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Off Balance
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Cauldron Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024). |
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The Film
 Robert Dominici (Accident's Michael York) seems to have it all. He's young, handsome, engaged to beautiful socialite Susanna (Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice's Mapi Galán), and on the verge of world fame as a concert pianist; however, he has been diagnosed with the late onset of progeria, a rapid aging disease that usually shortens the life expectancy of children. While Robert's aging on the outside seems slow by the standards of the disease, the deterioration of his brain is accelerating and he is finding it harder to control his violent urges; having already brutally murdered his doctor (Tenebrae's Carola Stagnaro) to keep his illness secret. When Susanna is murdered after a fight with Robert that sent her into the arms of his best friend Davide (Lady of the Night's Fabio Sartor), Inspector Datti (Specters' Donald Pleasance) suspects a connection between the crimes but has no real leads. After finding solace in the bed of old flame Helene (The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh's Edwige Fenech), Robert runs off to Venice to say with his mother (Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom's Caterina Boratto) who observes that his grief is making him look much older than he actually is whereupon Robert realizes that his physical appearance is changing. When Helene reveals that she is pregnant, Robert fears that his child will have the same disease and tries to kill her. Datti is certain that Robert is the killer even though Helene identifies her attacker as a fifty-year-old man and analysis of skin samples under her fingernails seems to confirm it while the voice that goads him on over the telephone seems to be that of an even older man. As his body and his brain start to progressively change, Robert becomes resentful of both the young and the old and starts baiting Datti in a game to try and stop him, even threatening Datti's daughter (Sweets from a Stranger's Antonella Ponziani). The second of only a few films in Ruggero Deodato's filmography that could be labeled as a giallo, Off Balance – better known internationally under its American video retitling "Phantom of Death" – makes overtures early on of being a whodunit but and delivers a few very voluminously gushing throat wounds (along with a less-than-convincing nightmare decapitation) but is ultimately more of a thriller-tinged tragic drama. According to film historian Troy Howarth, screenwriters Gianfranco Clerici (Cannibal Holocaust) and Vincenzo Mannino (Violent Rome) initially came up with the idea of progeria in an adult spurring on a killing spree for The New York Ripper which Deodato was supposed to have originally directed, and that was dropped when Lucio Fulci brought on his regular writing collaborator Dardano Sacchetti; whereupon Clerici and Mannino bought the original script back but were not able to find a producer and subsequently decided to produce it themselves with Deodato once again at the helm (more on this below). While Clerici's and Mannino's original motive might have been more impactful for the killer of The New York Ripper, it would not have been as lean and mean a giallo as it was. Here, once the film no longer tries to hide the identity of the killer – although the film itself reveals Robert as the culprit in the first two kills as triggered memories halfway in, there are no other suspects apart from Davide who is an obvious red herring even before he is revealed to also train under the same kendo instructor (Hal Yamanouchi whose head cast may have been repurposed for Umberto Lenzi's House of Lost Souls) as Robert – there are some poignant scenes of Robert decidedly not coming to terms with his mortality yet trying to connect with some people even as he kills others. York may have been too old for the part of a thirty-year-old man although one could argue that at the start of the film he is already experience the effects of the sudden onset of progeria, although a flashback in which he is supposed to be in his early twenties is less believable. York's range of old age looks were the expert work of Fabrizio Sforza who would earn an Oscar nomination for his work on The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The film stills feels structurally lopsided and overlong even at just over ninety minutes, yet more kills would not have been the answer. While the photography of Giorgio Di Battista (Bizarre) is slick but merely functional in a flat TV style – especially compared to the work of Renato Tafuri (The Church) on Deodato's follow-up Dial: Help – the film's mood is greatly aided by the scoring of Pino Donaggio (Dressed to Kill) who provides Robert's piano concerto, orchestral strings, and synthesizer suspense programmed by regular eighties collaborator Paolo Steffan (Donaggio also recycles his rock song "Wild Dawn Nights" penned for Savage Dawn twice). The supporting cast includes some familiar faces including Marino Masé (Lady Frankenstein) has a brief appearance as a forensic physician, former Miss Italy and actor/director Carmelo Bene's much younger second wife Raffaella Baracchi (The Barbarians) plays a Venetian prostitute, Giovanni Tamberi has a more sympathetic role here as Helene's friend and business partner than he did in the giallo Too Beautiful to Die, English dubbing director and actor Lewis E. Ciannelli (Kill, Baby... Kill!) has a part as one of Robert's doctors, and spaghetti western stuntman Benito Stefanelli (A Fistful of Dollars) has an unfortunate encounter with Robert in a roadside restroom (although the film's few stunt were actually choreographed by Zombie's worm face Ottaviano Dell'Acqua). Deodato has a cameo on the back of a motorbike and Fenech's villa in the film was also the country dwelling of Joanna Pacula's character in Lamberto Bava's Body Puzzle. 
Video
Off Balance was released directly to videotape in the United States as "Phantom of Death" by Vidmark which, like their cassette of Fabrizio Laurenti's Witchery, coined the most familiar English title over the original export title but also erroneously labeled itself as "original uncut version." That sub-ninety minute version did not delete the original credits but ran credits for just the lead actors and the title card over a textless version of the sequence; however, a number of cuts were made for pacing, including much of the Venice sequence and scenes involving Robert's mother, a childhood friend turned priest (The House on the Edge of the Park's Giovanni Lombardo Radice), and a female police decoy (Renata Dal Pozzo). The original end credits crawl was replaced with a video-generated one that consisted principally of the above the line credits cut from the opening. While a Spanish DVD turned out to be a rip of the NTSC Vidmark tape with the Spanish track synchronized, superior anamorphic transfers of the export version turned up in Germany from X-Rated and the U.K. from Shameless (the latter restoring BBFC cuts made to the VHS release). Fans of Deodato who hold this film in lesser regard but nevertheless want to own it will be glad they held out for Cauldron Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray – also released last year as a website-exclusive limited edition with a CD soundtrack, booklet, and slipcover – is a significant upgrade over the older transfers, still looking like an Italian eighties TV movie but revealing the textures of York's old age make-up as well as some ragged prosthetic throat wounds too easily blended in with gallons of arterial spray in standard definition. The shadows and blacks in a few well-lit scenes are excessively noisy but not so in others which may be an issue with the film stock or the cheaper Luciano Vittori processing. 
Audio
English and Italian audio tracks are offered in LPCM 2.0 along with optional English SDH subtitles and English subtitles for the Italian track – the film was shot with sync-sound audio with the voices of York, Pleasance, and Fenech on the English track while supporting players were dubbed and everyone's voices were replaced on the Italian track – but while the previous DVDs feature mono audio, the English track here restores the Dolby Stereo mix which had some hiss at the high ends not unlike some harsher passages of boosted dialogue levels in Nothing Underneath (a giallo of similar vintage which made use of entirely sync-sound recorded English dialogue). The Italian track is in mono and the music and effects sound as low as they did on the VHS and DVD English mono tracks. Optional English SDH subtitles are included for the English dub and English subtitles are provided for the Italian track, although the authoring does not allow viewers to toggle back and forth between audio or subtitle tracks. 
Extras
Extras start off with an audio commentary by film historians Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth who discuss the origins of the project with The New York Ripper and how Clerici and Mannino producing the film meant that Deodato was unable to reshape it as he saw fit, in addition to the demands imposed on him by Dania Film's Luciano Martino who distributed the film but did not have a hand in the production. They also discuss the casting and the film in the context of Deodato's other few giallo credits including the underrated The Washing Machine, as well as an extensive discussion of Deodato's beginnings as an assistant director under filmmakers like Roberto Rossellini and Antonio Margheriti along with his wider range of action movies ranging from cannibal films to science fiction.  An Uncommon Director (32:50) is one of the last interviews with Deodato who died in 2022. He discusses his work as an assistant director and his move into television commercials and then features, including his long working relationship with Clerici who he brought on to fix his screenplay for Jungle Holocaust and who penned Cannibal Holocaust based on Deodato's concept. Perhaps due to this relationship, he puts the blame for the faults of the production more on Martino while acknowledging that he was not at liberty to change the screenplay. He reveals that Martino wanted his brother Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark) to direct and imposed Fenech onto the film even though she was no longer his girlfriend (at the time Fenech was engaged to Ferrari executive Luca Cordero di Montezemolo) when he wanted Kelly LeBrock who he claims dropped out because of her jealous boyfriend. He speaks warmly of Pleasance but comes off a little pompous when discussing York and his "limitations." The disc also includes the Italian theatrical trailer (3:21) and the export trailer (3:21), the latter in English. 
Packaging
The cover is reversible with the new Off Balance artwork on one side and the Vidmark VHS "Phantom of Death" artwork reproduced on the other side.
Overall
Originating in discarded concepts in the original script for what would become Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper, Off Balance may seem like weak tea as far as Deodato gorefests but it has its moments.
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