Lynne Frederick is featured in Saul Bass’ absorbing “man vs. ants” drama, PHASE IV.
research station to study an en- croaching threat; only instead of a virus, this time the menace comes from ants—not gigantic as in THEM! but highly intelligent and potently venomous following a vaguely described astronomi- cal event. Mirroring the kind of lethargy our society still dem- onstrates in the face of loom- ing environmental disasters, a barely concerned government sends only two men into the field to investigate: an obsessive en- tomologist and a young special- ist in animal “languages” (Nigel Davenport and Michael Murphy, respectively). But it’s clear, as soon as they hunker down, that they’re in way over their heads; in a foreboding series of images, the ants have built a cluster of sand “skyscrapers,” reminiscent of both the monoliths of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and the vaguely human sentinels that line Easter Island. During the in- evitable war that ensues, the ants breed themselves to withstand
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poison, short out the humans’ generator and construct heat-re- flective towers that turn the tiny station into an oven. A young woman seeking refuge from the onslaught (VAMPIRE CIRCUS’ Lynne Frederick) is brought into the men’s fold—an Eve to Murphy’s Adam when the ants fi- nally reveal Phase IV of their op- eration: the birth of a new species. Bass, a graphic artist, di- rects with an eye for composi- tion but remains detached emotionally from his actors—an approach that works well in a film that continually makes al- lusions between the machina- tions of man and ant inside and out of their respective strong- holds. But the real star of the production is micro-photogra- pher Ken Middleham (THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE, BUG), who shot the amazing, surprisingly bracing insect se- quences. Legend Films’ trans- fer is framed at a ratio of 1.78:1 and is pleasingly sharp and
colorful. The disc is bare bones (you’ll have to seek Synapse’s 42nd STREET FOREVER VOL. 3 for the trailer) and, as of this writing, it’s exclusive to Best Buy stores.
TOBOR THE GREAT
1954, Lionsgate Home Entertainment, DD-2.0/CC/ST, $10.99, 76m 51s, DVD-1 By Kim Newman
Near the end of TOBOR THE
GREAT, eleven-year-old Brian “Gadge” Robertson (THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER’s Billy Chapin) has his shirt ripped by a goon (RED PLANET MARS’ Henry Kulky), who threatens to apply a blowtorch to his naked back— unless Gadge’s scientist grand- father (Taylor Holmes) gives a foreign spy the equations en- abling the creation of Tobor, an eight-foot-tall robot astronaut in- tended for the first space mission. When the spy (Stephen Geray) breaks the pen used to summon
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