Phase IV (1974)

Could be. Maybe the girl rising from the sand seemed even scarier when I was 12 and that's what seems different.

 

Is there a DVD with both endings?

 

I think the alternate (or "original") ending wasn't re-discovered until just a few years ago. I don't think there's anything out there on that ending other than the aforementioned YouTube video of a theatrical screening.

I knew nothing about this movie and then saw it on Netflix some months back. It was quite intriguing. Some really creepy stuff, mixed with some seemingly low budget stuff. It had a weird mix of a very dry material with a bit of melodrama thrown in. The alternate/original ending would definitely be cool to see on a restored Blu-ray.

 

Exactly. My experience is that horror/sci-fi works best, when it works, on a creative low budget allowing your imagination to do the work.

 

I think lower budgets made the writers and filmmakers work harder to make the material work.

 

I often find high-tech-budget special effects too perfect, an unrealistic distraction.

 

So this has received a bare bones Blu-ray Release from Olive films (have they EVER put special features on anything?) I kept hoping that Criterion would arrange for this title and release both the theatrical and Bass' original cut of the film. It would have been nice to see the surviving storyboards as well, various changes to the script. As I recall Mayo Simon is still alive so we could have had a featurette on him. He didn't last in the film business very long probably due to the fact that the work he did was terribly compromised.

There is a perception that the film was based on a novel by Barry Maltzberg. Maltzberg wrote the novelization. Heck, Criterion could also (or Arrow films--hello! opportunity here for the Saul Bass cut) have Michael Murphy read Maltzberg's adaption of the script (there were some differences as Maltzberg was working with an earlier draft of the script) and that might have been cool.

Arrow if you're listening:

1) Saul Bass version-restored
2) Audio interviews with Bass and a video one with Simon
3) Murphy reading the novel
4) A featurette on the microphotography which was groundbreaking in its day
5) "Fox IV" featurette or short documentary on the recut, disasterous Orange County screening
and...a commentary track by Simon. Heck, I'd do it for free (well, you'd have to fly me to the recording studio, put me up and feed me but, beyond that, I'm game!)

 

Apparently, Olive has a deal with Paramount to distribute all the leftover stuff Paramount doesn’t want to put out, and they pretty much just take existing HD transfers and put them on a BD disc and release them.

I’d say the “original ending” of “Phase IV”, which I’ve seen on YouTube as an audience-shot video from the apparent only screening of that ending, is a pretty unique case where it adds *a lot* to the film. Very weird, surreal, kind of creepy, etc.

Normally, I’d say the film is such an obscurity that there would be next to zero chance of a *second* blu-ray edition being released by another company, considering any BD release has seemed pretty far-fetched. But this film has received what little notoriety it has in recent years specifically because of the discovery of that “original” cut of the film (and subsequent screening of at least the original ending; I don't think they screened the entire original cut), and it’s most well-known among home video/movie enthusiasts right now for Olive dropping the ball on its BD release.

So I could envision Criterion or another studio, once rights are available, doing an elaborate edition with both cuts of the film and some additional special features.

 

This is an amazing comment. The Blu Ray release would have been so much better if Olive had gone with any of these ideas. May I ask you one question? What was disastrous about the OC screening? If this was the screening where they showed the original ending, I hadn't heard that anything went wrong.

In any event, I was terribly disappointed to learn that Olive would be leaving out the original ending. It is mind boggling. This is footage meticulously conceptualized by Bass and shot at great expense. And they leave it out? Never to be seen, except in some shaky bootleg Youtube video? It's a crime against art. That ending, while confusing to some, is exquisite. It casts the film in a new light. And the most impressive thing is that, even though the ending shows you a lot, it still gives you no certainty as to what man's fate will be. The highly symbolic sequence suggests that man's individuality will pass away, but in its place will come a kind of liberation, as every creature on Earth lives in communion, each species contributing in its own way to a unified whole. But then you realize that what you, the viewer, are seeing is what the 2 lead characters are experiencing, and what they are experiencing is dictated by the ants. Are we seeing what will be, or what the ants want us to believe will be? Whether the future holds liberation or slavery is left an open question. That's what I call an epic ending. So of course, it should be kept in a basement and never seen.

 

The audience was, as I recall, less than receptive to the movie and the audience scores and comments were somewhat followed to recut the film to make it more "acceptable" (heck, even the promotion at the time as I rexall pushed it as a typical science fiction ecology gone wrong movie). I saw it theaters as a kid and I found it haunting and, although the pacing is a bit on the languid side, it's a slow build burner.

As I recall there are also some editonal minor differences I the last reel including the original ending so they would have had to do a new transfer of the final reel as well. Srill, it wouldn't have been that expensive and it would have had a new selling point. Perhaps Paramount might have had to (or Olive) additional clearances. I'm hoping that Warner Archieve, now that they are licensing some Paramount titles, will release it.

 

Ah! Thanks! I misunderstood the reference to the OC screening in your original comment. You were referring to a test audience screening back in 1973, and I thought you were referring to the screening a few years ago when the original ending was discovered.

Yes, the test audience is to partly to blame for the swapping out of the endings. But I think that Paramount Pictures was looking for some reason to justify messing with the movie and the audience provided the excuse. As you correctly recall, there was a larger problem between the studio and Saul Bass. The studio wanted - and thought it was getting - a standard sci-fi story about ants attacking humans (along the lines of Them! and Empire of the Ants), while Bass was trying to use the ants to tell a story with greater depth and meaning. You mention the promotional posters. Well, if you look at those posters, you can totally see the disconnect. There’s a poster that depicts a horde of attacking ants - some of gigantic size - and one ant eating through a bloody human hand. The poster promotes the film this way: “The Day The Earth Was Turned Into A Cemetery! Ravenous Invaders Controlled By Terror Out In Space Commanded To Annihilate the World! Phase IV - When you can’t scream anymore!”

The poster looks like a promo for a 1950s B-flick. That description, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the film that Bass created. God only knows where that text came from. The only bit of it that makes some sense is the reference to “terror out in space.“ The initial script and the novelization attributed the ants ascendance to an alien species. Essentially, the initial script was a variation of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Fortunately, Bass saw how impoverished this approach was and went in a different direction. But the cheesy poster still went out and the novel still went out. Paramount didn’t care. The whole sordid business was grossly disrespectful to Bass and the film.

I saw the movie on television when I was a teenager. I had no idea what I was watching but I couldn’t change the channel. I too found it haunting. For me though, the problem (then and now) isn’t the pacing. The problem for me is that human story arc doesn’t hold up. It starts off great but it can't sustain itself. The professor’s descent into madness seems forced and Lynn Frederick’s presence seems to serve no purpose for the plot, other than to provide a female to complete the Adam-and-Eve images at the end. It really is a shame that this film, which could have been one of the greatest sci-fi films ever created, was undermined by a lack of support from the studio. If Paramount had provided a talented writer to fix the script and better map out the human drama, and if it then had embraced Bass’s vision of the film and promoted it accurately, this film might be considered a masterpiece today. IMHO.

 

I don't think that Mayo Simon's script was specific as to what caused everything. He was interested, I think, in the same thing that Bass was as they did work fairly closely as I recall reading somewhere (maybe it was in one of the magazines like Famous Monsters at the time). I suspect that explanation came from Maltzberg who wrote the novelization. He was prone to take things in a more explainable science fiction direction--it is somewhat representative as I recall of Maltzberg's novels at the time as well.

That's not to diminish Bass--he does a great job on the film but it was a collaborative project.