Before watching The Asphyx, I had never thought of what it would be like if someone adapted a junior scientist playset instruction manual into a feature film. Well, that sounds like an oversimplification, but it's an apt appropriation of how unintentionally amusing the film is. It proceeds from an unstated assumption that the audience doesn't care about the many leaps in logic it makes. Many of these do not occur for artistic purposes, making them as laughable as they are. It gets better. Intangible spirits are trapped in wooden boxes. An inexplicable 2:35:1 (widescreen) aspect ratio (which reveals the totality of pre-designed sets) enhances the artificiality to an-Ed Wood level of bemused catastrophe. It appears as if the only cinematic consideration that went into this production was Robert Stephens's deliberately campy performance. This 1973 comedy-opus is one of the infrequent bad movies so harmlessly but fundamentally incompetent that it earns its title as a cult classic for the cinemasochist who surely goes out of her way to see it.
The film goes out of its way to let us know that it takes place in the 1870's where Sir Hugo Cunningham (Stephens) has observed a celestial body that appears right when hanged men are about to die. He surmises this entity to be an asphyx that is actually a representation of the soul right as it leaves the body. More evidence is provided through his home movies of other people dying. History students will get a chuckle when Cunningham's camera actually moves horizontally during a shot. Celluloid films wouldn't even come into existence until the late 1880's, and shots would be stagnant until Griffith moved his camera. Cunningham decides that he can achieve immortality if he can capture his asphyx and store it forever. After he manages to put it in a wooden box, he actually places it within his cellar so he can doubly defy physical principles of matter indefinitely.
Despite this being 1973, the screenplay seems (appropriately) temporally challenged. What follows is a typical mad scientist plot as Cunningham tries to get his daughter and son-in-law to join him in eternal life. The fact that all of this happens in color, although the budget was minuscule, will remind you that this isn't a fifty's flick. The daughter dies after a mishap, so her partner vows revenge. Then the funniest sequence takes place when he exchanges the white rocks and blue rocks of the Asphyx-capturing machine, rendering it nonfunctional. The purpose of the rocks is not explained or even mentioned prior to this point. Their color must be of primary importance, somehow.
Like a child building a vinegar volcano, The Asphyx plays out like someone following a rigid formula for creation of what was supposed to be a genre film. There's little creativity on display in the final product. The science backdrop only more strikingly reveals the lack of artistry involved. So much exposition is wasted on telling us about how various technological devices work that we must take everything at face value. Our inability to do that classifies this film as a fine candidate for bad movie night.
Not Recommended
The film goes out of its way to let us know that it takes place in the 1870's where Sir Hugo Cunningham (Stephens) has observed a celestial body that appears right when hanged men are about to die. He surmises this entity to be an asphyx that is actually a representation of the soul right as it leaves the body. More evidence is provided through his home movies of other people dying. History students will get a chuckle when Cunningham's camera actually moves horizontally during a shot. Celluloid films wouldn't even come into existence until the late 1880's, and shots would be stagnant until Griffith moved his camera. Cunningham decides that he can achieve immortality if he can capture his asphyx and store it forever. After he manages to put it in a wooden box, he actually places it within his cellar so he can doubly defy physical principles of matter indefinitely.
Despite this being 1973, the screenplay seems (appropriately) temporally challenged. What follows is a typical mad scientist plot as Cunningham tries to get his daughter and son-in-law to join him in eternal life. The fact that all of this happens in color, although the budget was minuscule, will remind you that this isn't a fifty's flick. The daughter dies after a mishap, so her partner vows revenge. Then the funniest sequence takes place when he exchanges the white rocks and blue rocks of the Asphyx-capturing machine, rendering it nonfunctional. The purpose of the rocks is not explained or even mentioned prior to this point. Their color must be of primary importance, somehow.
Like a child building a vinegar volcano, The Asphyx plays out like someone following a rigid formula for creation of what was supposed to be a genre film. There's little creativity on display in the final product. The science backdrop only more strikingly reveals the lack of artistry involved. So much exposition is wasted on telling us about how various technological devices work that we must take everything at face value. Our inability to do that classifies this film as a fine candidate for bad movie night.
Not Recommended