This Canadian chiller isn't very well known but it's excellent, all the better for keeping its horror credentials disguised until late in the film. It has a complex but logical narrative structure with a brilliantly sustained sense of creeping doom helped no end by a superb score from Harry Freedman. I think you may have to be a Catholic to fully understand it though.
Henderson ( Christopher Plummer ) is a widowed Montreal detective investigating the death of a prostitute and heroin addict Elisabeth Lucy who has fallen to her death from an apartment block in a transparent white robe clutching a crucifix and the titular pyx, a container for the Holy Bread of Communion. As he investigates in the present, we are able to follow Elisabeth's last couple of days as her pimp Meg ( Yvette Brind'amor ) sells her to the sinister Keerson ( Jean-Louis Roux ).
Karen Black ( as Elisabeth Lucy )
Sex : Elisabeth is a prostitute. She is braless throughout the film
Death : Thrown from the roof by Keerson
Karen was a slightly cross-eyed actress who emerged in the late sixties as something of a counter-cultural icon. She became a genuine film star in the seventies but kept working when that star slipped and ended up making nearly 200 films over 45 years. In later years she suffered from pancreatic cancer and died in 2013 aged 74.
Louise Rinfret ( as Sandra )
Sex : Sandra is a prostitute
Death : Survives
Louise was a French-Canadian actress whose handful of other film credits are Francophone.
Francine Morand ( as Laura )
Sex : Laura is a prostitute
Death : Murdered messily in her bedroom ( we don't see how exactly )
Francine was another French-Canadian actress, working up to 2002. She is now 69.
Julie Wildman ( as Henderson's girlfriend )
Sex : She has just had sex with Henderson in her one scene
Death : Survives
Julie had a reasonably successful acting career, latterly on Canadian TV, down to the mid-nineties.
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