Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

"The Asphyx" is a 1973 British horror film directed by Peter Newbrook. It was also known as "Spirit of the Dead" and "The Horror of Death". It stars Robert Stephens and Robert Powell.

It tells the exploits of rich Scientist-Philanthropist Sir Hugo Cunningham, who discovers an unimaginable blur being recorded while he searches the negatives of dying men whom he had recorded. Later on, at a party, he is making a motion picture of his wife and son, who are playing in a pool and ends up filming their accidental deaths as well. At first, Cunningham doesn't realize that he's captured that same misshapen blur on the camera, but once he does, he comes to a conclusion: that the blur is a person's soul leaving the body. It isn't until he re-examines the pictures and film however, that he makes the startling discovery that the blur was not moving away from the bodies of those who were dying, it was moving TOWARDS them. After doing some research, the good Doctor finds that he has found a ticket to immortality through the blur, an ancient Greek spirit known as an "Asphyx". According to legends, the spirit will appear only at the moment of a person's death to take them away to the Underworld. Cunningham, in his brilliant madness soon deduces that if he can only stop this process from happening at all, it would make any person immortal and unable to die... unless their particular Asphyx is released.

The Doctor soon goes to his task and makes a deal with his adopted son for help in perfecting and utilizing the procedures, and, from there his laboratory becomes filled with torturous devices and instruments of death. He soon comes to understand however, that immortality comes at a high price, not easily fulfilled by mortal man.

Creepy, huh?

The Asphyx is set apart from the usual run of horror movies by its intelligent and literate script and a more thoughtful tone than we usually get from the genre
The setting is London in the year 1873 .The protagonist is a distinguished amateur scientist and beloved philantrophist ,Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens)a man obsessed by research into psychic pheneomena ,a result of his son's accidental death some years previously.During his researches he makes a major discovery-when photographing people at the very point of death Sir Hugo finds that every single shot has a distinctive smudge on it .They depict a strange,blurry shape .It is not due to a defect in the photographic process ;the chemicals used in the process have resulted in his being able to photograph and immobilise The Asphyx ,the spirit of Death which according to ancient Greek mythology comes for every living soul at the hour of their departure.Aided by his foster son Giles (Robert Powell ) he traps the Asphyx of a guines pig thus rendering the creature immortal .He traps his own Asphyx and endeavours to do the same for Giles and his natural daughter Christie (Jane Lapotaire).Things go badly awry ,the results being tragic and truly horrible especially for Sir Hugo

The movie is not without some problems of logic -why for example did Hugo change the method of inducing death given that the original method employed worked in his own case ?Also The actual Asphyx is pretty unconvincing -it is clearly a puppet.
However what you do get is a cerebral Gothic movie with elements of horror and the supernatural .Its conclusion -some 100 years into the future- is genuinely disturbing -and the movie while morbid and a genuine oddity is also thoughtful ,well made and acted with conviction by a talented cast .It is a movie where -unusually for the genre -the scientist is a genuinely nice guy ,motivated by a desire to do good .

I urge those wanting a variation from the genre norm to give this movie a try