The Pyx

This is a somewhat infamous (if mainly because Karen Black appears in see-through lingerie) Montreal-lensed early 1970s flick that has been floating around in various poor-quality DVD versions for some time. I just rented the new Trinity Home Entertainment release. The good news is that the film is now on DVD in its proper widescreen aspect ratio, but there are two bits of bad news. One, the print of the film that Trinity used for their DVD is horrible. It has various splices, scratches, and the color is bad. The second problem is more insurmountable--this just isn't a very good film.

Although The Pyx (aka "The Hooker Cult Murders") is correctly considered partially a horror film (because of material in the last 15 minutes or so), the bulk of the film is crime/drama, and it leans towards the "police procedural" subgenre of crime. There is some stuff here about hookers and drugs, and some violence/aftermath-gore, but this kind of material is very sparse and very tame. I could only recommend the film to Karen Black fanatics/fetishists, fans of early 1970s uneventful crime/dramas (if indeed anyone fits that description) and anyone who would like to see a depressing early 1970s semi-urban grunge captured on film, as that's the atmosphere director Harvey Hart manages to evoke (ironically aided by the crappy print). That the film was made in Montreal is evidenced by the periodic forays into French dialogue, which isn't subtitled, but it's infrequent enough that it's not a problem if you can't understand French.

The story, based on a novel by John Buell, concerns a prostitute, Elizabeth Lucy (Black), who is found dead after a drop off of a high-rise. She is clad only in lingerie, wearing an upside down cross and holding a pyx--a small, metal container used in Catholicism to bring consecrated hosts ("hosts" are the symbolic pieces of bread used in the Eucharist, or sacrament) to the sick. Jim Henderson (Christopher Plummer) is the police sergeant who ends up investigating the case. The film continually bounces back and forth from Henderson's investigation, which involves the more visceral crime scenes, as infrequently as those occur, and flashbacks to Lucy's immediate past, which involves more of the "sex" and drugs material, as infrequently as that occurs. The crux is that both Lucy's immediate past and Henderson's investigation are leading to the same climax--Lucy is moving forward in time while Henderson is roughly working his way back.

The principal problem with The Pyx is that it is so bland. It is also plagued with minor gaffes, like editing problems (and no, those aren't all just bad splices). Hart and screenwriter Robert Schlitt both come from a television background, but the pacing and momentum here are sub par even for a made-for-television film.

The scenes of Lucy with a smarmy client, preparing smack (heroin), having problems with her employer (a madam), arguing with her roommate (the source of the sometimes advertised "homosexual" angle--her roommate is a gay male) about whether she wants dinner and so on just aren't that interesting (even though some of the subject matter seems to have potential). There are also a number of transition scenes featuring actions like driving, walking and such that are so banal that it's almost impossible to keep one's attention on the screen--there was one scene I must have rewound three or four times, but I could never help myself from drifting. There are also a number of roughly directed scenes such as one between Henderson and the gay roommate that is just long shots of them walking city streets, sometimes with vehicles driving by and blocking the frame, where they do not appear to be talking to each other in the image, but where their voices are dubbed on the soundtrack. The Pyx is no paragon of direction or cinematography (or acting, editing, or anything else for that matter).

The police procedural stuff featuring Henderson was a bit better, but as soon as Hart would increase the intensity level just a smidgen (as with the scenario that Henderson walks into in the madam's apartment), he'd quickly return to boring flashback sequences, or someone would be driving for five minutes or something. To make matters worse, these occasional intensity increases tend to be prematurely lopped off with poor editing. Also, some of the police procedural stuff was very oddball--like the scene where they start playing a Gregorian chant on a reel-to-reel for a suspect in an interrogation room. But I like oddball stuff, so that was a bonus to me.

The final, "double climax"--we first get something of a thriller "false ending" before we move more into horror territory--was one of the better sections of the film, but by the time it arrives (it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes) it's difficult to get very excited about it. Still, it was enough to save The Pyx from an F (a rating of 5 or below).

Finally, the music deserves comment. It is fairly bizarre throughout, if not necessarily because of the music itself, because of the way it is contextualized. The main body of the film features a few songs by none other than Karen Black. These are extremely dated, quirky folk/religious songs, which, while not exactly poorly done, are severely out of place. The music in the climax is more stereotypical "Gothic Horror" classical, but it has a bizarre choir melody that sounds like a very primitive example of sampling (maybe it was done on a Mellotron, since proper samplers did not yet exist when The Pyx was made; the Mellotron was a kind of early faux "sampler" keyboard that utilized loops of tape). The timbre of the choir changes as much as the pitch, giving a "Satanic" flavor to the piece that just borders on--and occasionally crosses into--the sublimely ridiculous, making the climax unintentionally funny at times. Again, I liked the oddity of it, if only the film weren't so bland otherwise.