By
Hank Reineke
The
Asphyx Will Rip You Apart… The Asphyx
Will Invade Your Mind… The Asphyx Will Destroy Your Soul… If It Were In Your
Power… Would You Sacrifice Your Wife… Your Children For Immortality?
The answers to the questions posed above by the
advertising campaign for Peter Newbrook’s The
Asphyx (1972) was a resounding “yes.” As the gifted but obsessed psychic-research scientist Hugo Cunningham, celebrated
British actor Robert Stephens puts everyone in his family through the
proverbial ringer by film’s end. Such
single-minded research on his part is not accomplished without a measure of
personal guilt, mind you. But as a
curious man of science – and one obsessed with paranormal exploration -
Cunningham pushes forward determinedly with increasingly morbid experimentations.
Such “experiments” include the exhuming of his dead son
for some post-mortem testing, the photographing of a condemned man at a public
hanging, a self-administered electrocution, putting his daughter’s head through
a guillotine pillory and even willfully torturing a tubercular pauper. Hey, the last guy, a poorhouse resident, had
only forty-eight hours to live anyway… so he was fair game.
Like Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, Cunningham is a man driven
by obsession. Appearing before members
of the Psychic Research Society, the scientist presents to colleagues a series
of slides depicting a trio of unfortunates photographed at the precise moment
of their deaths. Each photograph has a
“smudge” present, a sort of phantasmagorical protoplasmic image hovering
nearby. It’s Cunningham’s theory that
the image is an Asphyx, a creature of Greek mythology. The Asphyx is a visual manifestation of one’s
tortured “soul the moment it departs the body.” It’s the scientists’ belief that if one could pre-emptively isolate and
imprison the Asphyx prior to expiration, that person might carry on as an
immortal. This appears to be
Cunningham’s endgame interest.
Though adopted son Giles (Robert Powell) is wary of his
father’s dark experiments (“This isn’t science!” he warns), he begrudgingly
becomes one-half of Cunningham’s research team – to disastrous results as one
might expect. Since Cunningham, to his
credit I guess, puts his own life on
the line in pursuit of science and immortality, it seems only fair to him that
members of the family do the same - and without complaint. Which certainly makes the case that, on some occasions,
father doesn’t know best.
Cameras began rolling on the The Asphyx on Monday, February 7, 1972, at Surrey, England’s Shepperton
Studios. Shooting wrapped a mere five
weeks following first photography. The film was to be helmed by first time
director Peter Newbrook, a former cameraman and cinematographer who boasted a filmography
dating back to the early 1940s. The film
certainly looks great, even if the
pacing of Newbrook’s direction is somewhat suspect. The Academy Award-winning Cinematographer
Freddie Young (B.S.C.) - of Lawrence of
Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, The Battle of Britain and You Only Live Twice fame - would use the newish Todd-AO 35mm
anamorphic system to great effect. In
many respects, Newbrook’s The Asphyx
is of similar construct to such British parlour-horror films being churned out
by Hammer and Amicus in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
The question now was whether or not a Victorian-era set horror
picture would make any money in 1972? The horror biz was already moving away from stately, moody gothic films to
more exploitative blood-splattered fare. Nevertheless, upon the film’s completion,
it was announced The Asphyx was to be
distributed in the British market by Scotia-Barber. On week later, Variety reported that Martin Grasgreen, President of Paragon
Pictures, had managed a deal with Glendale Film Productions (London) to handle
distribution of The Asphyx in both the
U.S. and Canada. In early winter of
1972, Paragon already had a number of exploitative horror-thrillers in release,
including Blood Suckers, Blood Thirst and Death by Invitation.
In August of 1972 the Independent
Film Journal announced that The
Asphyx, described as a “science-fiction suspense thriller,” would be
released the following month, the first of twenty-two films that Paragon had
waiting in the queue. Box Office promised the film would be
the recipient of “an extensive national advertising and promotion campaign,”
with “key theater” roll-outs in Dallas, New Orleans, New York City,
Philadelphia and Washington D.C.
Upon its September release, Variety noted The Asphyx
was – welcomingly - bucking the recent trend of blood and gore horrors:
Newbrook had intentionally delivered a more “cerebral” or “thinking man’s
horror film.” Acknowledging the film was
well cast and beautifully photographed, the trade review did rue that Brian Comport’s
verbiage-laden screenplay was slow going and riddled with historical
improbabilities. Other critics noted Robert Stephen’s mad scientist was one
seemingly gifted with precognitive invention.
It was true. As The Asphyx is set in the year 1875, scientist
Cunningham had somehow managed to prefigure such mechanical appliances as the
first motion picture camera (not actually developed until 1888) and an electric
chair (not developed into the early 1880s). To the credit of Box Office,
the trade paper cautiously suggested that, “Selling the film as a monster movie
would not be to its advantage: a more intelligent approach to sci-fi fans is
indicated.” I imagine “less-intelligent”
monster movie fans might have shifted restlessly in their seats back in ’72, awaiting
even the mildest of jump-scares.
The
Asphyx was the fourth and final of writer Brian Comport’s
screenplays to be produced. His first screenwriting
effort, Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly
(Cinerama Releasing Corp., 1970), was an out-and-out freaky and grisly
exploitation film. Technically speaking,
Girly wasn’t a completely original
invention of Comport’s. The original
story was loosely based on the stage play Happy
Family (aka All Fall Down) by the
novelist and BBC radio playwright Maisie Mosco. His second screen credit was a co-authorship with director Pete Walker
on Man of Violence (later re-titled The Sex Racketeers). That film was a convoluted and overly talky
international-gold smuggling-racketeer-caper-thriller with a pronounced sixties
swagger.
In one of those local-lad-makes-good-type newspaper
items, journalist Anthony Cardew of the Surrey
Mirror and County Post, shared an hour with Comport, then basking in the
success of his industry breakthrough with Mumsy,
Nanny, Sonny and Girly. “I was
offered a script which a producer wanted lived up,” the writer told
Cardew. “He wanted a bit more action or
something. I took the script apart and
rewrote it completely. I added new
characters, took some out and changed the thing entirely. I wrote it in note form, just suggesting the
way I thought it should go.”
The producer was pleased with Comport’s revised scenario
and formally commissioned him to draft a new screenplay, in the scripters own
words, “from the beginning, according to my own ideas.” With the film in production, Comport was also
approached by a representative from London’s Sphere books to turn his
screenplay into a novelization, a six-week effort bringing in a bit of extra
cash.
Many film critics found Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly – later retitled simply as Girly –aggressively unpleasant in its
lurid, sexually suggestive subject matter - and decidedly distasteful in its depiction
of depravity and violence. One critic would
unflatteringly suggest Comport as a leading “candidate for sickest mind of the
year award.” Another nonplussed reviewer thought the film as “Theater of the
absurd… absurdly vicious.”
Scolding reviews aside, Comport’s star seemed to be on
the rise. In October of 1970, only shortly
following the release of Mumsy, Nanny,
Sonny and Girly, production had already started on Robert Hartford-Davis’
thriller Beware My Brethren (Cinerama
Releasing Corp., 1972) also from a Comport script. Things then cooled for an interim but, following
a year or so of film-work drought, Comport was back with The Asphyx.
Though Comport’s script – adapted from a story provided
by Christina and Laurence Beers – would appropriate more than a few elements from
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Independent Film Journal interestingly suggested The Asphyx was of similar construct to William Castle’s B-movie
classic The Tingler (1959): “There
too a visible spirit of sorts popped up; but that one was of fear rather than
death.” Though some wondered why a
classically-trained actor of Robert Stephens’s caliber would agree to appear in
a film clearly beneath his station, the former board-trotter of the Royal
National Theatre thought The Asphyx “rather
good.” He told journalist Neville Nisse
of Staffordshire’s Evening Sentinel, “I
really enjoyed making it because I liked the script and the people
involved.”
The Asphyx performed
reasonably well at the box office – not boffo perhaps, but reasonably well. So much so
that in January of 1973, Paragon announced they were going to enter into a
co-production deal with Glendale for two additional features. Paragon would, of course, retain all U.S.
distribution rights, but would now also share in a generous slice of a film’s
international profit. When U.S. box
office receipts measurably dipped following the film’s initial run, The Asphyx was often paired on the
secondary market with other indie horrors: Night of the Living Dead, Son of Blob and Blood Suckers among them.
In Australia, The
Asphyx was given the more compelling title Spirit of the Dead, the adverts teasing an audience confrontation
with “The Horror That Lurks Halfway Between Heaven and Hell!” The campaign
posters for Spirit of the Dead featured
accompanying artwork promising a more ghoulish monster than the film would deliver. The Asphyx
would also enjoy a sustained life in the United Kingdom. Exploitatively re-titled The Horror of Death on its re-release, the film would play in cinemas
throughout the 1970s. It was often
incongruously paired on multi-bills with such chop-socky fare as Kung Fu Virgins and The Angry Dragon.
This 2023 Kino Lorber Studio Classics edition of The Asphyx replaces the Kino/Redemption
Films co-issue of 2012. The only really new
“Special Features” offered is the commentary track provided by film historians
Kim Newman and Stephen Jones and six trailers promoting other Kino
Product. This new edition is also
packaged in a protective slipcase that mimics the artwork of the case
insert. Both the 86 minute U.K.
theatrical cut and 99 minute U.S. expanded cut are made available to view. But, as the package warns, the
“reconstruction of the extended version blends HD footage mastered from the
35mm negative with SD footage mastered from the U.S. release print.” The
changes in visual quality are very significant as forewarned.
For the record, I watched the extended version. Though the inclusion of an additional
thirteen minutes is welcome, these extra fragments are of no great
interest. In fact, it’s possible the added
running time further slows down a film already in desperate need of judicious
editing. Newbrook’s direction is
competent, but Comport’s screenplay is weighed down by too many sermons: the
film’s main characters continually perseverate on the moral misguiding’s of
Cunningham’s tampering with spiritual and life-and-death issues. Such hand-wringing tires after a while. Having said all this, The Asphyx is an interesting film, if far from a forgotten classic. While aficionados of British horror should
certainly add the title to their watch list, it might be best to screen the
film with muted expectation.
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