The Pyx (1973) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Well, it's a real thing, with an obscure religious purpose. Let me explain with an analogy.  Suppose you want to take your wife to Applebee's for her birthday because she really likes the hot taco salad, but she's too sick to travel. You can go by yourself and pick her up a take-out order, which Applebee's will pack in a styrofoam container to keep it warm on the trip home.

Now suppose you are a Catholic, and your wife is too sick to go to Mass, but she wants to participate in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist (communion). Well, like Applebee's, the Catholic Church has take-out orders which can be delivered to shut-ins. They do not, however, stick a consecrated host in a styrofoam container. I'm pretty sure they would consider that disrespectful, since they believe that the consecrated host is the body of Christ himself. Instead, they deliver the blessed hosts in something called a pyx. There are many different kinds, but the most common type looks just like a pocket watch, except that when opened it contains no mechanical parts, but merely a small piece of unleavened bread. Many of them are intricate and ornate, and they are usually formed from various combinations of gems and precious metals.

So how do you write a script about such a thing?

Something like this:

A police detective in Montreal investigates the mysterious death of a hooker. Her nearly naked body is found on the sidewalk in front of a high-rise building. She either jumped or was pushed from the roof. The detective believes that the explanation of her death will hinge on determining why an heroin-addicted prostitute, who was not even a practicing Catholic, was clutching something so esoteric as a pyx.

Once you learn what a pyx is, you can probably solve this mystery quickly. Let's see, I think we can assume that a non-religious junkie hooker was not bringing the sacrament of Holy Eucharist to the sick. So what else might one need a consecrated host for? How about a black mass?

The film is told in two separate stories, cutting between them almost at random until they converge inevitably. On the one hand, we watch the detective try to solve the crime. On the other hand, we flash back to watch the hooker's final days. As we see how she died, the story cuts back to the detective, who has finally figured out what we just saw, and is bursting in on the killer, handgun drawn. The hooker's half of the movie is resolved with no supernatural elements. She is recruited for the black mass, she rebels when asked to defile the consecrated host, runs from the room, tragedy ensues, and she is back on the sidewalk where we first saw her. There is no indication that the Satan-worshippers are anything but deluded maniacs. On the other hand, the final face-off between the detective and the senior satanist seems to veer the film ninety degrees away from the straightforward police procedural which it has been, and to imply that the maniacs may really be in contact with pure eeee-villlll.

Or not.

To cut to the chase, this film is not worth watching in its current condition. To begin with, some scenes are completely irrelevant to either of the parallel stories (an argument between the detective and his girlfriend, and various "driving to the destination" scenes, for example). That might not be so bad except that those irrelevant scenes are also banal and utterly boring, so you would have to struggle to keep your concentration on this film even under the best of conditions.

Unfortunately, we do not have the best of conditions. If the film itself is merely bad news, the DVD is a catastrophe. Although the DVD includes a widescreen version, the picture quality is inferior to the worst video tape you have ever seen. It looks like a movie taped from broadcast TV, then dubbed and re-dubbed until your copy is several generations removed from the original. Every scene is filled with noise. Some dark scenes are nearly solid blackness, while some bright scenes are nearly pure white. Not only that, but the aspect ratio is not correctly represented, so you will see a film consisting entirely of very thin people. The sound is not much better than the picture, with voices sounding hollow and sometimes appearing to be dubbed poorly.

Having recited that litany of problems, let me also state that there are some interesting elements to the film:

• Christopher Plummer plays the police detective, and brings a modicum of professionalism to the film. On the other hand, Plummer is not one of those energetic Shakespearian actors like Olivier or Richard Harris. His brand of professionalism is stiff and aloof, and that makes some tedious scenes even more tedious.
• Karen Black plays the junkie hooker, and she walks through her last few minutes on screen wearing nothing but see-through lingerie. (The character also has two rear nude scenes, but these seem to have been performed by a body double.)
• Miss Black also composed and sang several songs for the soundtrack. Her numbers sound sort of like a cross between Buffy Saint-Marie and Enya, thus lending some scenes a spooky, warbling folk vibe.
• Speaking of music, the Gregorian chant accompanying the black mass is some of the strangest stuff I've ever heard. In some cases the sound editor slowed down the human voices to a bass growl in order to make them sound spooky. The effect was pretty creepy, so that decision made some sense. What didn't make sense is that he also sped some of the voices up, and that section sounds like a 33 1/3 record played at 78. This is supposed to be a tense scene, but I challenge you not to laugh out loud when you hear the speeded-up music.

Or maybe that sound editor didn't really speed up some stock Gregorian chant. Maybe he just used the famous Chipmunks Unholy Sabbath album. Yeah, I guess that would explain why Satan keeps saying, "Alvin! Alvin!!!!"