K09 - PHASE IV

Don’s Synopsis:  A cool-looking solar eclipse-y type of event is ruined by a dull narrator droning on about an effect on scientists or mysteries or something, when the movie switches to a close-up shot of an ant looking all THEM-ish. Following are tons upon tons of scenes of ants crawling around while the synch score warbles on in the background. Now there’s long shots of an old-fashioned Jeep Cherokee (damn, they were ugly back then) driving and driving and driving until it gets to an abandoned town. There, the scientists inside visit the ant version of Stonehenge (Ant-henge?) and a place where the ants made some crop circles (so it’s not really aliens, but ants doing that!) The two scientists, one young and one old, then go to a Biosphere-y EPCOT-ish looking dome, which is their research facility. Then the old scientist guy blows up the Ant Stonehenge in a definite “Yee-Haw” moment. The ants don’t like this and counterattack by assaulting a nearby family farm. The farm family escape, but make the mistake of running to the Biosphere facility where the scientists are so busy killing ants with a green bug spray that’s so powerful it kills the farm family too (but at least the hot girl survives).

Don’s Review:   This movie was one of those “Thinking” Sci-Fi films that were common for a short time in the late-’60s/early-’70s, although this movie at times makes one wonder “What were they THINKING???”   So it’s like a combination of the “nature lashing out at man” aspect of Hitchcock’s The Birds with the scientific aspect of the original version of The Andromeda Strain but it doesn’t hold a candle to either of those films.  I mean, birds getting smart and attacking I can believe, but ants getting smart – now that’s a stretch!  And when the ants are so smart that they know how an air-conditioning system works so they can sabotage it... well, then it’s time to send the movie to the MST folks where it can be handled properly.  And this KTMA episode is the earliest surviving copy of an MST episode that didn’t feature Gamera (those flicks were like the show’s training wheels), so it has some history of the show importance in that regard.  This being a KTMA episode, it still has the primitive look and feel of the show back then, and the riffing is still in the laconic style that would dominate the show until the end of Season One.  But the riffing here is done well and is pretty enjoyable, featuring all three and with Joel having the best lines in this episode. And I liked that the improvised lines cause the others to chuckle a bit at something someone else says (I think this is still before they started to pre-screen the movies during the KTMA Season, so complete on-the-spot improvisation still seemed to be the method on display here) – I think this is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the KTMA season. And they also seemed as confused at the ending as I was. (I still don’t get what the movie was aiming for with that.) The host segments are a pretty good set – but that was one part of the show that developed in quality very quickly in the early days.

Don’s Rating: