Phase IV by Saul Bass

[Franz Kindler]

This 1974 film is a hidden gem deserving of wider acclaim and would appeal to anyone who loves surreal, thoughtful science fiction. Fans of Quatermass or the psychedelic, off kilter, charms of Peter Fonda's Idaho Transfer and who are fed up waiting for the Satan Bug to ever get a dvd release should buy now! As far as I know it's the only feature directed by Saul Bass - responsible for some of the best title sequences in movie history through his work for Hitchcock and Scorsese among others. Full of striking images, great photography and with a fine cast it serves to remind us what a great period the 1970s was for science fiction. Until, that is, big budgets often became conflated with creativity. It's truly a peach....

[tarpot]

I agree totally. I have the dvd from Legend Films.

A great movie.

[Timmy Lea]

It's an absolute cracker, although I'm sad to admit I haven't seen it for a long time. Not that I don't have a copy, but it's buried somewhere among my piles of old VHS, and I have precious little time to watch things these days unless I happen to be reviewing them!!

I love desert-set, brooding 1970s science fiction/horror/disaster films anyway, but this is one of the finest. Nigel Davenport and Lynne Frederick (reunited after their first apperance together, four years before, in the similarly beautiful NO BLADE OF GRASS) are fantastic, although the real star is the landscape itself., which could almost make you want to live there were it not for the fact that you know you'd die of thirst (if you didn't get munched to death beforehand) I did manage a night or two in Dungeness, though.

One for the subgenre compilers: not only does it belong alongside other "killer ant" movies such as EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, THEM! and THE NAKED JUNGLE, but it also stands alongside FIEND WITHOUT A FACE, FIRST MAN INTO SPACE, THE HAUNTING, THE SHUTTERED ROOM, BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH, BLACK RAINBOW and THE SHINING (as well as almost every other film Kubrick shot after 1965) as a film that outwardly appears to be, and effectively pretends to be, American, but is actually entirely British.

I think I may have to look for that tape.