Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Sphinx Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson July 12, 2021

Sphinx (1980) was a $10+ million production from Orion Pictures shot on location in Budapest, Cairo, and Luxor. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton; The Boys from Brazil), starred Lesley-Anne Down and Frank Langella, and received supporting roles from John Rhys-Davies (one year before he played Sallah) and Sir John Gielgud. Erwin Kim wrote his dissertation at USC on Schaffner, who he conducted many interviews with and turned it into the 500-page book, Franklin J. Schaffner (Scarecrow Press, 1985), which remains the only major study on the director. Kim did archival research on virtually all of Schaffner's TV and movie productions, including Sphinx. He found that Orion bought the rights to an untitled novel by Boston ophthalmologist Robin Cook (Coma) sight unseen. The manuscript was initially titled Tombs and later re-titled Sphinx, which G. P. Putnam's Sons published in 1979. Ed Blank, then the drama editor of The Pittsburgh Press, reported that Sphinx sold 600,000 copies in hardback. Kim has chronicled that in February 1979, Orion sent Schaffner the galleys of Sphinx. After he signed a contract with Orion, Schaffner let Cook try his hand at a screenplay of his novel but the results were reportedly unfilmable. According to Kim, Schaffner chose John Byrum to pen a new draft of the script, owing mainly to his screenplay, Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976). Byrum wrote four drafts until Schaffner was fully satisfied.

Sphinx opens with a prologue set in the Valley of the Kings in 1301 B.C. Mernephtah (Behrouz Vossoughi), the royal architect, and his men have caught beggars pillaging one of the tombs inside the caves. Mernephtah delivers punishment to one of the thieves reminiscent of what Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) inflicts on a man in Gangster Squad (2013). The narrative flash-forwards to the present day where Egyptologist Erica Baron (Lesley-Anne Down) is interested in visiting the tombs of Seti I, Seti II, and Tutankhamen. Erica takes a pilgrimage to the Antica Abdul shop in Cairo. There she meets Abdu-Hamdi (John Gielgud), an antiquities collector on the black market. Abdu-Hamdi shows Erica a statue of the Seti I and she's taken with it. Local terrorists are also after the statue and Abdu-Hamdi realizes he must get Erica some pertinent information before meeting his fate. The French journalist Yvon Mageot (Yvon Mageot) helps Erica get out of her predicament. When Erica thinks she's alone in her hotel room, a mysterious man named Ahmed Khazzan (Frank Langella) reflects in her mirror. Ahmed is UNESCO's Egyptian Director of Antiquities and supposedly wants to get the men who were after Abdu-Hamdi. For much of the rest of the film, Erica is on the run during several long wild-goose chases.

Sphinx defies narrative logic and strains a viewer's notion of what's believable. For instance, Erica gets trapped in a cave full of a couple hundred bats that attack her. It's incredulous that she could get out unscathed and face the next obstacle. Sphinx works best as a sumptuous travelogue of Egypt. Cinematographer Ernest Day, who was camera operator on three of David Lean's epics and later DP on A Passage to India (1984), lenses the desert and pyramids from high above, capturing their awesome beauty.

Even critics who dismissed the film admired the camera's lensing of the wide-open vistas. An anonymous staff writer for the Herald-News wrote, "The scenes of the pyramids, Cairo, the Nile and The Valley of The Kings are the best ever seen." The Tallahassee (FL) Democrat's John Habich was in the minority, writing:"Scenes are framed with the unimaginative eye of the archetypal tourist — the Giza pyramids, feluccas drifting up the placid Nile, pesky beggar boys in a Cairo bazaar — and director Frank­lin J. Schaffner flashes them across the screen as perfunctorily as a home slide show."

The critical mass' consensus was that "Sphinx stinks." In Langella 2012 memoirs, Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them, the actor wrote admirably of his idol, John Gielgud, but called Sphinx "a real stinker." Langella seems to have forgotten what he told Roderick Mann of the Los Angeles Times in an interview back in May 1980 where he described Byrum's script as "very good" and superior to Cook's novel. However, the movie wasn't received well by audiences. John Omwake, then the entertainment editor for the Kingsport (TN) Times-News, reported that a few people walked out at the screening he attended.

Sphinx wasn't universally despised by reviewers, though. Joe Baltake of the Philadelphia Daily News thought that his fellow film critics overreacted to Sphinx by misinterpreting its levity: "[the movie is] a great deal of fun....What’s wrong with it is just about everything — and that’s what makes this film so entertaining and so eminently watchable. It's in­stant camp." Rick Teverbaugh of the Star-Press cited two reasons to see Sphinx: (1) Langella's well-modulated performance; and (2) the mag­nificent scenery and artifacts. The Edmonton Journal's John Dodd confessed: "I’m embarrassed to admit that I adored it." Dodd deemed it one of his great moviegoing guilty pleasures.

Schaffner thought that critics misunderstood his intentions. He confided to Henry Edgar of the Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia): "My idea was to make a romp — a picture that is totally an en­tertaining experience. One doesn't need to exploit the background at hand; I just meant for the film to be fun en­tertainment. based upon a premise so broad as to be enjoyed." How did Schaffner feel when the movie was finished? He told The Atlanta Constitution's Joseph Litsch that Sphinx "turned out pretty much like I thought it would, like I wanted it to. I'm very happy with the life the film has taken on for itself. I like the way It moves. I like the sense of romp that's in the picture. I think I set out to make a good picture in exotic circumstances, and I think that works."

Sphinx Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout! Factory's release of Sphinx comes on a BD-50, which uses the MPEG-4 AVC encode. The DI is based on a new 2K transfer of the interpositive. The movie appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.39:1. The transfer boasts a pretty beautiful image. Look at how clear the details are on the statue of Seti I (Screenshot #17). You can spot the textured grain in capture #s 1, 5, and 14. Skin tones appear natural without any post-processing or wax work. Shout! has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 34000 kbps.

Shout! provides a dozen chapters for the 118-minute film.

Sphinx Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1675 kbps, 24-bit). According to Erwin Kim, Sphinx was the first picture that Schaffner worked with that contained Dolby stereo, which he found difficult. A separate monaural track was prepared but Sphinx was released in theaters with stereo. It's an oddity that Shout! didn't include a stereo mix here. The mono track sufficiently reproduces the dialogue, which sounded comprehensible to my ears. There some Arabic words spoken that come accompanied with non-removable English subtitles (see Screenshot #s 19 and 20). The subtitles also were burned into the original release prints. Composer Michael J. Lewis delivers a four-star score that sounds rich and powerful along the front channels. Lewis came up with a theme that's reminiscent of Maurice Jarre's sweeping desert music for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). That's apropos since Schaffner was anointed as the "American David Lean." Lewis released a one-hour composer's promotional album in 1994 that introduces the theme in the cue, "Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza." He gives it a more majestic rendition in "Valley of the Kings," which boasts high brass notes. Lewis uses a lot of tablas and ethnic percussion throughout the score.

Shout! provides its own optional English SDH in addition to the compulsory English subs.

Sphinx Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (2:25, 1080p) - an unrestored trailer for Sphinx presented in 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen. The image is soft and hazy with film artifacts. Orion's trailer shows the scary bits and snippets of the action scenes.

• Radio Spot (0:32) - a good-quality radio spot that aired during Sphinx's theatrical run. The audio is clear.

Sphinx Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sphinx is best appreciated as a cinematic travelogue across Egypt. If you can suspend your disbelief at the incomprehensible ways that Erica avoids doom, then you'll get more out of the film. The movie didn't deserve the critical shellacking it received. Shout! Factory delivers a splendid transfer from a recent 2K scan. It's disappointing that it didn't include the original stereo mix, however. There are no extras except for the trailer and a radio spot. RECOMMENDED to fans of Schaffner and Langella.