Eye Candy #92 - "The Pyx"

The Pyx: Easily the worst transfer-to-DVD I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen some lousy copies before). The initial credit sequence is grainy, jumpy, with edit cuts that look like they were put together by a 5 year old. I didn’t know if I was going to make it through the credits. Plus, because the film takes place in Montreal, several of the characters right off the bat (and throughout the film) speak in French…with no subtitles. So I immediately thought “What the heck have I gotten myself into?” Luckily the transfer gets better (though “better” in this case is completely relative). Made for apparently about sixteen buck (Canadian), this is a mystery-thriller involving Satanism in Montreal. Starring Christopher Plummer as Detective Jim Henderson, he has to recreate the events surrounding the death of a prostitute who leaps to her death in the first jumpy minutes of the film. The prostitute, Elizabeth (played by Karen Black), is also shown moving towards her eventual demise in flashback. The problem is that it isn’t entirely clear that it’s flashing back all the time (this is partly due to the low budget nature, and partly due to the fact that this is a cut-down theatrical print that’s in bad shape that was put on DVD). But it’s an effective movie, and the low-budget nature serves the film well. It also has a creepy soundtrack that fit’s the mood of the piece. So, low-budget, low-production value in the extreme, but the final product is effective. Woodchuck sez, “May be up your alley, but better than the opening credits show.”