The Pyx
       
Director: Harvey Hart
Year:  1973
Rating: 6.0
Aka -  The Hooker Cult Murders

An oddity of sorts - part police procedural and part scraping the horror genre. It is a Canadian film which was shot in Montreal and stars Christopher Plummer and Karen Black. They are as different in acting styles as you can get but it doesn't really matter as they only meet for a brief moment and she is dead. The film has a parallel co-joined narrative that play on top of one another and yet never meet  except for that moment in which you stare in the eyes of the dead. It is an intriguing manner of presenting the story as one track is in the present searching for answers and the other interchanging track takes place the previous day and gives the audience the answers. Not sure if I have seen a narrative quite like this. Whether it works I am undecided - they are very different in mood - one very stoned Karen Blackish with her own songs giving that section an eerie dream like sense - while the other narrative is hard nosed rough police work that has that 70's gritty feel to it. Though shot in Montreal, you would never know - it looks more like Queens.



A woman falls from a high rise building to her death and Henderson (Plummer) and his police partner Pasquette (Donald Pilon) show up to investigate. They turn the woman over and it is Karen Black and since she is the star you know there are going to be flashbacks. She plays Elizabeth an escort who likes to ride the horse from time to time when she is frazzled and she has a cold-hearted Madam who sets down the rules. As Henderson investigates, the film keeps flashing back to Elizabeth's previous day that led up to her lying face down on the sidewalk.  He digs deeper and becomes obsessed with the case and finds more dead bodies - while Elizabeth in her section seems to sense that her assignment that night isn't going to turn out well but can't seem to turn away from her fate. Woven within is Catholicism - the Pyx is some sort of religious artifact that I never quite understood not being Catholic - sin and guilt and Satan are all present. A fairly minor film for both actors but both are fine  - Plummer in a tough guy role that I haven't seen before and Black always edgy and other worldly with those cat eyes of hers.