(1974)
Dir - Saul Bass
Overall: MEH
Renowned graphic designer Saul Bass in his only directorial effort Phase IV concocted a visually stunning though otherwise rather barren film. The real star of the movie is Kim Middleham, a wildlife photographer who captures elaborately-staged closeups of insects for large chunks of screen time. That along with some excellent set designs including giant monoliths in the middle of the desert provide Phase IV with its best assets. At the same time though, some of the ant sequences while impressively shot do drag on a bit and since the story hardly has anything going on, it creates the core problem with the movie. A mere two scientists and a stranded girl are cooped up in their laboratory arguing while trying to decipher their best move against the mutated ant colony and nearly all of the scenes with them are rather emotionally flat or predictable, (the younger scientist shows compassion for human casualties while the older, British one is too enthusiastically fascinated by their experiment to care). The ending is a bit dopey though likewise rather foreseeable as well. Bass presents the whole thing deadly serious, with sparsely-used, subdued music that is wholly appreciated. Yet the film is ultimately too void of excitement to be anything but an optically pleasing work.
(1978)
Dir - Jeff Lieberman
Overall: MEH
The occasionally compelling though far more frequently bumpy Blue Sunshine was writer/director Jeff Lieberman's second film; a strange, determined work that is confusing and sloppy in both wrong and intended ways. Bizarre murders spring up in sudden and/or creative ways like an early moment where a guy sings cringeworthingly at a party and then goes on a rampage when his wig gets pulled off, plus a later moment where a woman chases kids around with a kitchen knife. The strange behavior of the non-strange characters is unnecessarily distracting though, particularly the entire performance of the lead protagonist Zalman King who is bafflingly unhinged and unlikable from moment one. He is not alone in this as more than one other "normal" person's actions induce a fair amount of headscratching from the audience. This would be a clever trait if the movie's social commentary added up when it needed to, but instead the themes of reckless, counterculture college kids turning uppity yuppies rather infrequently work. The overall inconsistencies just become too distracting by film's end, an ending of which is regretfully sudden and lazily open-ended.
(1979)
Dir - Giulio Paradisi
Overall: GOOD
Sometimes the perfect concoction of the desperately bizarre can manifest itself into something that transcends logical analysis and becomes rather admirable in the process. The Visitor is just such a strange film that exists in its own world. Directed by Italian Giulio Paradisi, (credited as Michael J. Paradise), based off of a story by Egyptian/Italian writer Ovidio G. Assonitis, featuring an all-star, primarily American cast, and filmed on location in Atlanta, Georgia, The Visitor is one of those strange hodgepodges made up of conflicting parts. It borrows liberally and tries to cash-in on well-known genre films of the time like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Omen, The Exorcist, and even older gems like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, plus it has an unmistakable, Italian knock-off quality that is benefited from an elaborate budget and ambitious plot. Other curious elements like the same scenes being shown multiple times and some of the most clashing music in practically any movie further add to the perplexing nature of the entire thing. The story is mostly void of substance and presents itself as a point A to point B fairytale, but it is all in the embellished presentation which remains both easy to follow and all over the place simultaneously. Paradisi only helmed a small handful of movies and his work here is rather remarkable, both from a visual perspective and how he manages to juggle so many confounding elements to make it one of the most unique sci-fi horror films of probably any decade.
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