I'm just curious, is it the poster or the movie Phase IV which is your favorite? For me the movie was pretty good, taking itself seriously in a way I guess you don't see sci-fi movies do too often. But then again I'm no sci-fi buff... Being a big Saul Bass fan, however, I was mighty disappointed in the poster. To me it seems pretty standard. I would have thought he'd wanna make a super poster for his own movie...
The poster's nice enough, and the hand image is certainly iconic. But it doesn't really get at the film's best qualities, namely its inventive design and focus on ant-scale rather than human-scale dramas. The film is at its best when it ignores its stock human characters and focuses on the ants, who give much better "performances" than any of the actual actors in this one. But I'm guessing that the bloody punctured hand works a lot better, selling the film as standard B-movie horror, than a more abstract design that would be more fitting to the film's concern with geometry.
I'm just curious, is it the poster or the movie Phase IV which is your favorite? For me the movie was pretty good, taking itself seriously in a way I guess you don't see sci-fi movies do too often. But then again I'm no sci-fi buff... Being a big Saul Bass fan, however, I was mighty disappointed in the poster. To me it seems pretty standard. I would have thought he'd wanna make a super poster for his own movie...
ReplyDeleteThe poster's nice enough, and the hand image is certainly iconic. But it doesn't really get at the film's best qualities, namely its inventive design and focus on ant-scale rather than human-scale dramas. The film is at its best when it ignores its stock human characters and focuses on the ants, who give much better "performances" than any of the actual actors in this one. But I'm guessing that the bloody punctured hand works a lot better, selling the film as standard B-movie horror, than a more abstract design that would be more fitting to the film's concern with geometry.
ReplyDeleteMy own review is here.
Well spoken! - I agree.
ReplyDeleteHere's my review.
Oops, I just realized I posted an image instead of my review. For real this time. Heh.
ReplyDeletePhase IV is finally on dvd now is the US, awesome flick!
ReplyDelete