Friday 70s Science Fiction Film - Phase IV

Phase IV is a product of its time & I first ran across the film way back in the late 80s/Early 90s in my video store trash cinema days. The film is anything but trash cinema & run along the lines of 2001 in its scope & epicness.
The plot runs something like this from Wiki: 

"Due to some unknown cosmic event, listed in "phases", ants have undergone rapidevolution and developed a hive mind. A scientific team begins investigating strange towers and geometrically perfect designs that the ants have started building in the desert. Theant colony and the scientific team, along with a rural family, make war with each other, with the ants being the more effective aggressors. The narrative uses the scientific team as the main protagonists, but also has an ant "heroine" going about her duties in the colony. The film concludes with the last of the cosmic "phases," Phase IV, which promises a new future for all life on Earth.

Despite the lurid tone of its poster art based on one of the shocking images from the film,Phase IV approaches its subject matter naturalistically, with relatively little melodrama. The film contains relatively little dialogue, mainly relaying the storyline visually."

Wiki doesn't cover half of the story! 

The film concerns ants the same way that 2001 concerns mankind. See there's intelligence that seeks out a life form in the deserts of the west. A very dominate life form of alien intent & origins native to this planet.
Ants 

The cosmic consciousness alters the ant's intelligence, biology, etc. for its design & by the time mankind notices we're screwed.. The ants do all sorts of weird stuff. I can't even remotely get into some of the the whacked out stuff that science fiction writer Barry N. Malzberg packs in there.

The film is very well done for type & is very unsettling. Ken Middleham who shot the insect sequences for "Phase IV" also shot the insect sequences for the documentary "The Hellstrom Chronicle".

Phase IV For The OSR

Phase IV is well know among Dm's much to my surprise. I've talked with a number of folks who have used the premise of evolved insects in 90 % of those I've talked with its been ants. Besides the Phase IV novel there is another book that uses similar themes that can be used for a cosmic horror/weird/ "we're made to serve" theme. Frank Herbert's Green Brain. This book has some whacked out ideas of mankind vs the bug themes in it as well. The ending is well not very gamble but very cool. There is also the novel Hellstrom's hive. I've used both novels for 2 very different games. 

Hellstrom's Hive I've used for an off beat Call of  Cthulhu game. With some modification the novel could be used for a radical OD&D adventure. The stuff in there makes anything I've seen come out of a Lamentations of  the Flame Princess game look tame.Highlights from Phase IV, Hellstrom's Hive, & the Green Brain include the following: 

1. Human females modified into unconscious womb machines for a human slave race. 
2. The insects driving around living human/mammal mecha with the insects in control. 
3. Pyschic powers of a radical nature allowing the insect overlords to command their slave race 
4. Genetic modification of a host species for service to superior cosmic species 

I've not even scratched the surface of the these novels &  books . That being said there's a lot that could derail or make a game depending on the players & The DM. From Kult through Dungeons & Dragons the themes of the film are compelling & very radical. 

The Phase IV treatment doesn't have to even be used on Earth at all. The ants might evolve upon some lost colony waiting to be rediscovered by an expedition or mission to "save" the colonists. That episode of Star Ships & Spacemen might end very differently.
Upon Carcosa the Old Ones might get a run for their money from a very different source then mankind. The ants simply begin using the available cannon fodder, new spells might be created, & a very different sort of druid might be the result..
Upon the world of Mutant Future there might be entire countries with different colonies of these highly evolved ants moving across the planet & making war on other colonies of these insects.
Terminal space might have the players acting as ambassador for meeting with  a very different "alien" race. There might be different space craft created from a much smaller source then the one the players were expecting.
For Stars Without Numbers could some of the psi-tech have come not from the hand of man but someone much, much smaller?
Please note:  According to the IMDb, Bass complained in interviews that the film was re-edited after previews by 20th Century Fox radically altering the ending of the film which consisted of surreal images presented in a montage. The montage was supposed to suggest that the two surviving characters were altered by the ants creating the next step in evolution for humanity and insects. Many of the images from the altered conclusion of the film appear in the trailer and although it has recently been released to home video by Legend Films, the reissue on DVD features the shorter U.S. version which had 9 minutes stripped from the film before its official U.S. debut.
The novel leaves all of this intact..
 

The novel of Phase IV that I've got sitting next to me.