Phase IV backdrop
Phase IV poster

PHASE IV

1974 GB HMDB
September 13, 1974

Arizona ants mock the food chain on their way to a desert lab to get two scientists and a woman.

Directors

Saul Bass

Cast

Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton, David Healy
Horror Fantascienza

REVIEWS (1)

MC

Marco Castellini

In a future scientific station, they seek a remedy for a terrible and inexplicable phenomenon: in Arizona, the population has been exterminated by the invasion of voracious and indestructible mutant ants. An enterprising scientist may find the remedy to stop them... After the birds (in Hitchcock's eponymous film), rabbits ("Night of the Lepus") and frogs ("Frogs"), but before worms and bees ("Squirm" and "Swarm"), the invasion of terrible mutant ants could not be missing. Beast movies were very popular in the 1970s, and this "Phase IV" is undoubtedly one of the most effective and original of the period. Directed by debutant Saul Bass, "Phase IV" stands out for its excellent photography, but above all it entertains with the originality and audacity of the story (based on a novel by Mayo Simon), really at the limit of the unbelievable even for a science fiction film: thinking ants, that ally, fight, genetically mutate and even communicate through computers! Occasionally broadcast on television, recommended.

Where to Watch

Stream

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