so she takes refuge with the scientists inside the geodesic dome. Uh. And we get a scene where Hubs is explaining the beauty of ants. He's like, so defenseless in the individuals,

so powerful in the mass. But here we start getting some real conflict between Let's go and Hubs because Let's Go quite sensibly wants to call a helicopter to evacuate Kindred to safety while they keep fighting the aunt menace, and Hubs is against it. He's like, I think the bureaucrats would be rather unhappy to learn of our casualties. Yeah, because I mean to let's goes point two people have died. Three people have died, two of them were killed seemingly

by the experiment. Itself. They have uh this this poor woman who needs to be taken to safety. Uh yeah, but Hubbs is like, I don't know if we want to realigness up the experiment for this, we don't want

act 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 mantis is uh, and eventually he's let's go gets him to promise that he will call the helicopter to come collect Kindra, but he's obviously lying. Yeah, there's there's there are no helicopters in this movie. Never. But then at some point Kindrack gets mad while staring at an aunt.

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 gas it to kill all the ants. Yeah, this is another one of those scenes. It really feels like it was it was written and filmed by ants, like displaying you know, okay,

loose understanding of how humans work inaccurate. Yes, the human motivations are yeah, the ants are doing most of the acting here, yes, 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 and then the other side moves, and now it is the ants turn. 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 wad of some yellow white material through the tunnels. And I think the wad is supposed to be the poison, the yellow 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. So we see this handoff. It's a relay of the poison kills one at 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 Strewd's. It seems to be an egg that has been like

infused with the spirit of the yellow. Yeah, and this is one of those scenes where, Yeah, if you're gonna come in and you're gonna be very critical about everything, you're gonna say, is this something ants can do? Is this What's what's going on here? And I think you know, this is a movie that is that 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 it in, taking the colors um, then everything's gonna be fine. Right, So from here the arms race continues. The ants after this build a series of g M trip pillars right outside the geodesic dome, and uh, 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 in the lab above the level where the computers can tolerate it. Yeah, I love it. They answered it all in one night reflective monoliths to fry the humans and perhaps more importantly, to overheat their their delicate thinking machine. Um, it's the sort of heat based warfare that is actually

used specifically to my knowledge, by bees. Uh. Now, bees do not construct monoliths to fry supercomputers, but they will swarm around an invader and overheat it with their own

their own body heat. So um, it's that alone makes this feel like a in I mean, a speculative leap, certainly, but but kind of a believable tactic that you might conceivably have some sort of advanced ants used, right, 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 Hubbs says, we challenge them

with yellow chemistry, they respond with yellow creatures. Uh. So it's, you know, the answer, adapting to the poisons they're using. And Hubs says, we can try the blue, of course, but they'd only adapt again. So of course mad scientists progression. Hubs starts talking monologueing about how he believes the ants are 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 so Lesgo tries to call, but when he goes to 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, oh no, is covered in ants that have sacrificed their bodies to short out the electronics. And they managed to get in here. Yeah, they've penetrated the perimeter their sabotaging equipment. And then there's this ensuing battle.

They're 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 uh, and let's go. On the other hand, tries to create a sonic weapon to broadcast at the ants, except it as excruciating to

humans and cracks all the glass. Uh. And the sonic weapon works, it does shatter the 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. 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 mantis is from the experiments have gotten loose and they're trying to prey on ants as they're doing

their business. But but there's some ant revenge when an ant grabs a praying mantis is le egg and pulls it into a circuit board and it is fried. Yeah. I mean, how often do you see a bug movie with with two bugs battling it out? Um, like actual bugs in miniature in this artificial set like this must

have been quite a challenge to put together. Now, Hubs 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 night. LESCo believes we're being allowed this time for some purpose, a hypothesis I do not share. If this were so, it would it would raise questions I had not considered. And here's a really cool part where Let's

Go 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, I didn't fully make the connection here, but I think gets 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. Yeah, I love this because you know it's getting to the I buy into this idea. And in mathematics he's going to be the universal language that on some level the ants understand it, we understand it, and and I really love this this idea that like, the ants might not realize that we are intelligent too, you know, they could just be blind to this fact. And how do we possibly communicate with ants and let

them know this? But things get progressively worse inside the dome. There's a creepy scene where where Kendra is menaced by ants while she's sleeping. She she sees an uh An aunt on her pillow and says go away, please go away, and then hubs uh, possibly because of his venomous aunt bite or or possibly from the interaction of that bite with his his pre existing mad scientists disease. He starts going nuts and small sushing things, trying to kill ants

he sees or believes he sees um. 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 an aunt, but I can't tell if he actually did. He just sort of pulls back a bloody hand. I'm not sure he had to go some shattered glass on the floor and he managed just cut his hand up.

We don't see an ant. Hey then his Phase three buddy, Yeah, yeah, we're getting down to the final that this is the penultimate. Phase Phase four is going to really blow you away, and this is this is where we're getting there. So we see Less going Hubs in their bunks, and Less goes 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 aunt specialization. He says, you know, aunts are organized into roles by the queen in order to keep her alive. 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, uh, let's locate the queen and killer. That's our only way and lets go, says, uh, aunts have all the cards. The only way to survive

is to convince them that we're worth keeping alive. It is interesting here where um, you know, Hubbs ends up 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 lesgo is still seems to be more of the mindset. It's like it it is h it's the mass we need to communicate with. Uh So I feel like the focus on the individual is perhaps just more a part of hubbs is madness, right,

and oh, and here's a scene I did love. So the ants want to communicate that he let's go, 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? Yeah, they started saying, well, maybe that's here, it's a map. They want something in here when we should look around and see if we find it.

And it's pretty great because Kendras is suddenly like, oh, they must mean me, because I I I smashed an ant in the research room earlier. I will go out into the wild without my shoes on. He's like, all ready to sacrifice herself for these scientists. 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 tubs sitting at a desk.

But I included it because I don't know what these boxes are. But there it looks like he has several sticks of butter sitting on the console in front of him. It does look like it. There's also a scene where because basically he's convinced, I gotta 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. Why why buddy. So he's gonna 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 uh poison his way across the the ant dominated waste land and make his way to the queen and trying poisoner there. That seems to be the plan, but Hubbs goes outside to attack the queen, and so Kendra 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. Yeah, yeah, we were talking about pit traps and why we don't sit 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 core acquire that much energy.

And when 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 this film based on our our previous episode about aunts potentially building traps, to suddenly be hit with this scene, I think I exclaimed aloud. It was just it's it's such a shock. It's a great sequence. Yeah, it is. And of course he's immediately swarmed by ants. He gets land perauted by by the ants um and so now it's just down to LESCo

Is Michael Murphy. He's like, I gotta do it. So he delivers this monologue that's full of regret. He says, like, I would still like to believe that if we've had more time, we could have come to an understanding, some rational accommodation of interest, 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 go in, he ends up sliding and he falls in. Oh but but oh, 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 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 productive gear on it all, he has no shoes on it all. It's uh, and and we have the narration of, you know, of just how worn out and on the end of things he is. But then here we get to the ending, and the ending is so weird. Uh 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 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 one and they're going to keep winning, and essentially that the ants are going to be the new rulers of the Earth, but they're not going to be killed. The ants have some kind of plans for them, and he's just ready

to obey. Yeah, it is a it's a it's a great like suddenly just very trippy and psychedelic sequence. Um, you know, with with with images of a setting a rising sun. I guess ultimately it's supposed to be rising though I feel like they might have filmed a setting sun and then reversed it or something. Um, but very very orange, very very warming, beautiful um sequence that again just really kicks the film into high gear, Like suddenly we're in purer 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 they're going to be the profits of the New Age, or the oaks people of the Ants, or anti ambassadors. 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 answer in charge. Now that's sort of the the idea I got there, the I for one

welcome our new aunt overlords. Yeah, exactly. Um, it's it's also hinted like maybe they're gonna it's gonna be the beginning of a new species there, like that the Adam and Eve of the New ant World. But so the version of the movie I saw had the shorter ending, but there actually is an alternate ending. Yes, now this one. According to Michael Weldon, this one was was cut at the request of the studio because the lost ending, the original ending is even more nuts so psychedelic it um.

It reminds me a lot of how Disney's The Black Hole from nine nine also originally had a far trippier, weirder like quasi religious ending with our characters emerging in the afterlife and humans and robots merging together and then like this duty Apparently it's like that that is too weird.

This is this is a mainstream motion picture. But yeah, similar thing going here because the lost ending, like the actual ending, and we get in the you know, the theatrical cut of the film is very satisfying, very trippy, very visual, but the lost ending is just an absolute heroic dose of cinematic surrealism. So this ending is even longer.

I think it's like seven or eight minutes total, and it gives us this sort of mua dib 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 um and confused occasionally, like confusing number tags. We see flashes of ant megaprojects and

humans scampering across them like ants. We see visions of human beings I guess in servitude to ants, strangers with magnifying loops uh on their heads, you know, magnification devices over there eyes, so I guess they can see their masters better. Uh. There's a faceless human that pops up, perhaps the result of some sort of ant derived human you know, he's like a drone or something. Uh. We

see James and kin dress faces becoming one. Um. 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 sequences. There's a bald guy buried in the sand with a hole in his head and ants come crawling out the whole. It's just 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 the ant future loosely translated into some sort of visual form that the humans can understand. I would say actually that I think with the long ending, the whole point of like the the abstract image are and stuff is is to say that we can't understanding. 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? Yeah, that 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. Yeah, and in this extended um, you know, ultimately rejected ending. I think it also it Uh, it's beautiful but also horrifying at times,

like the dude with no face. Um, there's another guy with like some sort of weird implants in his head, Like you get the sense that, yeah, the an ant dominated world in which humans still have a role, it's going to be very different. It's not going to be altogether pleasant. Uh, it's it's yeah, this is a strange ending. It is a strange message to potentially hit the view were with. And I have to say, I 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 we can't do this ending? You know. I like it. I like the long, weird ending. I like the part of the at least humans are up on like a zigaratte that that's interesting. No, I 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 one of the studio was like, you can't do this, No, no, you've got a scale back on this. This is too weird. Well, I guess that's it. Phase four an ode to our our future use social overlords. Uh, that's a. That's a. That's a pretty great ant movie. This is the best AUNT movie I've ever seen. This may be the best um when I don't know if

it's the best animal Tach movies I've seen. It's certainly an animal Tach movie where the animals have the best strategy. They're not just swarming us, they're out thinking us. So, hey, you 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 of Films put out of what seems like a nice blue 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. Um, 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 reliable, and ultimately, you want high quality for this so I know the one on 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 uh, this extra uh, but you do have to purchase it through there. Otherwise you just rent

it and you get the theatrical ending. Oh and as for the soundtrack, Waxwork Records put out a really beautiful yellow vinyl of this with stunning jacket design, full of production are by Saul Baths, stills from that lost ending, and expansive liner notes. So this is really cool work looking. If you're if you, if you collect vinyl and this kind of soundtrack is your thing, uh, you should 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 gonna go and close it out then, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there your thoughts on Phase four having seen it recently, having seen it back in the day, did you see it? Were you one of the few people that apparently saw it in theaters back

in the nineties seventies. Whatever your answer is, we'd love to hear from you. UM. As always, Weird How Cinema publishes every Friday. You can find it in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Were primarily a science podcast, but you know, we like to to set most serious matters aside on Fridays and just discuss a strange film and in this case, you know, sometimes it's a film

that ties in with recent serious episodes who we've recorded. Um, 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. Uh. And then also I put up blog posts about uh these episodes at Simuta music dot com. That's 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 consumption. 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, just to say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.