One of my favorite recurring characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of books is Death. It talks in all capital letters. There is also a death of rats, an appropriately-sized rodent skeleton in a hooded robe and bearing a tiny scythe. It also talks in all capital letters, though all it can say is, “SQUEAK.”
In 1972’s The Asphyx, a wacky Victorian-era scientist played by Robert Stephens has discovered each person has their own angel of death, which is assigned to only that individual. He has also found a way to live forever by imprisoning that “spirit “Asphyx” at the moment of a person’s would-be demise.
Fortunately, he first tries this on a guinea pig, thus creating the world’s first immortal rodent. Curiously, the animal’s Asphyx looks exactly like those we will see later when the same process is attempted for human subjects. Shouldn’t the grim reaper for guinea pigs look different than that which is for humans? Also, is this what the Death of Rats from the Pratchett’s books looks like?
Regardless of the species one of these is whisking off to the afterlife, it looks quite laughable. It actually is intriguing when viewed in quick glimpses, if only because the viewer is trying to figure out what the hell they’re seeing. Then the picture shows us it way too often, and too long each time, guaranteeing hearty laughter at the sight of a puppet that moves as jerkily as Kermit the Frog and which is about as threatening.
Making matters worse, every character in this pronounces the spirit’s name as “ass-fix”. This results in such unintentionally hilarious dialogue as “You’re just here because you want to capture the condemned man’s ass-fix.” I’m guessing these are the kind of people who pronounce, and with a straight face, the name of our seventh planet as “your anus”.
It is at a public execution that Stephens realizes a spirit lingers nearby when a person’s (or guinea pig’s) life is in imminent danger. From there, it isn’t much of a leap for him to capture that spectral being in the beam of a special light. By moving the light, the asphyx will move with it, until it can be captured in a box. Yeah, I’m already thinking about Ghostbusters, too.
I’m not sure why trapping this being ensures a person will live forever. Consider the guinea pig, which had been poisoned so as to summon its asphyx. Isn’t the rodent still poisoned? So, shouldn’t it live in perpetual pain for eternity? And why does the asphyx stay in the light, anyway? Is it just an astral showbiz whore who can’t help but hog the spotlight?
Stephens next does an experiment on himself where he skirts the edge of death, courtesy of an electric chair of his own design. Once his asphyx is trapped, he is determined his daughter and his adopted son do the same. What is mind-boggling is he comes up with a different method of near-death for each of them. Since the electric chair worked for him, I have no idea why he would deviate from that arrangement. So, imagine his daughter’s reaction to the guillotine he has constructed in order to trap her asphyx. Then again, I’m not sure anything could shock a person further when one’s father has already built their own electric chair.
This looks and feels similar to the gothic films output of Hammer Films. Unfortunately, it compounds a batshit premise with bizarre gaps in narrative. Remember that “special light” I mentioned that is used to capture an asphyx? That is a “light booster” we first see being used in the public execution scene, but with no explanation as to why it is there or what it does. We don’t learn its purpose until some time has passed. Until then, I was completely, and pointlessly, bewildered by what that apparatus was.
Even weirder are the bookending sequences set in present-day London. Before the opening credits, we see police investigating a head-on collision between two automobiles. They pull a body from between the vehicles and, without us seeing the face, one of the officers announces in a stunned voice the victim is somehow still alive.
So, you know from the beginning one of these characters will achieve immortality, and it is simply a matter of guessing which one will. I won’t reveal who that is, though we will see at the end that person has somehow aged drastically. This is accomplished through makeup that is literally laughably bad. Also, I don’t understand why anything that could prevent a person from dying would still let them age. Once again, I ask you to consider how poison still in a body could not kill a person. The kicker is they also still have the guinea pig, and it looks exactly the same as before. I laughed so hard at this that my asphyx was probably hovering nearby, just in case I asphyxiated. Wait…the name of that thing now almost makes sense to me!
The Asphyx is a stupefyingly daft movie, but I have to give it points for being unique. There is actually a kernel of an interesting premise here, but the ineptitude of the film’s construction only exacerbates its goofiness. Shockingly, the technical aspects of it are quite solid, with the exception of the creature itself. I think the guinea pig deserves better than a sad Muppet that appears to be the grim reaper for humans. I hope that, when it met its maker, it was welcomed by The Death of Rats. SQUEAK.
Dir: Peter Newbrook
Starring Robert Stephens, Robert Powell, Jane Lapotaire
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray