The
Asphyx has moments where it threatens to work.
That is when it’s not getting bogged down with a lot of stuffy British
costume drama bullshit. Much of the
running time is spent with two boors having dull spiritual conversations in a
parlor, which really cuts into all the corny, but fun supernatural shenanigans.
Robert
Stephens stars as a scientist who takes pictures of people when they die and
every time, he sees the same smudge on the photos. He concludes that it could only be the soul
leaving the body. He then sets out to
catch the specter (which he dubs “the asphyx”) that claims the souls. His rationale being if he can steal his
asphyx, he can become immortal.
When
the ghostly shit finally does happen, it’s a bit hokey, but relatively
amusing. The scene where Stephens and
his partner try to capture the asphyx plays like a 19th century
version of Ghostbusters. (They shine a
light on it and try to force it into a glass lamp.) The special effects for the asphyx are a
little wonky. It just looks like a
puppet being reflected with a disco light.
These scenes do get a bit repetitive after a while though.
It
all begins to get dumb when the scientists stage these elaborate deaths for
themselves that they must wriggle out of at the last second in order to
summon the asphyx. The bit with the
extravagant gas chamber was particularly eye-rolling. However, we do get at least one nifty scene
involving a guillotine, but the movie needed more sequences of this caliber to
truly crackle. Too bad it all builds to
a lame Twilight Zone type of ending that features some bad make-up and a
frustrating final shot.
AKA: Spirit of the Dead. AKA:
The Horror of Death. AKA: Experiments.
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