Kendra (Lynne Frederick) gets a close look at the enemy in Saul Bass’s cult classic, Phase IV
PHASE IV (Saul Bass, 1974)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
August 4-10
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
Metrograph’s celebration of the career of logo designer, title credits innovator, and Oscar-winning director Saul Bass has just added his sole feature film, the 1974 sci-fi thriller Phase IV. The long-unavailable work, which was comically crucified on Mystery Science Theater 3000, is an underrated gem, a thinking person’s horror film that is too intellectual for its own good. As the result of some kind of space anomaly, ants are doing things that they’re not supposed to do, communicating among different ant species and developing what appears to be a surprising sentience and intelligence. Dr. Ernest D. Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) and scientist and mathematician James Lesko (Michael Murphy) head out to an awesomely shaped circular lab in the middle of the Arizona desert, where the ant rebellion has begun. Dr. Hubbs tells the Eldridge clan — Mr. Eldridge (Alan Gifford), his wife, Mildred (Helen Horton), their granddaughter, Kendra (Lynne Frederick), and ranch hand Clete (Robert Henderson) — that they’re being evacuated for their own safety, but they don’t listen until it’s too late. As Dr. Hubbs and Lesko continue their complex study of the ants, the creatures start playing a fascinating cat-and-mouse game with the humans, challenging them both mentally and physically. The ants even show more compassion and consideration for their dead; while Dr. Hubbs refuses to mourn the Eldridge grandparents, the ants hold a touching ceremony for their fallen. It all leads to a surreal, psychedelic finale that is part 2001: A Space Odyssey, part Colossus: The Forbin Project, and part The Holy Mountain. Don’t expect the conclusion to make much sense, especially because Paramount edited it down from its original glory (while leaving some bits of it in the official trailer); you can watch the full ending here; it’s a doozy.
While most genre movies make their killer creatures giant, like Empire of the Ants, The Deadly Mantis, and Them!, Bass keeps his bugs regular size, but they are often shot in spectacular close-ups by National Geographic time-lapse expert and insect photographer Ken Middleham (The Hellstrom Chronicle, Damnation Alley), making them appear to be enormous. Despite their size, the ants build some amazing structures, one a Stonehenge-like series of towers that would make Spinal Tap drool. (The production designer was John Barry, who later worked on the Star Wars and Superman series, while Dick Bush did the less-than-stellar cinematography.) The script, by playwright and screenwriter Mayo Simon (Futureworld, Marooned), is no mere stale Cold War parable or military manifesto but subtly references totalitarianism and communism while recognizing the coming climate change crisis. (In 1980, Bass would make The Solar Film with his wife, Elaine, about solar energy.) Meanwhile, the creepy, ominous score is by Brian Gascoigne, Stomu Yamashta, David Vorhaus, and Desmond Briscoe. Davenport (A Man for All Seasons, Bram Stoker’s Dracula) is gruff as the determined Hubbs, while the sensitive Murphy (Manhattan, An Unmarried Woman) and Frederick (Voyage of the Damned, Nicholas and Alexandra) form a sweetly innocent bond. The film is quite a warning, one that humankind is clearly still not taking seriously all these years later. Phase IV — which was also poorly marketed, as evidenced by the poster at left — is screening August 4-10 at Metrograph in the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ year-long residency there, which also includes the program “Why Man Creates — the Work of Saul Bass,” consisting of the Bronx-born Bass’s Why Man Creates, which won the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary Subject, The Solar Film, Saul Bass: In His Own Words, a trailer reel, a commercial reel, and classic title sequences.
Ostensibly set during the Korean War but actually about the controversial battle that was raging in Vietnam, Robert Altman’s MASH is one of the most subversive, and funniest, antiwar films ever to come from a Hollywood studio. Adapted by Hollywood Ten blacklisted writer Ring Lardner Jr. from Richard Hooker’s bookMASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors, the film focuses on a different kind of hero: the doctors and nurses at a Mobile Surgical Army Hospital not far from the front lines. These brave men and women don’t go around with guns, grenades, and helmets; instead, they equip themselves with surgical masks, clamps, and scalpels, fighting to save the lives of those who risked theirs on the battlefield. Instead of celebrating killing, they celebrate survival, and celebrate they do, led by Capts. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and John Francis Xavier “Trapper John” McIntyre (Elliott Gould), who have their own way with wine, women, and song. Joined by Capt. Augustus Bedford “Duke” Forrest (Tom Skerritt), they ridicule Majs. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Sally Kellerman) and Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), regularly embarrass Father John Patrick “Dago Red” Mulcahy (René Auberjonois), flirt endlessly with Lt. Maria “Dish” Schneider (Jo Ann Pflug) and her nursing staff, and generally wreak havoc that their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Henry Blake (Roger Bowen), will usually let them get away with, as long as they don’t interrupt his fishing outings. Hawkeye, Duke, and Trapper drink from a homemade still, take bets on whether Hot Lips’ carpet matches the drapes, play golf, and make fun of the military and religion every chance they get, especially during a mock funeral for Capt. Walter Koskiusko Waldowski (John Schuck), the dentist known as “Painless,” who has decided to commit suicide. The wacky cast of characters also includes Gary Burghoff as Cpl. Radar O’Reilly, Altman regular Michael Murphy as Capt. Ezekiel Bradbury “Me Lay” Marston IV, Bud Cort as Pvt. Lorenzo Boone, G. Wood as Brig. Gen. Charlie Hammond, and Kim Atwood as Ho-Jon. But Hawkeye and Trapper also happen to be outstanding doctors who take their oath very seriously, even when operating on an injured enemy. Their brazen disregard for authority of all kinds and the rule of military law is a knowing slap in the face to governments around the world, who so often send their young men and women off to war for highly questionable reasons.
Woody Allen’s Manhattan opens with one of the most beautiful tributes ever made to the Big Apple, a lovingly filmed black-and-white architectural tour set to the beautiful sounds of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Once again collaborating with screenwriter Marshall Brickman, master cinematographer Gordon Willis, and Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton, Allen’s tale of a nebbishy forty-two-year-old two-time divorcee who takes up with a seventeen-year-old ingénue (Mariel Hemingway) is both hysterically funny and romantically poignant, filled with classic dialogue (Yale: “You think you’re God.” Isaac: “I gotta model myself after someone.”) and iconic shots of city landmarks. After quitting his job as a successful television writer, Isaac moves to Brooklyn, where he has to cope with brown water and expensive taxi rides, among other dispiriting things. Meanwhile, against his better judgment, he develops a liking for the elitist snob Mary Wilkie (Keaton), who is seeing his best friend, the married Yale (Michael Murphy); calls her therapist Donnie; and counts among the overrated Carl Jung, Lenny Bruce, Norman Mailer, and van Gogh, which she pronounces “van Goch.” And then he has to deal with one of his ex-wives (Meryl Streep), who left him for another woman (Ann Byrne) and is writing an intimate account of their failed marriage. Of course, it’s impossible to watch Manhattan without thinking about Allen’s relationship with Soon Yi (they’ve now been together for nearly two dozen years), but if you get past that, you’ll rediscover a wonderful, intelligent comedy about men and women neatly wrapped up in a gorgeous love letter to Gotham. “He adored New York City, he idolized it all out of proportion — no, make that, he romanticized it all out of proportion,” Isaac says at the beginning of the film, which was nominated for two Oscars (Hemingway as Best Supporting Actress and Allen and Brickman for Best Original Screenplay).
