Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Palaest recommended

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

jockledoodledoo This very "made for TV" movie drags at a snail's pace, and it really shouldn't at one hour and twenty-seven minutes. Anything of merit can actually be seen in the trailer which heavily uses the 'best', or at least most memorable scene in the film featuring an aged child on a swing. This scene, in the actual film itself, is no longer than the footage seen in the trailer - which, when I viewed it, certainly intrigued me. Don't be fooled.The acting is hammy, and even compared to something like 'House on the edge of the park' this is mediocre. The quality of image and sound (on the Shameless DVD release) leaves a lot to be desired - but judging from some of the night scenes the quality of film used in the first place was not the best. A cheap shoddy production all round it would seem.Donald Pleasance does nothing of merit, and York's over-acting grates from a very early stage. Tedious plot padding comes in the shape of pointless ventures to Venice - only to kill a prostitute and moan some more at a priest.The Italian horror genre can offer so much more than this, so unless you are an extreme completist, don't bother.

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.

Coventry Unusual giallo, directed by one of Italy's finest horror filmmakers, and revolving on a truly ingenious and original topic, namely a murderer who commits his crimes because he can't accept the extremely rare disease that is destroying him physically and emotionally. Robert Dominici is a genius pianist, also practicing an eminent oriental fighting sport, suddenly stricken with a terrible illness that causes him to age rapidly. Leaving a trail of frustrated and extremely gore murders in the city, inspector Tati (Donald Pleasance pretending to be Italian, again!) has tremendous difficulties, as the forensic lab tests indicate a gradually older culprit each time. "Phantom of Death" is not Deodato's best film (that honor unquestionably goes to "Cannibal Holocaust") but it's a well-made and occasionally very tense thriller with good special effects and loads of streaming red liquid. It wouldn't be an Italian flick if the murders weren't extraordinary gross, right? We've got a couple of slit throats and one poor girl is violently thrown through a window. The acting performances are rather impressive, with Michael York being the personification of pure agony. Even more impressive are Edwige Fenech's looks! This giallo was made 18 years after her initial successes in the genre ("All the Colors of the Dark", "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh"), but she still looks exactly as gorgeous as she did back then. I guess she's definitely NOT suffering from the rapid-ageing virus...

FieCrier A female doctor is murdered by a sword. The film makes some pretense of mystery about the identity of the killer, but it doesn't really do a very good job (and the video box gives it away completely). The killer has a rare disease that causes him to rapidly age and also causes the deterioration of his mind. Thus, one murder is thought to have been done by someone of about thirty years of age, and the next by a fifty-year-old.The murder scenes aren't bad, but the rest of the movie does drag. The killer talks a lot, and what he says isn't of much interest. He also likes to call the police inspector played by Donald Pleasance. The police are all very bad at their jobs, fatally screwing up sting operations, letting suspects go before putting them in a lineup, and so on. Overall the movie is perhaps more of a drama musing about aging and death than it is a horror movie.Like Psycho IV two years later, this film also has a mentally ill character concerned about passing on his genes. In Psycho IV, that made sense, since Norman had more or less become "normal" through treatment. Here, it's a little more surprising that the man whose mind is supposed to be quite deteriorated is worried about it.I saw the uncut version of this on video. Can't say it's worth looking for - hold out for a widescreen DVD, and then it might be slightly more worthwhile.