Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb. Hey, we have a really fun one for
Speaker 1: you here today. This is an episode that originally published
Speaker 1: in January of twenty twenty two, concerning the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four film Phase four. Yes, this is an ANT movie,
Speaker 1: but it also might be the trippiest mind blowing ant
Speaker 1: movie of all time. It's a lot of fun. Really
Speaker 1: enjoyed watching this one and then chatting with Joe about it.
Speaker 1: So let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we are discussing We're not only discussing an
Speaker 1: ant movie, which of course is a subset of killer
Speaker 1: bug movies in general. We are discussing what my be
Speaker 1: the ant movie, the most ambitious ANT movie in many ways,
Speaker 1: the most perplexing and thought provoking ANT movie. I'm super
Speaker 1: excited to talk about it. Actually just had as a
Speaker 1: pre recording snack a couple of ants on a log
Speaker 1: I got off the the celery and peanut butter and
Speaker 1: the raisins It just felt appropriate.
Speaker 3: You know, I feel like that reflects our higher ant
Speaker 3: consciousness now, because the important thing to understand about ants
Speaker 3: is they don't even mind if you eat a few
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That's sort of like the it's like the skin cells
Speaker 3: that you would scrape off of somebody's hand while hugging them.
Speaker 3: You know, it just like doesn't bother the colony as
Speaker 3: a whole. And I would say that's actually reflective of
Speaker 3: the movie we're talking about today overall. The movie is
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies sci fi ant flick Phase Four, which
Speaker 3: we alluded to possibly doing an episode in our Core
Speaker 3: episode about ants building traps. We talked about some biology
Speaker 3: papers about ant behaviors, whether whether these structures ants build
Speaker 3: should be understood as traps or not. But this movie
Speaker 3: came up because we were talking about ant movies and
Speaker 3: I said, you know, there's this ant movie I've been
Speaker 3: looking at in the video store for years, just based
Speaker 3: on the DVD cover. It's called Phase four. The cover
Speaker 3: is like this kind of cool design, but it's got
Speaker 3: ants crawling out of a hole in somebody's hand. Never
Speaker 3: seen it, and we went in just based on the
Speaker 3: DVD cover. I'd say this was a hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, after we had we had already decided this
Speaker 1: is the one. I actually received word from someone on
Speaker 1: the stuff to blow your mind. Discord email us if
Speaker 1: you want to invite to that who They were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this one's good. You're going to want to
Speaker 1: cover this one for a weird house. I also have,
Speaker 1: of course, looked it up when we were talking about it.
Speaker 1: I looked it up in Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia film
Speaker 1: in which he called it quote a great science fiction
Speaker 1: thriller starring countless real ants. Yeah, so that was a
Speaker 1: solid endorsement, but it still was able to prepare me
Speaker 1: for all that was to come.
Speaker 3: Well, So, when I look at the other side of
Speaker 3: the critical response to this movie, I think some people
Speaker 3: have been kind of critical of it lacking in human depth.
Speaker 3: And I'll say, okay, I'm with them there. I mean
Speaker 3: that this is not really a humans movie, and the
Speaker 3: human characters there are few of them, and the ones
Speaker 3: that are there, we don't learn much about them, and
Speaker 3: they're not super dimensional. But I think that's okay because
Speaker 3: this is a movie that encourages you to also see
Speaker 3: humans as sort of just sells on the whole body
Speaker 3: of the human species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and in very delightful ways. It is. It
Speaker 1: is a movie almost by ants for ants. It is
Speaker 1: a movie that is one fresh on ant rotten tomatoes.
Speaker 1: It is. It is such an interesting film in so
Speaker 1: many ways, like it's going to be fun to discuss everything.
Speaker 1: I'm almost not sure where to art here.
Speaker 3: You know, the funny thing about ant Rotten Tomatoes is
Speaker 3: there are no in between scores. It's either one hundred
Speaker 3: percent or zero percent every.
Speaker 1: Time they're unified.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe we should talk about ant movies more generally,
Speaker 3: because this is, of course not the only one. In fact,
Speaker 3: I had a very powerful, vivid memory that came rushing
Speaker 3: back to me just the other day when when I
Speaker 3: started trying to recall if I'd seen other ant movies before,
Speaker 3: and it was a memory of being about twelve years
Speaker 3: old and watching this terrible made for TV killer ant
Speaker 3: movie that I think was on the Fox network or
Speaker 3: one of those you know, it was one of those
Speaker 3: made for TV movies that they used to advertise in
Speaker 3: the weeks leading up to it, so they'd have a
Speaker 3: commercial with you know, Don la Fontaine or somebody on
Speaker 3: there saying this Sunday at eight nine Central, you will
Speaker 3: learn the true meaning of terror ants and you'd get
Speaker 3: a music sting and man that I don't know if
Speaker 3: they focus group tested that or whatever, but that worked
Speaker 3: on my twelve year old brain. That was like, I
Speaker 3: had to make an appointment to watch a movie that
Speaker 3: I went back and looked up and I found out
Speaker 3: it is called Marra Bunta Colon Legion of Fire, and
Speaker 3: I rewatched the trailer and ooh, this looks stinky. It
Speaker 3: looks like it is no good. It has some absolutely
Speaker 3: atrocious CGI ants, stripping a moose clean down to the
Speaker 3: bone like piranhas on Land. It does have Mitch Poleggi
Speaker 3: from the X Files and Shocker, and it also has
Speaker 3: something that's common to some of these ant movies where
Speaker 3: there are scenes of columns of army ants that are
Speaker 3: treated like rivers of molten lava and a volcano movie.
Speaker 3: So you get, I don't know, a kid stranded up
Speaker 3: on top of a crate and then on all sides
Speaker 3: of them, the ants are just flowing and they've got
Speaker 3: to jump over them to get to safety or something.
Speaker 1: What is it with Shocker connections? We're gonna have another
Speaker 1: one of those coming out, that's right. So I guess
Speaker 1: when I think of ANT movies that I saw as
Speaker 1: a kid, I my mind probably goes to nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four as them because this one was in I think
Speaker 1: it was in pretty tight rotation on like the turner
Speaker 1: stations back in the day, like there was a pretty
Speaker 1: good chance you're going to catch part of them, you know,
Speaker 1: especially on like a Sunday afternoon. But other notable ANT
Speaker 1: movies include nineteen seventy seven's Empire of the Ants. There's
Speaker 1: also nineteen seventy seven's TV movie Ants with an exclamation Point,
Speaker 1: starring everyone's favorite work bist Robert Foxworth of what was it?
Speaker 3: Can't you remember the name of that movie?
Speaker 1: Death Moon or deth Moon Death Moon Fame, But that
Speaker 1: one also starred Suzanne Summers, Brian Denahey, Anita Gillette. This
Speaker 1: is the actor who played Liz Lemon's mom on thirty Rock,
Speaker 1: and also Bernie Casey.
Speaker 3: So does Foxworth play another work beast in this movie?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, like, yeah, maybe a laid back work beast
Speaker 1: that has to go up against in this case. Ants.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, but oh, okay, it sounds good.
Speaker 3: A question about them though. Them is a movie not
Speaker 3: with regular ants, but with big ants, right, It's like
Speaker 3: an atomic age mutation movie.
Speaker 1: Correct. Correct? And I think that leads into our next
Speaker 1: major distinction to make here. When we're talking about ant movies,
Speaker 1: you're gonna either deal with giant ant movies or you're
Speaker 1: gonna deal with normal sized ants. So it's either going
Speaker 1: to be a giant bug feature or it's going to
Speaker 1: be a swarm feature. And what's interesting about that is
Speaker 1: when you have the giant ant, it's going to be
Speaker 1: more about individual ants. That's the spectacle of it, right.
Speaker 1: This generally you're doing a lot to get one giant
Speaker 1: ant on the screen, But when you're dealing with the swarm,
Speaker 1: of course, you have this more accurate reflection of what
Speaker 1: ants are. They are not the individual, they are the group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right, and I would say broadly,
Speaker 3: I think i'd break ant movies into three category. So
Speaker 3: you've got your giant ant movies, in which case the
Speaker 3: ant is not really important. It's not important that it's
Speaker 3: an ant. It's just a giant bug, and it could
Speaker 3: be any bug, could be a giant praying mannis giant
Speaker 3: spider is just a giant bug that attacks. So I
Speaker 3: think that's probably going to be my least favorite kind overall,
Speaker 3: because that you lose the essential antiness, you know, the
Speaker 3: form the formic aromas of the premise is just like
Speaker 3: any giant bug will do, because they're just big and
Speaker 3: they'll tear you apart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, might as well go with a more interesting solitary bug,
Speaker 1: you know, insect or rachnet, like a scorpion for example.
Speaker 3: Sure, giant scorpion, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: Giant spider obviously, okay, but then.
Speaker 3: When you break it down, you keep the ants small.
Speaker 3: I think they're basically two ways you can go. One
Speaker 3: is the just ants as ants, like, you know, they're
Speaker 3: kind of an environmental threat almost. This comes back to
Speaker 3: the like they're like rivers of molten lava in a
Speaker 3: volcano movie. You know, they're just like as the floor
Speaker 3: is lava, except instead of lava, it's ants. But then
Speaker 3: the other way to go is to think about ants
Speaker 3: as a sort of organization principle and have the horror
Speaker 3: lie there. And that's actually where Phase four goes, which
Speaker 3: I think is interesting to think about ants not just
Speaker 3: as something that turns the floor into lava, but something
Speaker 3: that has has organized behaviors that can surprise you and
Speaker 3: make you afraid.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and that's definitely the realm that we're going
Speaker 1: to be venturing into with phase four here.
Speaker 3: I guess the real distinction there is that, like, does
Speaker 3: the danger of the ants lie in their in their
Speaker 3: numbers alone or in their use sociality? And Phase four
Speaker 3: it's in their use sociality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is we have to drive home. This
Speaker 1: is definitely one of the more, if not the most
Speaker 1: ambitious ant movies and intelligent ant movies, Like they really
Speaker 1: went for it with this particular film, trying to use
Speaker 1: ants to their full potential cinematically. So it's a rare beast.
Speaker 3: I think it's a work beast in many ways, because
Speaker 3: I would say this is also a highly technical film.
Speaker 3: As we've already said, it may be lacking in some
Speaker 3: human depth, but as a sort of visual art project,
Speaker 3: I'd say this movie is a home run. I mean
Speaker 3: it is a beautiful, weird celebration of geometry of like
Speaker 3: colors and lines and angles and close up photography of ants,
Speaker 3: and I would say very good special effects. There were
Speaker 3: parts where the ant puppetry is so good. I sometimes
Speaker 3: couldn't tell if I was looking at you know, microphotography
Speaker 3: of real ants or if it was one of the puppets.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was very difficult to tell. And I
Speaker 1: should also throw in that not only are the visuals great,
Speaker 1: but the sound design and music is also really noteworthy,
Speaker 1: and we'll touch on that as we go.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Phase four was was something of a flop at
Speaker 1: the time, apparently maybe it was ahead of its time,
Speaker 1: but over the years it's been particularly influential on various
Speaker 1: visionary filmmakers. Apparently, I know it's Michael Weldon liked it.
Speaker 1: I've read that Panos Cosmntos was a fan of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apparently inspired Beyond the Black Rainbow, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a film I have a lot of
Speaker 1: admiration for, and certainly having seen Phase four now I
Speaker 1: can I can definitely see where those inspiration points are.
Speaker 1: Apparently apparently as well, this was also a film that
Speaker 1: was riffed in the KTMA, like basically proto season of
Speaker 1: Mystery Science Theater three thousand and that's an episode you
Speaker 1: can actually find places, you know, uploaded on video servers
Speaker 1: and all. I've never watched it because the KTMA episodes are.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a different beast it was the first season.
Speaker 1: It's not quite like watching a full blown MST three
Speaker 1: K episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say in general, they're not as engaging,
Speaker 3: not as good. And the weird thing about it is,
Speaker 3: I recall some of the movies, so this is like
Speaker 3: when they were a public access show in Minnesota or
Speaker 3: wherever it was before they got syndicated became a national show.
Speaker 3: But the weird thing about that early season is I
Speaker 3: haven't seen a lot of them, but I know they
Speaker 3: do some movies that are kind of seems like higher
Speaker 3: budget maybe better movies than they do in the later seasons. Actually,
Speaker 3: like I think they end up doing The Green Slime,
Speaker 3: which is a movie we may come back to on
Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema someday, especially because it's got its own
Speaker 3: really groovy rock theme song.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I don't think they'd quite calibrated what was
Speaker 1: an MST three K film at that point. So at
Speaker 1: any rate, if our discussion here perks your interest and
Speaker 1: you're not quite ready to watch it without some sort
Speaker 1: of riffing structure in place, then I guess you could
Speaker 1: check out that Katma episode. But for the most part.
Speaker 1: I think this is a film that stands on its
Speaker 1: own and is richly enjoyable on its own, and more
Speaker 1: to the point, in high visual quality that you're not
Speaker 1: going to get with the rip of an old public
Speaker 1: access television broadcast.
Speaker 3: Now, while we're talking talking about looking up this movie,
Speaker 3: I got to say, also is a bizarre coincidence. As
Speaker 3: weird of a name as Phase four with the Roman
Speaker 3: numeral for ivy is for a movie, there is actually
Speaker 3: a totally unrelated other movie called Phase four that came
Speaker 3: out in the early two thousands. It looks like some
Speaker 3: kind of Dean Caane conspiracy action thriller.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So word of warning, don't get into
Speaker 1: much for a hurry when you're saying this, when you
Speaker 1: don't want to wind up with the Brian Bosworth film.
Speaker 1: If you watch a Brian Bosworth film, you want to
Speaker 1: watch Stone Cold from nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: So I've never seen that one, But while we were
Speaker 3: chatting about this, you got me to look up stills
Speaker 3: from it and Brian Bosworth and Stone Cold is fresh.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, God, look at his hair at the sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's ridiculous. That was and I remember it being
Speaker 1: a fun action B movie because you have Lance Hendrickson's
Speaker 1: in it. William Forsyth is in it, so it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: It's like a biker fighting movie or something. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 3: give me the elevator pitch on phase four before we
Speaker 3: hit the trailer audio.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what if there was some sort of a
Speaker 1: solar conjunction and it caused all ants to suddenly declare
Speaker 1: a peace treaty and turn their attention on other species
Speaker 1: on the rest of the world. So basically a nature
Speaker 1: strikes back, but this time it strikes smart and with
Speaker 1: you social precision.
Speaker 3: Great premise. Let's hear some audio.
Speaker 4: In the next few moments. We will try to give
Speaker 4: you an impression of a new kind of film experience.
Speaker 4: If your curiosity is aroused, you are ready for phase four.
Speaker 4: How do you fight a force that knows what your
Speaker 4: next move will be before you think of it?
Speaker 1: All right, that's a solid trailer right there.
Speaker 3: I agree. And now one of the things we've already
Speaker 3: talked about is that, you know, I've had my theory
Speaker 3: that really the star of this movie if it is
Speaker 3: not ants, you could say it's ants, But if it's
Speaker 3: not ants, it's still not humans. It is visual geometry.
Speaker 3: It's colors and lines and shapes and design. And I
Speaker 3: think that totally makes sense once you realize who the
Speaker 3: director of this film was, because I think the director,
Speaker 3: Saul Bass, this was his only movie. Am I right
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 1: This was his only feature length film. Yeah, he did
Speaker 1: some other short films and experimental films and some you know,
Speaker 1: sort of documentary style shorts, but this is the only
Speaker 1: full length film he did.
Speaker 3: And it seems to me very much a graphic designers
Speaker 3: or art director's kind of films. It's not really an
Speaker 3: actor's film. It's not really very script driven. It's a
Speaker 3: movie about showing you pictures. And the style of those
Speaker 3: pictures reads very much to me is that mid century
Speaker 3: modern design style, the kind of thing that you see
Speaker 3: a lot on mad Men or whatever. And I think
Speaker 3: that makes sense because I've read that mad Men was
Speaker 3: in many ways trying to copy the style of the
Speaker 3: director of this film, Saul Bass.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Casaal Bass is something of a legend, certainly in
Speaker 1: the graphic design field here. He lived nineteen twenty through
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, and he was for Starters. The title sequence,
Speaker 1: title design guy of the day. He crafted title sequences
Speaker 1: for major films from the mid nineteen fifties all the
Speaker 1: way through the mid nineties. We're talking about the likes
Speaker 1: of The Seven Year Itch, Vertico, Psycho, Spartacus, West Side, Story, Seconds,
Speaker 1: Broadcast News, Big Good Fellas, Kate, Fear, and Case. I
Speaker 1: should also note that, in addition to directing Phase four,
Speaker 1: he of course did the title design. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: You're not. If you're Saubash, You're not gonna trust that
Speaker 1: to anybody else. This is your baby.
Speaker 3: You're doing the titles, and the title design is great.
Speaker 1: It is like you said. The Mad Men is often
Speaker 1: credited as kind of an homage to his work and
Speaker 1: some of the visual elements there. He did logos as
Speaker 1: well for a number of big name companies throughout the sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: and eighties, and I was reading something too about the
Speaker 1: longevity of his designs on that front. He also did
Speaker 1: some pretty famous movie posters, including the aforementioned films, but
Speaker 1: also Stanley Kubrick's The Shining Oh.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. Did Saul Bass do the credit sequence for
Speaker 3: Doctor No, the first James Bond movie?
Speaker 1: That's I think he had some connection with the Bond film.
Speaker 1: I didn't put it in my notes, but that sounds right,
Speaker 1: if not Doctor No. One of the Bond films he
Speaker 1: has connections to.
Speaker 3: It seems to kind of fit into his design and Clay.
Speaker 1: I was looking at some of the rejected poster designs
Speaker 1: that he did for the Shining stuff, Like he had
Speaker 1: one that heavily featured the Hedge Labyrinth the Hedge Maze,
Speaker 1: and Kubrick had rejected that one because he didn't want
Speaker 1: too much focus to be put on that. But I
Speaker 1: was reading a post about this at Farout Magazine dot
Speaker 1: co dot uk and it had images from the original
Speaker 1: correspondence between Bass and Kubrick, and you can see that
Speaker 1: Saul Bass has has signed like the cover letter here,
Speaker 1: and he includes this wonderful It's either an illustration or
Speaker 1: a stamp of himself as a fish. So it's like
Speaker 1: his sort of mild mannered, mustached, bespeckled face here on
Speaker 1: a fish's body. It's pretty amusing.
Speaker 3: Is that a joke on him being a Bass?
Speaker 1: I guess so. Yeah.
Speaker 3: His Shining poster is worth looking up because I love
Speaker 3: the design. It's like it's just three sort of silhouettes
Speaker 3: heading into the opening of a maze, and part of
Speaker 3: me wonders if did Kubrick reject this just because he
Speaker 3: was in a bad mood and he was being difficult.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, maybe so because it's a great poster, like
Speaker 1: we said. Phase four was Bess's only full length film,
Speaker 1: though he made six other short films, including Why Man
Speaker 1: Creates from nineteen sixty eight, which won an Academy Award
Speaker 1: for Best Documentary Short Subject. His other films include the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty Robert Redford produced the Solar film promoting solar
Speaker 1: energy over fossil fuels. He also made a very interesting
Speaker 1: looking nineteen eighty four short titled Quest, based on the
Speaker 1: Ray Bradbury story Frost and Fire. I look this one up.
Speaker 1: I found like a rip of it on one of
Speaker 1: the video streaming sites, but I didn't watch it because
Speaker 1: part in part it looks too interesting. I feel like
Speaker 1: I need to see this in a like a higher
Speaker 1: visual format or something.
Speaker 3: I wonder iful that a disc out there that collects
Speaker 3: his smaller works or something.
Speaker 1: I would hope, say how or perhaps there's one of
Speaker 1: the blu rays that we allude to later on. For
Speaker 1: this film has some extras like that. But it looks
Speaker 1: very cool and definitely has that the sort of the
Speaker 1: sci fi visual sensibilities that we'll discuss in relation to
Speaker 1: this film. I also want to point out that he
Speaker 1: often worked with his wife and creative partner, Elaine Bass
Speaker 1: on these projects.
Speaker 3: Right, So if you've heard us talk in the past
Speaker 3: about rub the Fur movies, I would say this is
Speaker 3: a really excellent example of one of those. This is
Speaker 3: a design first movie, and the pleasure of it is
Speaker 3: almost all about texture. It is a celebration of surfaces.
Speaker 1: Now, it did have a writer, Mayo Simon born nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight. This is the screenwriter who wrote the West
Speaker 1: World sequel Future World in seventy six. This had Peter
Speaker 1: Fonda and Yu'll Brenner in it. Also the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine film Marooned starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman. That
Speaker 1: one won an Academy Award for Visual Effects. But Simon
Speaker 1: went on to create the NBC TV show Man from Atlantis,
Speaker 1: which I'd never heard of before, starring Patrick Duffy of
Speaker 1: Dallas Fame and Belinda Montgomery, who some of you might
Speaker 1: remember as being Doogie Howser's mom.
Speaker 3: I do not remember.
Speaker 1: It looks very fun in a mid like mid seventies
Speaker 1: TV sci fi sort of way.
Speaker 3: Now we've already said that this is not really an
Speaker 3: actor's film. In fact, it's not even really a very
Speaker 3: human film. But I guess we should mention some of
Speaker 3: the cast members.
Speaker 1: Right first and foremost, we have Nigel Davenport playing doctor
Speaker 1: Ernest D. Hubbs now Davenport lived nineteen twenty eight through
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, English actor known for nineteen sixty six is
Speaker 1: a Man for All Seasons, in which he played the
Speaker 1: Duke of Norfolk, and nineteen eighty one's Chariots of Fire,
Speaker 1: in which he played Lord Birkenhead. That one had. I've
Speaker 1: only seen parts of Chariots of Fire and it was
Speaker 1: many years ago. It's got a pretty extensive cast, so
Speaker 1: I don't specifically remember where he fit into that, but
Speaker 1: of course it's it's a famous movie and has a
Speaker 1: tremendous score by evangelists.
Speaker 3: Nigel Davenport seems like an actor you call in for gravitos.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He has a great presence and a great presence in
Speaker 1: this where he plays the determined and at times reckless
Speaker 1: at times later on the film he basically becomes kind
Speaker 1: of an ant focused captain a hab in any ways.
Speaker 3: So he has just a terrible case of mad scientist disease.
Speaker 1: Yes, so he's perfect casting for this. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: anyone else here. He was also in the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven adaptation of H. G. Wells The Island of Doctor Moreau.
Speaker 1: This is one I fondly remember from catching on TBS
Speaker 1: or TNT back in the day. This one started Burt
Speaker 1: Lancaster and Michael Yorke. He apparently plays Scrooge's dad in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty four George C. Scott adaptation of a
Speaker 1: Christmas Carol, and he's also in nineteen eighty four's Gray Stoke,
Speaker 1: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, starring Christopher Lambert.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Well who is he? And Greystoke? Is he?
Speaker 3: Is he? Is he Tarzan's dad or something?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: Gray Stoke is another one that I've only seen parts
Speaker 1: of on TV when I was much younger. I've not
Speaker 1: I don't think i've watched it in full. I'm I
Speaker 1: believe he plays one of the grumpy British guys like generally.
Speaker 3: That's Oh, I think there are a few of Thosese.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's generally you're casting for Davenport.
Speaker 3: Well, all right, So basically, the two main characters of
Speaker 3: this movie are the two scientists who go in to
Speaker 3: investigate the ant phenomenon, and so Davenport plays one of them,
Speaker 3: he plays Hubs, and then the other scientist is one
Speaker 3: named LESCo, who is played by the actor Michael Murphy.
Speaker 1: That's right. A born nineteen thirty eight American actor, best
Speaker 1: known for his work with Robert Altman. He did seven
Speaker 1: pictures for Altman. They include the likes of Countdown, The
Speaker 1: Cold Day in the Park, mash The Original film, Brewster,
Speaker 1: McLeod McCabe, and Missus Miller Nashville Kansas City. He also
Speaker 1: appeared in Woody Allen's Manhattan, Peter Weir's The Year of
Speaker 1: Living Dangerously, and Oliver Stone Salvador. He also worked with
Speaker 1: John Sayalis Silver City. He was in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia,
Speaker 1: and of course he was in He was in Tim
Speaker 1: Burton's Batman Returns. He also mayor. Oh yeah, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the mayor of Gotham City. There. I guess he was
Speaker 1: only one term, because I don't think he pops up
Speaker 1: to another Batman film. But he was also in a
Speaker 1: movie called count yorga vampire. And this is our other
Speaker 1: Shocker connection because he was in Wes Craven Shocker.
Speaker 3: He plays Peter Berg's dad in Shocker. He's like a
Speaker 3: detect who's on the case trying to chase down Mitch Pelegi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Murphy, Murphy's fine in this. You know, he's
Speaker 1: a you know, far younger than many of these other
Speaker 1: film appearances that we noted, but yeah, he's he's he's
Speaker 1: a numbers guy. He plays what he's a game theorist
Speaker 1: and mathematician. Mathematician, Yeah, doesn't really know or care anything
Speaker 1: about ants, but it is ultimately like the younger, more
Speaker 1: compassionate of the duo here, right.
Speaker 3: I think they do a kind of strange thing where
Speaker 3: they have two scientists. One is a like entomologist who
Speaker 3: cares deeply about ants, and the other is a mathematician
Speaker 3: who doesn't care about ants. And so you would think
Speaker 3: that the one who goes ahab and just wants to
Speaker 3: destroy all of ants would be the mathematician, but no,
Speaker 3: they switch them. It's kind of counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if if the other guy, if Davenport's hubs
Speaker 1: is Captain a hab Then Murphy's less go is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's kind of along for the ride. Yeah he
Speaker 3: decided well. In fact, he even says he was like,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to get away for a few weeks.
Speaker 3: That's why I took this job. So it's like he
Speaker 3: wanted to go see the watery part of.
Speaker 1: The world, all right. We ultimately have a very small
Speaker 1: human cast in This is one thing I noticed before
Speaker 1: we even watched the film, and has like five or
Speaker 1: six people are credited, and the two we covered have
Speaker 1: most of the screen time, but there is another there's
Speaker 1: a third human character that plays a I don't want
Speaker 1: to I guess a crucial role. It's not a great
Speaker 1: part because he's kind of a damsel in distress for
Speaker 1: a lot of it. But we have the actor Lynn
Speaker 1: Frederick playing Kindra Eldridge. Now. Frederick lived nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety four, British actor of the seventies who
Speaker 1: had a really promising career going died too young. Known
Speaker 1: for roles in The Amazing Mister Blunden, Nicholas and Alexandria,
Speaker 1: and The Prisoner of Zenda. She was also in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two horror film Vampire Circus.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize she was in Nicholas and Alexandra. I
Speaker 3: got to look that up. I see she was in.
Speaker 3: That's a movie where I also very much appreciate the textures.
Speaker 3: There's some really good sets and locations in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard you talk about that one before. Basically,
Speaker 1: she is what we'll discuss like. She's an innocent human
Speaker 1: who gets swept into this ant takeover drama. She has
Speaker 1: a couple of grandparents that are are doomed, and we'll
Speaker 1: discuss their doom in a bit. But the actor who
Speaker 1: plays Grandma Grandma Eldridge in this is the actor Helen Horton,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: She pops up in Superman three, did a lot of
Speaker 1: TV work. But she's also the voice of Mother from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine's Alien.
Speaker 3: Now, this is funny because I didn't remember Mother in Alien.
Speaker 3: This is the name of the computer. Is the computer
Speaker 3: that controls everything. I only remember Dallas communicating with Mother
Speaker 3: through like a command line on a computer screen, though
Speaker 3: maybe Mother has a voice. When there's like a self
Speaker 3: destruct countdown on the ship or something.
Speaker 1: I think that is it. Yeah, okay, where Mother's given
Speaker 1: the countdown and Ripley is trying to get out of
Speaker 1: there with.
Speaker 3: A cat, right right, But I don't know. Maybe next
Speaker 3: time I watch Alien, I'll got to keep I'll keep
Speaker 3: an ear out for Helen Horton, who in this movie
Speaker 3: just plays like suspicious Grandma. It's Mildred is just not
Speaker 3: very happy about the government telling them that they need
Speaker 3: to flee the ant menace.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk a little bit about the music
Speaker 1: on this one. Normally we highlight a single individual that's involved,
Speaker 1: but this time, like three different individuals at least are
Speaker 1: worth noting here. So, first of all, Brian Gascoigne is
Speaker 1: credited with the music. Born nineteen forty three, British composer
Speaker 1: and musician who also scored the Emerald Forrest in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five and worked in the music department on such
Speaker 1: films as Godsford Park. He did piano on that, Harry
Speaker 1: Potter and The Goblet of Fire. He did keyboards and
Speaker 1: synthesizer on that. He did synthesizers on Cherry two thousand
Speaker 1: and most exciting of all, at least to me, he
Speaker 1: was also in the music department on Jim Henson's nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two masterpiece The Dark Crystal. I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of that film, and I think the music for that
Speaker 1: movie is tremendous. The score was composed by Trevor Jones,
Speaker 1: but Gascoyinn provided quote synthesized electronic sounds. So I'm guessing
Speaker 1: it was like, Okay, the crystal's doing something. We need
Speaker 1: to get gas coin in here to start tickling the synth.
Speaker 3: What is the sound of draining essence?
Speaker 1: Now we also have Desmond brisco on this who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five through two thousand and six. He's credited
Speaker 1: as Composer Additional Electronic Music, a British composer and sound engineer,
Speaker 1: co founder of the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Now this
Speaker 1: is the group that included pioneering electronic artist Delia Derbyshire,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, She's the one who provided the electronic
Speaker 1: arrangement of the original Doctor Who theme and ultimately influenced
Speaker 1: many future big names and electronic music.
Speaker 3: So I've said on the show before that I am
Speaker 3: not a hoovey and I don't really know much Doctor Who,
Speaker 3: but when I did very first try to watch a
Speaker 3: few episodes, the main thing that actually hooked me about
Speaker 3: it more than the show itself was the theme song.
Speaker 3: I got briefly obsessed with the theme music and with
Speaker 3: the different versions of it from over the years, and
Speaker 3: ended up going on the steep dive about Delia Derbyshire
Speaker 3: and like how she created it with I guess it
Speaker 3: was analog tape effects at the time, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean this, yeah, digital manipulation, and yeah, what a
Speaker 3: great piece of classic electronic and tape effects music.
Speaker 1: And then on one more individual I want to mention
Speaker 1: in reference to Phase four, and that is Stomu Yamashta,
Speaker 1: who is credited with composer Montage Music. Born nineteen forty
Speaker 1: seven Japanese percussionist, keyboardist and composer known for helping to
Speaker 1: fuse traditional Japanese percuss of music with Western prog rock.
Speaker 1: In the sixties and seventies. He was a member of
Speaker 1: the supergroup Go alongside such names as Steve Winwood, best
Speaker 1: known for the track Higher Love, but also German electronic
Speaker 1: music pioneer Klaus Schultz, of whom I'm a big fan.
Speaker 3: Oh I don't know if I know him.
Speaker 1: Oh, you would dig out. I'll have to send you
Speaker 1: some stuff after we record, because Claus Schultz put out
Speaker 1: some wonderful material. Now, Yamashta, on his own scored the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six David Bowie sci fi film The Man
Speaker 1: Who Fell to Earth, as well as nineteen eighty two's Tempest,
Speaker 1: starring John Cassavetti's Susan Sarandon, Molly Ringwald, and Roald Julia.
Speaker 3: Now this is a movie where I don't think there
Speaker 3: was ever like a melody from the score that stuck
Speaker 3: with me. But in general I loved the sound design
Speaker 3: and the ambient electronic music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a film that's very concerned with computers
Speaker 1: and computer technology and all that computer technology is also
Speaker 1: scene is and very much plot wise as a way
Speaker 1: of translating the way of the ant in a way
Speaker 1: that ants and humans might communicate. So it uses electronic
Speaker 1: music well in providing a sense of the cosmic and
Speaker 1: other worldly and even like the sense of the cosmic
Speaker 1: and other worldly to be found in the mind of
Speaker 1: the ants. There are a few places where it gets
Speaker 1: a little melodic and traditional, almost as if somebody like
Speaker 1: the producers were like, hey, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: Saw this is a human movie for humans, and this
Speaker 1: scene has humans doing human stuff. Let's get some human
Speaker 1: music in here. But otherwise, yeah, it's pretty great. Lots
Speaker 1: of electronic touches. There are stretches without music, but those
Speaker 1: tend to revolve around one of two soundscapes I found,
Speaker 1: either windswept desert or the insides of their spaceship like
Speaker 1: research station that also has a supercomputer. There, so lots
Speaker 1: of computer noises.
Speaker 3: Oh, in fair warning, I wouldn't normally mention this, but
Speaker 3: there was one part of like, if you're listening with
Speaker 3: like loud headphones or something, there is one segment of
Speaker 3: this movie where for like several minutes they start making
Speaker 3: this excruciating high pitch noise. Yeah, I imagine. Do you
Speaker 3: know the part I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: Rob Yes, yeah, absolutely, Because I was watching it with
Speaker 1: the sound up, part of it with the sound up
Speaker 1: while my wife was trying to work like the next dream,
Speaker 1: and I was a little I was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is getting a bit much. I have to plug in
Speaker 1: the headphones for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So if you go watch it yourself, just be wary,
Speaker 3: keep your finger on the volume button.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into the plot of this baby.
Speaker 1: We have to mention this is a movie that is
Speaker 1: not afraid to narrate.
Speaker 3: No, no, Yeah, there is plenty of voiceover narrate near
Speaker 3: In fact, I wonder if there is just if you
Speaker 3: go by word count, I wonder if there's more voiceover
Speaker 3: narration than there is dialogue.
Speaker 1: Probably, So you know, I have to be one. Anytime
Speaker 1: I think about narration and film, I always go back
Speaker 1: to like various threads I would read and arguments about
Speaker 1: really Scott's Blade Runner, where people are like, get that
Speaker 1: narration out of here, narration in a film by god,
Speaker 1: And I was always like, I kind of like the narration.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with the narration? Give me that?
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't have strong general feelings about it one
Speaker 3: way or another. You know, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it can be good, it can be bad. It
Speaker 1: can also help along a movie that maybe you know,
Speaker 1: it just needs a little narration help and letting you
Speaker 1: know what's supposed to be going on.
Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, And also in this movie, without the narration,
Speaker 3: you would either need to make it way more dialogue
Speaker 3: heavy and add totally different types of characters and stuff,
Speaker 3: or you just got to have the narration in there,
Speaker 3: because they begin by explaining the whole situation. The opening
Speaker 3: narration includes shots of space where you're seeing these planets
Speaker 3: and stars, apparently a line that they're very vague about
Speaker 3: what's going on, but in a way that I found
Speaker 3: pleasing rather than frustrating. I think some people might be
Speaker 3: more frustrated, but they don't say exactly what's going on.
Speaker 3: But there's so some kind of weird astronomical event, and
Speaker 3: this astronomical event gets scientists and mystics alike very excited,
Speaker 3: but nobody knows what it means except you are told
Speaker 3: that there's a researcher named Ernest Hubbs who documents that
Speaker 3: right after this astronomical event, ants around the world start
Speaker 3: doing things that ants don't do. It says that they're meeting, communicating,
Speaker 3: making decisions, again being very vague about what that means,
Speaker 3: but I guess we'll find out more as the movie
Speaker 3: goes on. And while the narration explains the situation, we
Speaker 3: get to watch this beautiful ballet of ants running around
Speaker 3: in tunnels, fighting, reproducing, doing all kinds of things. And
Speaker 3: I want to say, also that the effects and photography
Speaker 3: in this opening ant ballet are just wonderful. There were
Speaker 3: plenty of parts where I couldn't tell if I was
Speaker 3: looking at real ants or at special effects. Even some
Speaker 3: of the close ups that were obviously puppets look very good.
Speaker 3: Of the textured surfaces, the exoskeleton, the eye, the sand grains,
Speaker 3: the antennae. At this point I immediately felt like we
Speaker 3: were in very good hands as far as the look
Speaker 3: and design of the movie was going. Absolutely but then
Speaker 3: we get tons more voice over narration. I started transcribing it,
Speaker 3: but I think later on I realized, like, I don't
Speaker 3: need to read all of this verbatim, but essentially there
Speaker 3: is a different voice coming in that we will later
Speaker 3: find out as doctor Hubbs, and he's dictating some kind
Speaker 3: of government memorandum. He's issuing a MIMO to like the
Speaker 3: biocontrol division of some kind of agency, and he is
Speaker 3: explaining alarming reports of something going on in the American Southwest.
Speaker 3: He says that the traditional antagonisms between different ant species
Speaker 3: have come to a dramatic halt, and he says, at
Speaker 3: the same time, there has been an apparent disappearance of
Speaker 3: those insects which prey on ants, specifically mantises, beetles, millipedes,
Speaker 3: and spiders. And he says that if this goes on,
Speaker 3: we're going to see some real booms in ant populations.
Speaker 3: And then meanwhile, we see beautiful time lapse footage of
Speaker 3: ants swarming over and devouring a big tarantula, and he
Speaker 3: ends up offering in this MIMO a proposal. He's like, look,
Speaker 3: what we've got to do is a full scale attack
Speaker 3: on the ants, otherwise they're going to represent a threat
Speaker 3: to all other life forms in the area. So we
Speaker 3: need to build an experiment station out near ant ground zero.
Speaker 3: And he says he needs more personnel and needs another
Speaker 3: researcher to join him. So the leader here is going
Speaker 3: to be this ant researcher Hubs, but he also requests
Speaker 3: somebody named j. R. LESCo, who is a senior scientist
Speaker 3: who is a qualified information specialist with cryptological background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so we're already getting the idea that there's
Speaker 1: going to be some sort of communication aspect to this study,
Speaker 1: this project, which again seems to be a out understanding
Speaker 1: and combating ants who have declared like an ant wide
Speaker 1: peace treaty and are turning their attention to other things
Speaker 1: in a way that makes us feel threatened. And it
Speaker 1: seems like Hubbs has just been granted an enormous budget
Speaker 1: for this project, but also, as we'll find out, a
Speaker 1: very limited window in which to operate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. So they build him a geodesic dome
Speaker 3: out in the desert that's full of the world's most
Speaker 3: sophisticated technology, and it's got supercomputers and stuff in in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four. But he's also constantly getting calls on
Speaker 3: the radio that are like, they're like, can you hurry
Speaker 3: this up? You know, we don't have enough budget to
Speaker 3: fund you for two more days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well maybe, I mean, maybe it's on hubs, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe you should have scaled down on the facilities here.
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't need this what seems like a spaceship,
Speaker 1: you know, it feels like it should be on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars, not in the wedd of the Arizona desert.
Speaker 3: We've only got these super computers rented through Friday. After
Speaker 3: that there are late fees. Well anyway, so that's the setup,
Speaker 3: and then we get to the actual narrative part of
Speaker 3: the film. So we see a car blasting through the desert,
Speaker 3: kicking up clouds of dust from the road, and it
Speaker 3: goes past signs for a golf course and a country club,
Speaker 3: and then a sign that says welcome to Paradise City.
Speaker 3: But it's one of those comedic, ironic reveals because when
Speaker 3: you peel back from all those signs, it's just a
Speaker 3: cursed land of emptiness and dust.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they refer to it as another desert
Speaker 1: development that didn't develop.
Speaker 3: Right. It's some half built houses and a grid of
Speaker 3: dirt roads. But when they go down to the end
Speaker 3: of the longest of the dirt roads, we see something
Speaker 3: very strange. And in the middle of the nothingness there
Speaker 3: is this grove of seven pillars, just pillars reaching straight
Speaker 3: up out of the ground like Greek columns. And so
Speaker 3: they drive up and park the car and out hop
Speaker 3: a couple of guys. These would be our protagonist again.
Speaker 3: This is Nigel Davenport is doctor Hubbs and Michael Murphy
Speaker 3: is doctor LESCo. And I immediately noticed some very interesting
Speaker 3: color coating. This was another thing that tipped me off
Speaker 3: early how sort of visual and design oriented this movie
Speaker 3: would be. Because Rob, I don't know if you noticed
Speaker 3: the same thing, but The color coating of the wardrobes
Speaker 3: of the two actors is so starkly different. LESCo is
Speaker 3: just blue, blue blue. He's blue jeans, blue shirt, blue jacket,
Speaker 3: and blue hat, whereas Hubbs is all these earth tones
Speaker 3: and earth energy. So he's wearing khaki pants, a brown jacket,
Speaker 3: he's got long hair and a dark beard, and he's
Speaker 3: carrying a staff or stick of some kind. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I was immediately wondering what's going on with this? It
Speaker 3: again seems like a graphic designer's touch. But is LESCo
Speaker 3: supposed to be the sky while Hubbs is the earth?
Speaker 3: Or is it a blue wizard in ratagas the brown thing.
Speaker 1: I really noticed this as much when I was watching it,
Speaker 1: but I guess I was focusing more on the environment
Speaker 1: they're in, which is pretty brilliant, because this is the
Speaker 1: place where where human organization and human development has the
Speaker 1: wave has crashed and fallen back. It is where human
Speaker 1: development has failed, but it is where this new sign
Speaker 1: of ant civilization has sprung forth right.
Speaker 3: And so they walk around in these half built or
Speaker 3: abandoned houses, and LESCo asks if there are any dead
Speaker 3: bodies out here, and Nigel Davenport says, no, the population
Speaker 3: moved itself out days ago. And then they start talking
Speaker 3: about their background, and we learned that LESCo has achieved
Speaker 3: scientific fame by applying game theory to the language of
Speaker 3: killer whales, and Hubs is very intrigued by this. He
Speaker 3: wants to know, did you ever actually make contact with
Speaker 3: a whale? And LESCo says, only with the emotionally disturbed ones.
Speaker 3: And Hub is like, well, how did you determine that?
Speaker 3: And LESCo says, well, we talked. I think he's supposed
Speaker 3: to be kidding, but they never clarify this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's math nerdery. And also, this is
Speaker 1: the point in the movie where if you don't know
Speaker 1: anything about it, you can easily imagine we're going in
Speaker 1: the direction of like a computer literally translates what ants
Speaker 1: are saying in some sort of a computer voice, in
Speaker 1: the same way that you have films where this is
Speaker 1: happening with dolphins and other creatures. But and this is
Speaker 1: a film that is about communication or attempts at communication
Speaker 1: between two drastically different intelligent species. But it does so
Speaker 1: in very clever ways that I think really like takes
Speaker 1: the question seriously and takes the you know, the gulf
Speaker 1: between different you know, possibly evolved intelligences, the gulf between them,
Speaker 1: and how difficult it would be like for one side
Speaker 1: to even realize the other side is intelligent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's something I really liked about this movie is
Speaker 3: that it it takes the confusing nature of cross species
Speaker 3: communication seriously. Like there's a great scene I want to
Speaker 3: talk about later that involves communication between humans and ants
Speaker 3: and how it's hard to understand what it means. But anyway,
Speaker 3: here at the beginning, it's clear that LESCo does not
Speaker 3: see himself as a biologist or a zoologist or somebody
Speaker 3: who cares about or understands animals. He says, I'm strictly
Speaker 3: a pencil and paper guy. The two scientists approach the
Speaker 3: Seven Pillars and Rob, how would you describe these pillars?
Speaker 3: I love this feature of the movie. And they won't
Speaker 3: be the last pillars we see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're pretty great because they're monolithic, but they don't
Speaker 1: you know, they're not as perfect as say the monolith
Speaker 1: from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey, though you
Speaker 1: can't help but imagine some of that DNA is present there.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly the this is a film that exists,
Speaker 1: you know, in the ultimately in the very long shadow
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one, a space Odyssey. But these
Speaker 1: feel they feel very organic. They're reminiscent of termite mound
Speaker 1: cooling towers. They have these little crevices towards the top
Speaker 1: that feel like they're intended to do something with the air.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing that you'd think an ant
Speaker 1: researcher would be very interested in, but they ultimately don't
Speaker 1: seem to investigate that much. But yeah, they feel like
Speaker 1: they are at this place where where organic animal construction
Speaker 1: and human construction meets and the distinction becomes blurred, right.
Speaker 3: I mean it's the angles I think that make them unusual.
Speaker 3: I mean, if they were just sort of rounded pillars,
Speaker 3: you might think, well, those are very tall and strange,
Speaker 3: but they're more like termite mounds. It's the fact that
Speaker 3: they have like a diamond shape with sharp angles that
Speaker 3: makes it look like, oh, this shouldn't be something ants
Speaker 3: are doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks very alien and cool.
Speaker 3: Oh and of course we see in close ups that
Speaker 3: ants are looking looking out the scientists through crevices in
Speaker 3: the pillars. So anyway, after this, they go to a
Speaker 3: farm where they find some dead sheep, and there are
Speaker 3: shots of them walking through the tall grass that's rippling
Speaker 3: in the wind. It's very elegant. But they eventually come
Speaker 3: across a crop circle with geometric designs inside it.
Speaker 4: There's like a.
Speaker 3: Diamond in the middle and then a ring around the outside,
Speaker 3: and Hubs is talking about how there are some ant
Speaker 3: species that will attack anything that threatens their food supply,
Speaker 3: and so what do these patterns in the field represent. Well,
Speaker 3: it's not clear yet, and in fact, I don't know
Speaker 3: if it ever becomes clear. It's just like the ants
Speaker 3: make this pattern in the field for some reason, and.
Speaker 1: I don't even think our characters perhaps realize that pattern
Speaker 1: is there. This is like the privileged information that is
Speaker 1: for the viewer. Yeah, there's no indication that they notice
Speaker 1: that they are standing in the midst of this strange
Speaker 1: crop circle. Right.
Speaker 3: And I will say, by the way, I don't know
Speaker 3: if this is true, but I just read briefly on
Speaker 3: the internet some people alleging that this film may have
Speaker 3: inspired some of the people who made crop circles, and
Speaker 3: then said that they were made by aliens because apparently
Speaker 3: this pre date some of the big crop circle craze.
Speaker 1: Huh, I didn't realize that. I did read somewhere that
Speaker 1: this is arguably the first appearance of a crop circle
Speaker 1: in a film, But that would be interesting, and certainly
Speaker 1: it would match up with what we know about about
Speaker 1: crop circles in there. They're very human origin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apparently there are a few reports of things sort
Speaker 3: of like crop circles that date to before the seventies,
Speaker 3: but I think the real crop circle craze started sometime
Speaker 3: in the mid to late seventies. That's when it really
Speaker 3: took off. Well anyway. So they're going around this farm
Speaker 3: that still does have a few people in it, and
Speaker 3: we meet a farmer named mister Eldridge. I don't think
Speaker 3: we ever learned his first name, and he's explaining a
Speaker 3: fuel ditch trap for ants, Like they dig a big
Speaker 3: moat around the farmhouse and fill it with gasoline or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a crazy sounding planned. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if they aunt get across the water, we'll just light
Speaker 1: this troth of a fuel on fire and then that'll
Speaker 1: do him, and then we'll just keep this troth of
Speaker 1: fire going for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the family is mister Eldridge, and then his
Speaker 3: wife Mildred Eldridge, who is skeptical of these scientists who
Speaker 3: have arrived to tell them they're in danger. And their
Speaker 3: granddaughter Kendra Eldridge, who she kind of rides horses and waves.
Speaker 3: And then there's another guy named Cleat, who I guess
Speaker 3: is their aunt burning guy. It's like, oh, you got
Speaker 3: an aunt burning guy. Yeah, his name's Cleat. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: put you in touch.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But Kindra is the main character again, this is
Speaker 1: the character played by Lynn Frederick spoiler. She's the only
Speaker 1: one that is going to survive for any length of
Speaker 1: time here.
Speaker 3: Right, But anyway, Hubbs tells them they're going to have
Speaker 3: to evacuate in a few days for their own protection.
Speaker 3: Mildred is not happy about that, but strangely, mister Eldridge
Speaker 3: is like, hey, listen to them, it's for our own protection.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that was Phase one, and then we get a
Speaker 3: transition where we see phase two. It's not clear what
Speaker 3: has changed, but that's what we get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's the interesting thing about this film, Like
Speaker 1: the title phase four is not referring to most of
Speaker 1: the film, Like Phase four is the place we are
Speaker 1: going to arrive at at the end of the film.
Speaker 3: Right, So the next thing we do is we go
Speaker 3: to the two scientists in their self contained research facility,
Speaker 3: which is a geodesic dome with an antenna tower next
Speaker 3: to it and then a bunch of little nodes coming
Speaker 3: off of it, like these pipes leading out to these
Speaker 3: little spheres planted out in the perimeter around the geodesic dome,
Speaker 3: which we later learned are for spraying beautiful poison.
Speaker 1: Yes, of which they have. Do they have just two
Speaker 1: colors or are there three colors?
Speaker 3: There are only two we learn about that there may
Speaker 3: be others.
Speaker 1: There's yellow and there's blood.
Speaker 3: So the scientists are inside doing experiments. There are lots
Speaker 3: of machines that make beeping and worrying noises, sometimes a
Speaker 3: big air pressure hiss as well. And this might sound
Speaker 3: kind of hard to believe, but I believe. I think
Speaker 3: there are several just extremely pleasurable shots of Michael Murphy
Speaker 3: just flipping lots of switches.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're not exactly sure what he's doing here necessarily,
Speaker 1: but you have that nice computer electronic ambiance going on
Speaker 1: in the background, and he's very chill about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a nice vibe. Now, I love, love, love this
Speaker 1: research facility they have here. In general, I love it
Speaker 1: when researchers and or adventurers in a film are just
Speaker 1: drastically technologically over prepared for a mission, overfunded as well,
Speaker 1: perhaps here. I love it when it's as simple as
Speaker 1: an antarctic research facility or an underwater station that just
Speaker 1: happens to have a flamethrower on hand. I also love
Speaker 1: it when it's an eight mission into the jungle and
Speaker 1: you bring along tripod, gun drones and your own talking
Speaker 1: techno ape.
Speaker 3: It's congo.
Speaker 1: You have congo, And I guess that's the thing too.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it's very criteny, and this film
Speaker 1: does feel very Crichtony in many respects. Well, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Don't want to say it's ripping it off, but I
Speaker 3: say I think there are some very clear parallels between
Speaker 3: this movie and the Andrama to Strain, Michael Crichton's first
Speaker 3: big novel, which is also about a group of scientists
Speaker 3: that go into a self contained facility in the American
Speaker 3: Southwest in order to fight some kind of novel biological
Speaker 3: menace that has been caused by an astronomical event. So
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit of inspiration.
Speaker 1: Going on there that would make sense. Yeah, but again,
Speaker 1: what we have here is a weird station that seems
Speaker 1: like it's built for the surface of Mars, full of supercomputers,
Speaker 1: NASA style living conditions, you know, like this wonderful scene
Speaker 1: where they're picking out what kind of food they're going
Speaker 1: to eat, or they're getting some coffee or something, and
Speaker 1: it's like a spaceship, but not only a spaceship. A
Speaker 1: spaceship that has been engineered to stand is like the
Speaker 1: last redoubt against the ant onslaught, and yet it is
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent ant proof, though there seem to
Speaker 1: be measures taken to try and make it so. Like
Speaker 1: there's essentially like a decontamination airlock that you have to
Speaker 1: get nude for. They're the poison sprayers with two different
Speaker 1: flavors that we mentioned.
Speaker 3: It's great, and there's some drama inside about cost overruns
Speaker 3: that we alluded to earlier, Like there's a guy on
Speaker 3: the radio who's calling hubs and being like, hey, you
Speaker 3: got to speed up your research. We're running out of
Speaker 3: money here.
Speaker 1: And I guess this is important too, to not like
Speaker 1: one of the things that they keep driving home. I
Speaker 1: think with the human interaction is that ants have it
Speaker 1: all together. Not only previously they did, you know, species
Speaker 1: to species, or a colony to colony in some cases,
Speaker 1: and super colonies. But now all ant kind is one
Speaker 1: is on the same page. They are working in unison. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: none of our humans can get along completely. They all
Speaker 1: have different ideas and different views. You know, our two
Speaker 1: researchers are arguing with each other. They're having conflicts ultimately
Speaker 1: with the other human character and with these people on
Speaker 1: the phone, right.
Speaker 3: But the way they come up with to speed up
Speaker 3: the research, by the way, is hilarious because what it
Speaker 3: means is, Okay, we got to get the ants to
Speaker 3: do something. So Hubbs is like, well, I guess I'll
Speaker 3: go blow up these towers in the desert with a
Speaker 3: handheld grenade launcher.
Speaker 1: Yes, and yeah, we have to stress that we're talking again,
Speaker 1: like a handheld grenade launcher like the one Arnold has
Speaker 1: in Terminator too. He just casually uses it to blow
Speaker 1: up all the ant monoliths that are there, which which
Speaker 1: which is interesting too because later on, like the voice
Speaker 1: on the phone is like, you should try destroying one
Speaker 1: of the monoliths to see if you can provoke a reaction.
Speaker 1: He didn't. He didn't mess around. He just blows them
Speaker 1: all up. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I think he's already done it. When they suggest that,
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, I'll think about it, okay.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And I just again it comes back to
Speaker 1: the fact that this grenade launcher I'm I'm assuming or
Speaker 1: hoping it is Slash, was illegal to actually own one
Speaker 1: of these that fires actual grenades and not flares. So
Speaker 1: I guess it is part of the specialized kit that
Speaker 1: he requested and was approved for use in this research experiment.
Speaker 1: So that means it has its like its own shelf
Speaker 1: in the in the research station, or maybe it's in
Speaker 1: as it's mounted behind glass with a sign that reads
Speaker 1: break if studied. Dandelion is rapidly approaching.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we just see him out there in the
Speaker 3: middle of the road. He's standing there like like Mill
Speaker 3: Gibson and the Road Warrior poster with the thing. He's
Speaker 3: just shooting these ant colonies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got a whole ammunition box of grenades and
Speaker 1: he's just letting it, letting the monolithts happen.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so from this they do learn some things
Speaker 3: because LESCo figures out that the ants are communicating by
Speaker 3: sound that he's like, they're talking to each other, and
Speaker 3: he starts recording the sounds they're making and trying to
Speaker 3: decode it and understand their language in anyway, so we
Speaker 3: knew this was coming. Later that night, the ants apparently
Speaker 3: attack the Eldridge farm. They're the only other humans left around,
Speaker 3: and the ants set upon them. So they start attacking
Speaker 3: the horse out in the field, and then the fire
Speaker 3: trap is triggered, and then the ants swarm the house
Speaker 3: and then the humans have to flee in a truck,
Speaker 3: and Mildred is all like they warned us, and then
Speaker 3: I think ants attack the truck and attack inside the truck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're they're They're suddenly inside they're crawling in
Speaker 1: Grandpa's hair. There's the results in a wreck, and so
Speaker 1: they're fleeing on foot at this point towards the research
Speaker 1: facility and towards the buildings, you know, the remains of
Speaker 1: this housing development.
Speaker 3: They're still there, right, So they basically get to the
Speaker 3: research facility, but they're attacked by ants when they get
Speaker 3: out of the truck, and at the same time LESCo
Speaker 3: is showing off his work to Hubs on decoding the
Speaker 3: ant language. And while he's doing that, ants cut the
Speaker 3: power to the facility. They cut the power, man, how
Speaker 3: can they cut the power? They're animals, but they do,
Speaker 3: and the so Hubs responds by spraying the ants outside
Speaker 3: with this gorgeous yellow poison that it's like coming out
Speaker 3: of these spheres. It's weird to say it's beautiful, but
Speaker 3: it is beautiful. And they call the poison yellow. It's
Speaker 3: just called the yellow. Yes, And I think again, it
Speaker 3: makes a lot of sense for this movie to call
Speaker 3: its poison, to not have a chemical name, to not
Speaker 3: let it have a brand name. It's just the yellow,
Speaker 3: and that indicates like that color and lines reign supreme
Speaker 3: in the world A phase four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, But the poison defense here it seems to work.
Speaker 1: In fact, it works a little too well.
Speaker 3: Right, So it kills most of the ants, though some
Speaker 3: ants get away, and then meanwhile they come out the
Speaker 3: next morning, and so the two scientists are in these
Speaker 3: environment suits they look like they're like, you know, like
Speaker 3: eva suits in space, and they go out to see
Speaker 3: that they're spraying of the poison has killed the people
Speaker 3: who came from the farm. It killed Mildred and mister
Speaker 3: Eldridge and Cleat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it killed grandma and grandpa. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: as we find out in a bit, Kindre is fine.
Speaker 1: She was actually in the basement of one of those houses.
Speaker 3: Right, she hid in the cellar.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: But also there you start getting some hints that things
Speaker 3: are going in a weird direction because Hubbs is trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what the ants did to sabotage their
Speaker 3: generator in the truck, and meanwhile less Goo's like, there
Speaker 3: are dead people, and then Hubbs is like, oh, yes,
Speaker 3: a tragedy. But he so you're starting to get the
Speaker 3: sense that maybe he's a little disconnected from the value
Speaker 3: of human life. But anyway, he says, okay, so I
Speaker 3: think the yellow should hold its potency for three or
Speaker 3: four days, which was a great phrase. I thought, Oh,
Speaker 3: but then there's something very rare. So when they find Cleat,
Speaker 3: remember the ant burning guy. So they find Cleat and
Speaker 3: his hand is tightly closed and they pry it open
Speaker 3: with a metal rod, and it has three symmetrical holes
Speaker 3: in the palm of the hand like dots, and then
Speaker 3: we see ants crawling out of the holes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is This really gave me the willies watching this.
Speaker 1: This is how you know. The makeup effects that they
Speaker 1: did on this are are really convincing. They really feel
Speaker 1: like they are holes in a hand, and we get
Speaker 1: close ups and usually like an extreme close up on
Speaker 1: an effect like this will reveal the flaws and the design,
Speaker 1: but this one just makes me feel more and more
Speaker 1: like I'm looking at three holes in a human hand
Speaker 1: with an ant crawling out of it. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: you have the if you have the fear of holes,
Speaker 1: I would maybe make sure you're ready to fast forward
Speaker 1: through this scene. There's also an earlier scene where they're
Speaker 1: looking at a hole in like the neck of a sheep.
Speaker 1: She that also gave me the willies.
Speaker 3: Agreed, and again the effects look great. Oh but also,
Speaker 3: like we said, they discovered that Kindra survived with the storm,
Speaker 3: so she takes refuge with the scientists inside the geodesic
Speaker 3: dome and we get a scene where Hubbs is explaining
Speaker 3: the beauty of ants. He's like, so defenseless in the individual,
Speaker 3: so powerful in the mass. But here we start getting
Speaker 3: some real conflict between LESCo and Hubbs, because LESCo quite
Speaker 3: sensibly wants to call a helicopter to evacuate Kindre to
Speaker 3: safety while they keep fighting the ant menace, and Hubbs
Speaker 3: is against it. He's like, I think the bureaucrats would
Speaker 3: be rather unhappy to learn of our casualties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean to to Lesco's point, two people
Speaker 1: have died. Three people have died. Two of them were
Speaker 1: killed seemingly by the experiment itself. Now they have this
Speaker 1: poor woman who needs to be taken to safety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Hubbs is like, I don't know if we want
Speaker 1: to really mess up the experiment for this.
Speaker 3: We don't want to ask you exactly. Yeah. So Hubbs
Speaker 3: is he's trending into mad scientist mode, and it helps
Speaker 3: that while saying all this stuff, he's in the middle
Speaker 3: of staging an experiment where he puts ants in a
Speaker 3: maze with a bunch of praying mantises, and eventually he's
Speaker 3: LESCo gets him to promise that he will call the
Speaker 3: helicopter to come collect Kindra, but he's obviously lying.
Speaker 1: Yeah there is. There are no helicopters in this movie,
Speaker 1: never show uh.
Speaker 3: But then at some point Kendrick gets mad while staring
Speaker 3: at an ant. She's like, ants killed my horse, and
Speaker 3: she smashes a bunch of the glass lab equipment, which
Speaker 3: sends ants everywhere inside the lab. Hubbs gets bitten by
Speaker 3: one of them before he can seal the room and
Speaker 3: gass it to kill all the ants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is another one of those scenes. It really
Speaker 1: feels like it was. It was written and filmed by
Speaker 1: ants like playing you know, okay, loose understanding of how
Speaker 1: humans work in accurate.
Speaker 3: Yes, the human motivations are Yeah. The ants are doing
Speaker 3: most of the acting here, yes.
Speaker 1: But from there we move on to some ant business.
Speaker 1: It's back to like basically, you know, this is a game.
Speaker 1: It is one side moves in the on the other
Speaker 1: side moves, and now it is the ant's turn.
Speaker 3: Right, So what the ants do? I'm not sure I
Speaker 3: understood this scene right. Maybe you can correct me if
Speaker 3: you've got a different impression. What it looks like is
Speaker 3: happening is that there's this sequence of ants repeatedly trying
Speaker 3: to move a wod of some yellow white material through
Speaker 3: the tunnels. And I think the wad is supposed to
Speaker 3: be the poison, the yellow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and like one will die or become exhausted,
Speaker 1: probably die, pass it on to another ant, and that
Speaker 1: ant will keep journeying with the poison.
Speaker 3: Right, so we see this handoff. It's a relay of
Speaker 3: the poison kills one ant, the next ant takes it
Speaker 3: along on the journey, eventually bringing it, I think, to
Speaker 3: the queen, and then the queen like sniffs the poison
Speaker 3: and breathes heavily while examining it, and then starts to
Speaker 3: give birth to a yellow green object like strudes. It
Speaker 3: seems to be an egg that has been infused with
Speaker 3: the spirit of the yellow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is one of those scenes where, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're going to come in and you're going to
Speaker 1: be very critical about everything, you're going to say, is
Speaker 1: this something ants can do? Is what's going on here?
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, this is a movie that
Speaker 1: is largely takes the viewpoint of like, Look, if I
Speaker 1: explained it to you, I'd probably get it really wrong
Speaker 1: and it would feel kind of dumb. But if you're
Speaker 1: just viewing it, if you just kind of like breathe
Speaker 1: it in, take in the colors, then everything's going to
Speaker 1: be fine.
Speaker 3: Right, So from here the arms race continues. The ants
Speaker 3: after this build a series of geometric pillars right outside
Speaker 3: the geodesic dome. And the scientists are like, what are
Speaker 3: they doing? What is this? And we discovered that they
Speaker 3: have built solar reflectors to direct beams of sunlight at
Speaker 3: the dome and this immediately starts bringing up the temperature
Speaker 3: in the lab above the level where the computers can
Speaker 3: tolerate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. They ants did it all in
Speaker 1: one night, reflective monoliths to fry the humans and perhaps
Speaker 1: more importantly, to overheat their their delicate thinking machine. It's
Speaker 1: the sort of heat based warfare that is actually used specifically,
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, by bees. Now, bees do not construct
Speaker 1: monoliths to fry supercomputers, but they will swarm around an
Speaker 1: invader and overheat it with their own their own body heat.
Speaker 1: So it's that alone makes this feel like a I
Speaker 1: mean a speculative leap, certainly, but kind of a believable
Speaker 1: tactic that you might conceivably have some sort of advanced
Speaker 1: ants us right.
Speaker 3: Right, So that's their new offense, but also the ants
Speaker 3: of a new defense, because the researchers see that, like,
Speaker 3: the ants have started a new generation of workers that
Speaker 3: are yellow like the poison and hubs says, we challenge
Speaker 3: them with yellow chemistry, they respond with yellow creatures. So
Speaker 3: it seems, you know, the ants are adapting to the
Speaker 3: poisons they're using, and Hub says, we can try the blue,
Speaker 3: of course, but they'd only adapt again. Yeah yeah, so
Speaker 3: of course mad scientists progression. Hubs starts talking monologuing about
Speaker 3: how he believes the ants or a new type of intelligence,
Speaker 3: one that can be harnessed and educated by humans. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: and he's like, oh, yeah, I didn't call the helicopter,
Speaker 3: so LESCo tries to call, but when he goes to
Speaker 3: flip the switch on the radio, it shorts out, and
Speaker 3: you know, sparks go all over the place, and we
Speaker 3: find that the circuit board OHO is covered in ants
Speaker 3: that have sacrificed their bodies to short out the electronics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they managed to get in here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've penetrated the perimeter. They're sabotaging equipment, and then
Speaker 3: there's this ensuing battle. They're fighting a war over like
Speaker 3: the air conditioning. The ants are trying to burn out
Speaker 3: the lab computers and the humans are trying to keep
Speaker 3: the environment cool. And so there's this cool great stuff,
Speaker 3: like shots of an ant crawling all the way down
Speaker 3: a spiraling copper coil inside the air conditioning units and LESCo,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, tries to create a sonic weapon
Speaker 3: to broadcast at the ants, accepted as excruciating to humans
Speaker 3: and cracks all the glass and the sonic weapon works.
Speaker 3: It does shatter and crumble the pillars. But then we
Speaker 3: also get ants attacking, continuing to attack the electric wires
Speaker 3: inside the facility, and there's a great scene of ant revenge.
Speaker 3: I mean, this movie really does kind of have ant characters,
Speaker 3: Like you can see them fighting their side of the
Speaker 3: battle too, because like some of the mantises from the
Speaker 3: experiments have gotten loose and they're trying to prey on
Speaker 3: ants as they're doing their business. But there's some ant
Speaker 3: revenge when an ant grabs a praying mantis's leg and
Speaker 3: pulls it into a circuit board and it is fried.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, how often do you see a bug
Speaker 1: movie with two bugs battling it out like actual bugs
Speaker 1: in miniature in this artificial set like this must have
Speaker 1: been quite a challenge to put together.
Speaker 3: Now, Hubbs is not doing well because of the venomous
Speaker 3: ant bite on his hand, and we get some narration
Speaker 3: where he says, I'm taking one of my less painful
Speaker 3: moments to record these notes. Our equipment only functions for
Speaker 3: a few hours at LESCo believes we're being allowed this
Speaker 3: time for some purpose, a hypothesis I do not share.
Speaker 3: If this were so, it would raise questions I had
Speaker 3: not considered. And here's a really cool part where LESCo
Speaker 3: tries sending a message to the ants. It's an audio message,
Speaker 3: but he uses it to encode because he figures out
Speaker 3: that the ants have a code that they communicate in
Speaker 3: about directions, and so he can send them images. And
Speaker 3: so he sends them an image of a square, reasoning
Speaker 3: I didn't fully make the connection here, but I think
Speaker 3: it's something about geometry. He says, like, mathematics is the
Speaker 3: universal language among intelligent creatures. If there's intelligence there, I
Speaker 3: want it to know there's intelligence here. So he sends
Speaker 3: it a square.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love this because you know it's getting to
Speaker 1: the I buy into this idea in mathematics is going
Speaker 1: to be the universal language that on some level the
Speaker 1: ants understand it, we understand it. And I really love
Speaker 1: this idea that like, the ants might not realize that
Speaker 1: we are intelligent two, you know, they could just be
Speaker 1: blind to this fact. And how do we possibly communicate
Speaker 1: with ants and let them know this, but things.
Speaker 3: Get progressively worse inside the dome. There's a creepy scene
Speaker 3: where Kendra is menaced by ants while she's sleeping. She
Speaker 3: sees an ant on her pillow and says, go away,
Speaker 3: please go away, and then hubbs, possibly because of his
Speaker 3: venomous ant bite, or possibly from the interaction of that
Speaker 3: bite with his pre existing mad scientist disease. He starts
Speaker 3: going nuts and smashing things, trying to kill ants he
Speaker 3: sees or believes he sees. He gets a really bad
Speaker 3: case of I attached a picture for you to look
Speaker 3: at here, Rob kind of mad scientist eyes like. He
Speaker 3: looks like he's about to start talking about how he
Speaker 3: should have won a Nobel prize but the narrow minded
Speaker 3: academics stole it from him. And he thinks he kills
Speaker 3: an ant, but I can't tell if he actually did.
Speaker 3: He just sort of pulls back a bloody hand. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure he had.
Speaker 1: Here's some shattered glass on the floor and he manages
Speaker 1: his hand up. We don't see an end. Hey, then
Speaker 1: his Phase three buddy, Yeah, yep, We're getting down to
Speaker 1: the final of the This is the pinultimate phase. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Phase four is going to really blow you away. And
Speaker 1: this is this is where we're getting there.
Speaker 3: So we see LESCo and Hubbs in their bunks, and
Speaker 3: Lesco's wondering, why don't they kill us? You know, they
Speaker 3: roast us in here all day and then they dare
Speaker 3: us to come out at night. Why why do they
Speaker 3: Why do they play these games? Why don't they just
Speaker 3: kill us? Now? What do they want? And Hubbs talks
Speaker 3: about ant specialization. He says, you know, ants are organized
Speaker 3: into roles by the queen in order to keep her alive.
Speaker 3: He says, she's at the center. It is she who
Speaker 3: speaks if she were to die, and then they hash
Speaker 3: out their different views about what should be done next,
Speaker 3: how to proceed. Hubbs thinks, let's locate the queen and killer.
Speaker 3: That's our only way, and LESCo says, ants have all
Speaker 3: the cards. The only way to survive is to convince
Speaker 3: them that we're worth keeping alive.
Speaker 1: M It is interesting here where you know Hubbs and
Speaker 1: focusing more and more on the queen, and so he
Speaker 1: ends up focusing more and more on the individual as
Speaker 1: opposed to the group, whereas I think LESCo still seems
Speaker 1: to be more of the mindset it's like a it's
Speaker 1: the mass we need to communicate with. So I feel
Speaker 1: like the focus on the individual is perhaps just more
Speaker 1: a part of Hubbs's madness.
Speaker 3: Right, and oh and here's a scene I did love.
Speaker 3: So the ants want to communicate that LESCo transmitted the
Speaker 3: square to them earlier. They transmit back. They make vocalizations
Speaker 3: that the computer can interpret and it prints what they say.
Speaker 3: And what they say is in response to the square.
Speaker 3: They say, a circle with a dot in it. What
Speaker 3: does that mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they start to saying, well, maybe that's here. It's
Speaker 1: a map. They want something in here. We should look
Speaker 1: around and see if we find it. And that's pretty
Speaker 1: great because Kindra is suddenly like, oh, they must mean me,
Speaker 1: because I smashed an ant in the research room earlier.
Speaker 1: I will go out into the wild without my shoes on, rightady,
Speaker 1: to sacrifice herself for these scientists.
Speaker 3: Yes, She's like, the ants want me, and if I go,
Speaker 3: I commit aunt suicide. Then the scientists will get away,
Speaker 3: all right, rub there's a picture I included here, not
Speaker 3: because anything interesting is going on. It's just Hubbs sitting
Speaker 3: at a desk. But I included it because I don't
Speaker 3: know what these boxes are, but it looks like he
Speaker 3: has several sticks of butter sitting on the console in
Speaker 3: front of him.
Speaker 1: It does look like it. There's also a scene where
Speaker 1: he because basically he's convinced, I got to go out
Speaker 1: and kill the queen. They I what they where? They
Speaker 1: think the mound is where the queen can be found.
Speaker 1: And he goes to get the grenade launcher out again,
Speaker 1: but there are no grenades left because he used all
Speaker 1: of them to blow up the monoliths earlier.
Speaker 3: Why why, buddy.
Speaker 1: So he's gonna have to do it the old fashioned way.
Speaker 1: He's gonna have to take a canister of the blue
Speaker 1: out there and poison his way across there the ant
Speaker 1: dominated waste plant and make his way to the queen
Speaker 1: and try and poison her there. That seems to be
Speaker 1: the plan.
Speaker 3: But Hubbs goes out to attack the queen, and so
Speaker 3: Kindra has already gone out to sacrifice herself to the ants,
Speaker 3: and we see her just sort of disappear. Hubbs goes
Speaker 3: out and falls into a pit trap. The ants construct
Speaker 3: a pit trap. This is amazing connection to the core
Speaker 3: episode we did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we were talking about pit traps and why
Speaker 1: we don't like studies about why we don't see more
Speaker 1: pit traps in nature. You know, how about how ultimately
Speaker 1: a pit trap is is easy to build, it doesn't
Speaker 1: require that much energy. And we talk about ants potentially
Speaker 1: building traps as well. And so because of all that,
Speaker 1: and then having sort of developed a vague interest in
Speaker 1: this film based on our previous episode about ants potentially
Speaker 1: building traps, to suddenly be hit with this scene, I
Speaker 1: think I exclaimed aloud. It was just it's such a shock.
Speaker 1: It's a great sequence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. And of course he's immediately swarmed by ants.
Speaker 3: He gets landed puranaed by the ant, and so now
Speaker 3: it's just down to LESCo Is Michael Murphy. He's like,
Speaker 3: I gotta do it. So he delivers this model that's
Speaker 3: full of regret. He says, like, I would still like
Speaker 3: to believe that if we'd had more time, we could
Speaker 3: have come to an understanding, some rational accommodation of interest,
Speaker 3: some agreement. But that's not the way it's going to be.
Speaker 3: So he suits up, just starts spraying the blue everywhere,
Speaker 3: and finally he's come around to Hub's position. He's like,
Speaker 3: we only have one chance. We got to assassinate the queen.
Speaker 3: So he goes up to the mound where the queen
Speaker 3: is supposed to be. But then I guess there's sort
Speaker 3: of another pit trap because he's as he's trying to
Speaker 3: go in, he ends up sliding and he falls in.
Speaker 1: Oh but then we should mention on the way to
Speaker 1: the mound, like he's having all sorts of mishaps. He
Speaker 1: starts out in his full protective suit, but oh right,
Speaker 1: he like falls and breaks the glass. Ants get into
Speaker 1: the mask and are biting his face, and so by
Speaker 1: the time he gets here he has no protective gear
Speaker 1: on it all, he has no shoes on it. All right,
Speaker 1: it's and we have the narration of, you know, of
Speaker 1: just how worn out and on the end of things
Speaker 1: he is.
Speaker 3: But then here we get to the ending, and the
Speaker 3: ending is so weird, and I love this, and there
Speaker 3: are a couple of things I think we can say
Speaker 3: about what the ending could have been also. But in
Speaker 3: the end he goes down in to find the queen,
Speaker 3: and instead of finding the queen, he finds a room
Speaker 3: with a with a like a rectangular doorway as if
Speaker 3: it was built for humans inside the ant mound, and
Speaker 3: inside this room Buried underneath the sand is Kendra, who
Speaker 3: appears to be maybe still alive or in some suspended
Speaker 3: animation state, and Michael Murphy sort of surrenders to the
Speaker 3: ants and he knows that the ants have won and
Speaker 3: they're going to keep winning, and essentially that the ants
Speaker 3: are going to be the new rulers of the Earth,
Speaker 3: but they're not going to be killed. The ants have
Speaker 3: some kind of plans for them, and he's just ready
Speaker 3: to obey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a it's a great like suddenly just
Speaker 1: very trippy and psychedelic sequence, you know, with images of
Speaker 1: a setting a rising sun. I guess ultimately it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be rising the I feel like they might have
Speaker 1: filmed a setting sun and then reversed it or something.
Speaker 1: But very very orange, very very warming, beautiful sequence that
Speaker 1: again just really kicks the film into high gear, like
Speaker 1: suddenly we're in pure visionary filmmaking mode and we're gazing
Speaker 1: into the future. These two have been chosen by the ants.
Speaker 1: They don't know what their purpose is going to be
Speaker 1: or what this new world is going to consist of,
Speaker 1: but there I guess they're going to be the profits
Speaker 1: of the New Age or the spokespeople of the ants
Speaker 1: or anabassadors.
Speaker 3: They're like the Yeah, I was thinking, are they going
Speaker 3: to be used as the ambassadors to the rest of
Speaker 3: humanity to like explain to them that the ants are
Speaker 3: in charge? Now, that's sort of the idea I got.
Speaker 3: They're the I for one, welcome our new aunt overlords.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's also hinted like maybe they're gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna be the beginning of a new species. They're like that,
Speaker 1: the Adam and Eve of the New Ant World.
Speaker 3: But so the version of the movie I saw had
Speaker 3: shorter ending, but there actually is an alternate ending.
Speaker 1: Yes, now this one. According to Michael Weldon, this one
Speaker 1: was cut at the request of the studio because the
Speaker 1: lost ending the original ending is even more nut so psychedelic.
Speaker 1: It reminds me a lot of how Disney's The Black
Speaker 1: Hole from nineteen seventy nine also originally had a far trippier,
Speaker 1: weirder like quasi religious ending with our characters emerging in
Speaker 1: the afterlife and humans and robots merging together, and then
Speaker 1: like the studio apparently it's like that is too weird.
Speaker 1: This is a mainstream motion picture. But yeah, similar thing
Speaker 1: going here because the Lost ending, like the actual ending
Speaker 1: that we get in the theatrical cut of the film,
Speaker 1: is very satisfying, very trippy, very visual. But the Lost
Speaker 1: ending is just an absolute heroic dose of cinematic surrealism.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: So this ending is even longer. I think it's like
Speaker 1: seven or eight minutes total, and it gives us this
Speaker 1: sort of muadib fever dream vision of a future world
Speaker 1: in which ant civilization dominates humans. And all of this
Speaker 1: is presented very you know, surreally and abstractly, with visual
Speaker 1: flashes and confuse occasionally, like confusing number tags. We see
Speaker 1: flashes of ant mega projects and human scampering across them
Speaker 1: like ants. We see visions of human beings I guess
Speaker 1: in servitude to ants, strangers with magnifying loops on their heads,
Speaker 1: you know, magnification devices over their eyes, so I guess
Speaker 1: they can see their masters better. There's a faceless human
Speaker 1: that pops up, perhaps the result of some sort of
Speaker 1: ant derived human, you know, he's like a drone or something.
Speaker 1: We see James and Kindred's faces becoming one. There's you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of erotic flashes of human bodies. There's oh,
Speaker 1: and there's just so much going on that Like it's
Speaker 1: it's like a crazy music video with all sorts of
Speaker 1: strange surreal sek. There's a bald guy buried in the
Speaker 1: sand with a hole in his head and ants come
Speaker 1: crawling out the hole.
Speaker 3: It's just eleven thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's like it just goes into like
Speaker 1: just extreme visual mode. And and I think it works
Speaker 1: into a large extent because it is it is the
Speaker 1: ant future loosely translated into some sort of visual form
Speaker 1: that the humans can understand.
Speaker 3: I would say actually that I think with the long ending,
Speaker 3: the whole point of like that the abstract imagery and
Speaker 3: stuff is is to say that we can't understand it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, when we can, we can we can sort
Speaker 1: of glimpse it. Yeah, we can't fully understand like why
Speaker 1: the ants have done this, that and the other. Like
Speaker 1: what the full vision is here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the future of humans under an earth controlled
Speaker 3: by ants is going to be so bewildering and incomprehensible
Speaker 3: to us. It would be like, you know, like what
Speaker 3: we do with an experiment like ants trying to understand
Speaker 3: why they're in a maze in a laboratory. It just
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in this extended you know, ultimately rejected ending,
Speaker 1: I think it also it it's beautiful but also horrifying
Speaker 1: at times, like the dude with no face. There's another
Speaker 1: guy with like some sort of weird implants in his head,
Speaker 1: Like you get the sense that, yeah, an ant dominated
Speaker 1: world in which humans still have a role, it's going
Speaker 1: to be very different. It's not going to be altogether pleasant.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, this is a strange ending. It is
Speaker 1: a strange message to potentially hit the viewer with. And
Speaker 1: I have to say I understand. I understand why the
Speaker 1: studio probably came in and they're like, Saul, Saul, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? What are you doing with this? You know,
Speaker 1: we can't do this ending? You know.
Speaker 3: I like it. I like the long, weird ending. I
Speaker 3: like the part where the at least humans are up
Speaker 3: on like a zigarot. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: No, I love everything about the extended ending. And I
Speaker 1: think if you go out and watch this film, you
Speaker 1: need to make sure you get to see the extended
Speaker 1: ending as well, and you can choose which one you prefer.
Speaker 1: But I totally get why the studio was like, you
Speaker 1: can't do this, No, No, you've got to scale back
Speaker 1: on this. This is too weird.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess that's it. Phase four an ode to
Speaker 3: our future use social overlords. That's A. That's a. That's
Speaker 3: a pretty great ant movie.
Speaker 1: This is the best ant movie I've ever seen. This
Speaker 1: may be the best. I don't know if it's the
Speaker 1: best animal tack movies I've seen. It's certainly an animal
Speaker 1: tack movie where the animals have the best strategy. They're
Speaker 1: not just swarming us, they're out thinking us. So, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to watch phase four as well? You want
Speaker 1: to reach phase four? Well, you can watch this film
Speaker 1: pretty much wherever you rent or purchase digital movies. All
Speaker 1: of Films put out of what seems like a nice
Speaker 1: blu ray of it in the US not too long ago.
Speaker 1: One oh one Films put out a really nice blue
Speaker 1: ray in the UK, and I believe they also put
Speaker 1: one out in the US as well. I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you find a version that includes the original ending as
Speaker 1: an extra. Sometimes you might be able to find that extra,
Speaker 1: you know, floating around online, but that's not really and ultimately,
Speaker 1: you want high quality for this. So I know the
Speaker 1: one oh one Films Blue has the extended ending as
Speaker 1: an extra, and if you purchase the movie but not
Speaker 1: rent it on Apple TV, then you get access to
Speaker 1: this extra, but you do have to purchase it through there.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you just rent it and you get the theatrical ending.
Speaker 1: Oh and as for the soundtrack, Waxwork Records put out
Speaker 1: a really beautiful yellow vinyl of this with stunning jacket design,
Speaker 1: full of production art by Saul bass, stills from that
Speaker 1: lost ending, and expansive liner note. So this is really
Speaker 1: cool work looking. If you're a if you collect vinyl
Speaker 1: and this kind of soundtrack is your thing, you should
Speaker 1: check this out. I think they might have put out
Speaker 1: a CD release as well, but I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: good place to just stream the soundtrack, you know, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's up on any of the streaming
Speaker 1: sites at least as of this recording. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and close it out then,
Speaker 1: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there thoughts
Speaker 1: on phase four having seen it recently, having seen it
Speaker 1: back in the day, did you see it? Were you
Speaker 1: one of the few people that apparently saw it in
Speaker 1: theaters back in the nineteen seventies, whatever your answer is,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. As always, Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema publishes every Friday. You can find it in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a
Speaker 1: science podcast, but you know, we like to set most
Speaker 1: serious matters aside on Fridays and just discuss a strange
Speaker 1: film and in this case, you know, sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: film that ties in with recent serious episodes we've recorded.
Speaker 1: If you want to follow Weird House Cinema on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I created an Instagram for it. It's Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's the name of the show. That's the name of
Speaker 1: the Instagram account. And then also I put up blog
Speaker 1: posts about these episodes at Simmuta music dot com. That's
Speaker 1: a linked on the Instagram if you want to get there.
Speaker 1: But whenever we refer to other pieces of media that
Speaker 1: are related to it, other trailers, other bits of music.
Speaker 1: That's often where I will stash that for your easy
Speaker 1: case assumption.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
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