Vomitron_G Ruggero Deodato...I hope I'm not bumbing against people's cart when I say that with having just watched PHANTOM OF DEATH his directorial skills somewhat became a bit more questionable again to me. I mean, the man undeniably is a master in depicting 'jungle mayhem', with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST arguably the best cannibal movie ever made (except no substitute - it is actually a very good movie with the most effective set-up I've ever witnessed in such films) and CUT AND RUN, again, one of the best efforts in the genre I've ever seen (and one of my personal favorites). Deodato is at his best anytime he's free to go over the top in any genre (THE BARBARIANS, anyone?)... But put him in the director's seat of a movie that's a bit more serious and demanding on the (international) cast's behalf, and he's bound to slip. As is, in my opinion, the case with PHANTOM OF DEATH.The Italian title, by the way, doesn't exactly encourage viewers to go see it, so I don't know what the producers were thinking. Literally translated, it means "A crime a little bit common (ordinary)". Sounds a little bit dull, doesn't it? Regardless, the basic synopsis does sound interesting enough: A successful pianist - why exactly a pianist is totally irrelevant; I suspect it was to lend the movie a bit more 'class' - starts suffering from a disease that rapidly ages him. Aside from not being able to cope with this affliction, it also starts affecting his mind and he can't resist the urge to kill women any longer. All this wrapped up in a Giallo-style film. This idea is put to good use in the plot, as his rapid aging makes it quite difficult for the police to determine what the killer looks like.Further more, Deodato (or the screenplay?) does have a good sense of pacing regarding the unfolding of events and presenting us a necessary killing on regular occasions. The murders are also pretty bloody & squirty, so that's a plus. One killing even has a girl bursting through a glass door in slow motion. But face it, as far as originality goes, Dario Argento had been throwing girls through windows in slow motion since 1977 already. So, nothing too special there either.But now for the two main things Deodato completely messes up. He has absolutely no clue on how to make an effective transition from one scene to another. And on a few occasions he sometimes even makes the cut from one shot to another look bad. Now, when you're wildly shooting a movie in a jungle, you can get away with that and the audience just doesn't notice it. But when you're shooting a stylish crime thriller and trying to tell a decent story, then you better fine-tune your directing skills in that department too. Deodato just jumps and cuts from one scene to another, including often too short and seemingly pointless scenes. It often results in a character's lines barely having come out of his mouth, and wham-bam cut to a different scenery. Doing it like that, might get you on with the story, but it also causes more than one problem for other aspects of the movie. Some might think I'm nitpicking, and I might be, as in some other movies (pulpy exploitation flicks, for example) I wouldn't point out these things. But you can feel PHANTOM OF DEATH tries to be a bit more ambitions on several levels, so I'm holding these flaws against it. However, the mise-en-scène is more polished than I would have thought. So at least the movie looks good enough.The other problem I have, is that with a movie of this type, Deodato just can't move his cast to give a decent performance. A given is, of course, that the supporting cast is downright abominable (acting/performance-wise). But it's worse than that. Donald Pleasance looks exhausted and uninspired and I suspect the main cause of this being that he has been given bad material to work with (so not necessarily his age at the time). The dialogue is poor and one scene has him go shamelessly over the top, running into a crowd on a square, shouting stuff like "Where are you? Show yourself, bastard! I kill you! You bastard! I kill you!!!". Very funny, yes. Very sad too. Same goes for Edwige Fenech. She's got her on-screen charisma and looks great. But she has not much to do or say. In the second half of the movie, she basically sits at home all the time being pregnant and waiting for her lover (the killer) to return. Michael York somehow does pull it off on some level, but his character is loaded with so much pathos - man, those scenes when he's talking to the blind dog - that it sometimes becomes painful to watch. And his slow motion death-scene at the end was plain laughable, to put it mildly. Attentive viewers can spot a cameo by Giovanni Lombardi Radice. And no, don't get your hopes up: He doesn't die a painfully bloody death.But this movie is memorable for at least one scene alone. Freaky & creepy sh!t, I tell ya. Two words as a teaser: Old kid.And yes, there's female nudity coming from more than one cast member.Let me end it here by saying that PHANTOM OF DEATH (or OFF BALANCE, as is the title I prefer) is certainly of interest to Giallo fans. It can be enjoyed. But it's not a great movie.

The_Void This film became an instant must see for me after reading the plot outline - how could I resist a film about a killer who was unlucky enough to catch a disease that makes him age rapidly? This film is quite heavily flawed, but it's safe to say that director Ruggero Deodato hasn't squandered it, as Phantom of Death is a very fun little thriller that makes good use of its central idea and features some very nice scenes of gore. Yes, you've got to expect a lot of the red stuff from a man whose biggest film credits include The House on the Edge of the Park and Cannibal Holocaust, and the film certainly doesn't disappoint; as we've got a woman being stabbed though a window, another having her throat sliced open, a decapitation and other such macabre happenings. The plot focuses on a piano player who, after losing some of his hair, discovers to his horror that he's one of the few adult sufferers of a disease that speeds up the aging process. As you might expect, this has a profound effect on his mind as well as his body; and it ultimately leads him to murder...One of the main weak points of this movie stems from the plotting. The screenplay is very disjointed, and the film doesn't always flow well. Furthermore, it suffers from the common Italian thriller flaw of not always making a great deal of sense - so it's lucky that the ideas and their implications are usually enough to carry the film. The acting is a strong point for the movie, however, and this one features some rather risky casting. Michael York takes the lead role and brings class and sophistication to it, which ensures that the classic British actor is always more than the common sleazy killer seen in most Giallo's. Donald Pleasance is his opposite number, and while he isn't given an awful lot to do in his role as the police officer on the case; he's a hell of a lot better than he was in the Halloween movies in which he made his name. The central cast is rounded off by classic Giallo temptress Edwige Fenech, who still looks great despite this film being made over a decade and a half since her immortal roles in Sergio Martino's classy Giallo's. Overall, this isn't great or a classic; but Phantom of Death shows some great originality (something Giallo's aren't well known for) and entertains despite its obvious flaws. Well worth seeking out!

Bogey Man Ruggero Deodato's Un Delitto poco comune aka Off Balance (1987) is an Italian thriller about a wealthy and happy pianist (Michael York) whose life turns upside down after the doctors find a very rare and lethal disease inside him. He starts to grow older very fast, having only few months to live or so and things turn even darker for him as someone starts to viciously murder those close to him. The plot follows police agent Donald Pleasance's attempts to find the killer before it's too late as well as the pianist's own efforts to return a some kind of balance to his life.Film maker Ruggero Deodato has made one of the most challenging and important films of all time, Cannibal Holocaust (1979) which tells about rotten media violence and the animal species that consumes it. The film is notorious for its unspeakable acts of carnal violence but none of it is in vain or gratuitous which is way too much for some viewers to understand and admit as most of them can't face themselves on the screen. Deodato has also made pure exploitation trash like the 1980 La Casa sperduta nel parco aka The House at the Edge of the Park or Inferno in diretta aka Cut & Run (1985) both of which are mostly just extremely gratuitously violent but also have at least some thoughts and themes to make them more interesting than other nasty and gory Italian films of the period.Off Balance is written by Gianfranco Clerici whose other credits include the mentioned masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust with Deodato as well as The House at the Edge of the Park but also Lucio Fulci's sadistic and misogynistic terror tale Lo Squartatore di New York aka The New York Ripper (1982) the last two of which are perfect opposites to the firstly mentioned and its subject matter. Off Balance is easily among their weakest works but, fortunately, has some brain too in addition to blood.The film has a very promising beginning with the first murder scene taking place during the credits inter-cutting to calm scenes depicting the protagonist play piano in his concert. The film moves fastly from the beginning and the characters and their relations get introduced well too. But ultimately, after the first half or so the film loses its fire and becomes slower with plenty of talk and things that don't make too much sense, mostly involving the killer and his (absent) motives for his vicious acts. I can't name one single explanation for his acts and that is rather frustrating once one has realized that. The things that are discussed in the second part are also interesting and important but they are presented with too much contrast with the more lively first half.The film's theme about aging and living one's life while it's offered and on hand is of course important and surprisingly well-concentrated on in the script and practically the whole last part is about this and not about the killings anymore. The film tries to make the audience understand how important it is not to let your life pass by without living it, as there may come times in the future that you start regretting it as life after all would have offered something interesting and worth living. It definitely doesn't say life or youth ends when your hair go off but it says that some things should be understood not by experience but for example by other people around us or art depicting these things.The film works also as a pure giallo thriller as it has its moments of suspense and mystery and of course the graphic blood letting. There are few nasty murders in the film, both at the very beginning and they are definitely very "Italian like" with the huge amount of red color sprayed over the screen. The second one is very close to Dario Argento's style but serves not any other purpose than itself, unlike the great usage of similar effect in Argento's Tenebre (1982) for example. The effects are pretty good and the aging character becomes all the more tragic as we see the horrible face mutations of his in so little time. York does a believable role and never over-acts at all.Off Balance is more promising and potential than some other films of the giallo/slasher genre and since it's Italian, it could've been so much more than it now is. Deodato and Clerici have once proved to be a very efficient couple but it seems they're ambitions are either not supported by the producers anymore or have just changed a little bit in themselves. 3/10

rundbauchdodo This thriller exists in two versions: One for TV and export that is quite tame, and an uncut version with extremely gory murder scenes which, as far as I know, was only released in parts of Europe (mainly Southern Europe). I have never seen the "clean" version, so this comment reviews the uncut (French) version.Robert Dominici (Michael York) is a successful and attractive pianist whose life could not be better. But one day his doctor tells him that he suffers from a rare disease which makes his body grow old horrendously fast. No wonder that the disease throws Robert completely off balance (hence one of the export titles), he leaves public life and starts to kill young women in nasty ways (just before the goriest murder, Ruggero Deodato has a short cameo!). Police inspector Daddi (Donald Pleasence) has to solve the crimes.York and Pleasence are tremendous, and the female lead is led by giallo cult actress Edwige Fenech. York's character is, despite his gruesome killings, rather truly tragic than villainous. With this film, Deodato made one of the best gialli of the 1980s, but it's a shame that the censored version is far better known in the German and English spoken parts of the world. Everybody who has the opportunity to get the uncut version should not hesitate and grab it.