The Asphyx (1972)

I could hardly believe my eyes when I first saw the trailer for this movie- it was like Ghostbusters but serious and set in Victorian England. How could I NOT find it awesome? It's a very rare thing indeed when a movie not only lives up to its theatrical trailer but also exceeds it. How this movie manages to remain so far below the radar confounds me. I think now is a good time to stop jibber jabbering about it and let you get to the goods.

Watch:

Am I right or what? The trailer is a bit annoying what with the "More than a myth...More than a maybe!" horseshit but at the end of the day what can you really do about it?

 The story revolves around Sir Hugo Cunningham, a scientist/philanthropist who discovers a mysterious blur on photographs taken by him and fellow colleagues of people taken at the moment of their deaths. He believes this blur to be the image of the soul as it leaves the body, but his doubts lead him to further experimentation after the accidental death of his son. Through a series of mishaps and accidents he discovers something far more insidious- a being known as the Asphyx, a spirit which appears at the moment of death to take one away the the underworld. Theorizing that one could become immortal by capturing their Asphyx before death, he begins experiments to prove the unimaginable, but not without dire consequences.

While this is considered a horror film, it only fits via technicality. Like most British horrors of its era, this film is less of a scare and more of a morality tale. Hugo's obsession with cheating death so as not to lose those close to him ever again leaves him completely blind to any consequence, and we see his character and human decency erode along with it. If you can't figure out what I am getting at then you are probably a sociopath.

But back on track here- Poor Hugo's desire for immortality is the true centerpiece, and the horror we see is not of the blood and guts variety but completely cerebral in nature. I find it sad that modern horror films seldom play on this aesthetic and concern themselves with more bargain basement gore fest plots with zombies or werewolves or some such other overdone elements from decades past as their main focus. The plot is more than compelling and really quite original, and I would not be surprised if this movie wasn't at least a teensy tiny inspiration for Ghostbusters some years later.

The Ghostbusters parallel is an easy one to make, and the trailer posted above provides you with all the ammunition you need to make the jump. One thing I am definitely surprised by is that this film isn't bigger with the whole "steam punk" crowd. Considering the fact that there's lots of cool technology reverse engineered to look plausible in a different era (examples: spirit capturing "light boosters" powered by blue crystals and coffins capable of containing them, and also a motion picture camera in use a full 20 years before they were invented), you would figure they would have latched onto this one immediately. Maybe it's better that way because I think that whole genre and it's title are total bullshit.

The cinematography gets big ups here, as the Director of Photography was the formidable Freddie Young, who you will recognize from various films you haven't seen such as Lawrence of Arabia, You Only Live Twice, and Doctor Zhivago. Unfortunately for me, the Magnum Entertainment vhs edition is pan and scanned all to bloody hell so I couldn't really enjoy any of his meticulous work. I cannot say how the Interglobal Home Video editions look and I assume that any DVD edition from the US or UK is likely in widescreen format and does not suffer from this problem. Even though this happened through the entire movie in the most annoying ways possible I still got sucked into the movie enough that it did not matter, but having a widescreen copy would definitely be worth it.

Something else I would like to mention is the difference between the prints used for the DVD and VHS masters for the tape I saw and the DVD my brother had seen before recommending this to me. In my old vhs things are ever so slightly washed out (part of the charm of British horror films of this era I think) and the Asphyx appeared to be blue, but you might have noticed that it is green in the theatrical trailer posted at the start of this review. Upon doing some research, I found out that someone (some sources say All Day Entertainment, but I cannot confirm this) actually did an incredibly extensive restoration of this film which included very careful color correction of a badly faded 35mm print. For a film this obscure that is a very major effort, and I am thankful someone stepped up to the plate. Maybe I should go get the DVD too.

I think you might have guessed by now that I REALLY enjoyed this film. It's well shot, a compelling idea, has cool artwork on the cover, and has some great moral dilemas for the audience to mull over. Of course I do have a couple of misgivings (mostly the absolutely terrible old age makeup used at films end, it looks like a really lame papier-mache mask), but no film is 100% perfect and that's why I love the artform so very much. No matter what edition you choose to pick up or come across (I won't lie, I went for the artwork on mine, plus it was only 5 bucks) I think the smarter folks out there will really enjoy it and find that there's quite a bit to chew on in what most people might dismiss as nothing more than a simple ghoul movie.

Please do watch this and enjoy yourself.

Girly (aka Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly)

This movie is a bizzarre anomaly. If you're the type of person who hates English accents and/or figures of speech you will probably want to skip this one as you'll prove yourself an absolute nonce in the end. My initial viewing didn't grab me very much to be perfectly honest, and it had to simmer for a while in the recesses of the brain before I decided to watch it again. The satire is oppressive, thick, and dry. Once you get past that you find a disturbing film full of childish naivete laced with murder and brutality all set within the confines of a lovely English mansion's large estate. Do yourself a favor and peep the trailer for a hot couple of minutes will you:

The trailer gives you a decent idea of the almost annoying level of cutsey pootsey dialogue (even the score is grossly cute and sarcastic) this film has throughout. The basic plot revolves around the four characters named quite appropriately Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and the titular (and titillating) Girly. Each filling their own place in a bizarre scheme involving Girly and Sonny luring strangers into coming to stay and forcing them to play a sadistic game designed to make them the "perfect family". Of course if one fails to observe the vague and varied rules death comes swiftly and viciously.

The film starts with Sonny and Girly picking up a bum off a park bench after running about through a zoo before opening. This includes an uncomfortable incestuous/erotic bit between the two when Sonny feeds Girly a piece of candy (what the fuck!?!) which can be seen in the Spanish trailer at around the 40 second mark. Don't say I didn't try to warn you:

Finding their scheme of picking up bums nobody will miss to be lacking in the fun rich British scumbags feel they do so very much deserve, they manage to cop a man and his girlfriend (via Girly's sex appeal over the man) from a drunken party, killing the girlfriend and taking the very soused and grief stricken man now dubbed "New Friend" off to their home play the game. Little does anyone suspect but New Friend is just as manipulative of a player as them and the begins starts to slant in his favor...

Note: I condensed the plot in order to tantalize you into watching this. Netflix has it, just sayin'...

This movie also has a handy DVD release for those no longer transfixed by images and sound encoded on magnetic tape making it available to a wider audience for the first time (I'd have never seen it otherwise). Unfortunately the company who released it called it by its better known in the US title of Girly but failed to provide the full title on the front cover (I'm anal like that, but you probably realized this by now). See it below:

However when one watches the DVD it features the full British title in the same font as the rest of the credits (I find this a good thing). Here is what the British title screen looks like:

And here is how it appears on the US home video release (and assumedly theatrical runs too):

Sure the title looks okay for this one pictured above, but the rest of the titles are in the curly pink and heart emblazoned font of the British title screen. Its a very minor thing to pick at, but I think the original title screen helps invoke the overly cute but deadly atmosphere this film rests its cred on. Obviously the idea of satire mixed with horror completely escaped whoever marketed this movie in America. It of course had an all too short theatrical run in both the US and Britain and was practically all but forgotten. In 1987 Prism released this VHS of it that became just as forgotten in the rental shops so it would seem.

Films like this don't come around very often. While there is likely a reason for that (1. they are hard to make and get right 2. do we really need a glut of them?), I have come of the opinion that this film needs a bit more credit than it gets. Like I said before in this review my initial viewing left me a bit unimpressed but once I gave it a decent mental chew and saw it again it started to grow on me a little. While this movie undoubtedly won't prick some of your collective ears, maybe a handful of you lot will watch it and see what I see now.

I've read that this film is a commentary on the breakdown of the nuclear family in the late 60's amongst other things. While I'm not quite sure about that (it makes some sense, perhaps I am not yet wise/learned enough?) I am quite sure this film left me very unsettled and frankly amused in a rather cheeky way. A serious complaint I have is that there are good portions of this film that totally fucking PLOD. I could have made a sandwich for a bit and missed very little. Even a review of it from the time of its original release complained of some of it lack of pace. Sure we can't all have our cake and eat it too, but it easily could easily have been at least ten minutes shorter. Speaking of shorter, Girly (played by Vanessa Howard) wears awfully short skirts in most of the movie. Its kind of disturbing because sure she has hot legs/etcetera, but you are never really certain of how old she is supposed to be...