THE ASPHYX (aka THE SPIRIT OF THE DEAD, HORROR OF DEATH, 1973)

Streaming on Shudder and Amazon Prime!
Directed by Peter Newbrook
Written by Christine Beers, Lawrence Beers, Brian Comport

Take hokey science and mix it with hokey effects, and somehow make it seem authentic (most likely because the actors speaking the lines utter the Queen’s English) and you’ve got THE ASPHYX, a bizarre mishmash of some of my favorite films of old and one oddball oldie is definitely something worth experiencing.

The story begins with Sir Hugo Cunningham, a scientist (Robert Stephens,) and his adoptive son Giles (Robert Powell, possibly best known for his performance as Christ in 1977’s TV movie JESUS OF NAZARETH) noticing a black smudge in numerous photographs and when another one of the scientist’s sons dies on camera, the same smudge is present. Sir Hugo becomes obsessed with this smudge, dubbing it the Asphyx and then devising a mechanism which captures the creature before the time of a person’s death, thus making that person immortal.

The obsession with immortality makes this film a distant cousin of the Frankenstein mythos as Cunningham tries to thwart death and become immortal. When the operation succeeds, Sir Hugo pays dearly for playing god as his family begins to die around him.

The film is also reminiscent of THE TINGLER, a personal favorite film of mine, as both scientists attempt to capture an elusive creature that only appears during dire consequences. Castle’s classic film and Vincent Price’s performance is much more entertaining, but in the 70’s THE ASPHYX could have been THE TINGLER’s modern counterpart.

As derivative as THE ASPHYX is, it also seems as if the film served as inspiration to some modern and very familiar fright fests. The photos taken just before the time of a person’s death are eerily reminiscent of the slideshow shown to the captive girl toward the end of MARTYRS depicting perfect martyrdom before death. Though the subject matter is slightly similar, I still couldn’t help but be reminded of those memorable images as our scientists attempted to prove the existence of the Asphyx at the beginning of the film to an audience of peers.

But the modern film is most surprisingly like THE ASPHYX is GHOSTBUSTERS. The ghost-like creature dubbed the Asphyx in this film looks a lot like an anorexic Slimer. The obvious puppet effect doesn’t have legs, yet has a large mouth and flailing arms. Even more similar is the method by which the Asphyx is captured: trapping the spirit in a beam of light and then leading it into a containment unit which most would recognize as very, very similar to Ray, Egon, Peter, and Winston’s ghost capturing technique in the 80’s popular film. Though the method of capturing the Asphyx is much more clumsy and much less funny, the similarities between the two films are rather jarring.

This is not a great film by a long stretch. The musical score is completely inappropriately upbeat, more like an elegant ballroom waltz than a horror film score. The make-up is oddly effective, though rudimentary. The aforementioned puppet is simply projected onto a wall and the horrible old man make-up Sir Hugo wears at the end is so bad that it simply has to be seen to be believed. That classically and unintentionally hilarious end scene and lines like “This guinea pig is now immortal!” make this film so bad it’s fantastic. Film buffs should seek out THE ASPHYX for its connections with better films and those entertained by overly-melodramatic bad cinema are in for a real treat.