The Asphyx
| The Asphyx | |
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| Directed by | Peter Newbrook |
| Produced by | John Brittany |
| Written by | Christina Beers (story) Laurence Beers (story) Brian Comport |
| Starring |
Robert Stephens Robert Powell Jane Lapotaire Alex Scott |
| Music by | Bill McGuffie |
| Cinematography | Freddie Young |
| Edited by | Maxine Julius |
| Distributed by |
Cinema Epoch United Entertainment |
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Release date
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Running time
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99 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Asphyx is a 1972 British horror film directed by Peter Newbrook. Also known as Spirit of the Dead and The Horror of Death, it stars Robert Stephens and Robert Powell.
In Victorian England, philanthropic scientist Sir Hugo Cunningham is a part of a parapsychological society that studies psychic phenomena. As part of their latest investigation, the men have begun photographing individuals at the moment of death; done properly, the resultant photo depicts a strange blur hovering around the body. Though the society concludes that they have captured evidence of the soul escaping the body, Cunningham is skeptical.
At a party to celebrate his recent engagement, Cunningham is making home movies with a primitive video camera of his own invention when his fiancée and son are killed in a boating accident. When Cunningham views the film, he sees that not only has he captured the blur, but that it is moving towards his son, and not away from him. From this, Cunningham concludes that the blur is not the soul but a force known in Greek mythology as an "Asphyx," a kind of personal Grim Reaper that comes for every individual at the moment of his or her death.
While filming a public execution as a protest against capital punishment, Cunningham activates a spotlight that he has crafted using phosphorus stones beneath a drip irrigation valve. Later, when viewing the film with his ward, Giles, Cunningham sees that the condemned man's asphyx was briefly held suspended in the spotlight's beam. Concluding that an individual's asphyx is an organic force and therefore subject to the laws of physics, Cunningham theorizes that some property of the energy released by the combination of phosphorus and water renders the asphyx immobile. If correct, this would mean that an asphyx could be trapped, and that an individual would be immortal so long as their asphyx remained imprisoned.
Giles and Cunningham successfully capture the asphyx of a dying guinea pig and seal it in the family tomb, beneath a spring fueled by the lake. Seeing immortality in his grasp, Cunningham tasks Giles with helping him to capture his own asphyx, deciding that his contributions to science are too important for him to pass away. Cunningham commissions the construction of an impenetrable vault door on his family tomb, with a complex combination lock as the only means of opening it; once he has captured his asphyx, Giles is under instruction to seal the asphyx inside, so that no one can ever set it free.
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Wikipedia