Cauldron Films
Blu-ray Release: July 9, 2024
Video: 1.66:1/1080p/Color
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo; Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
Subtitles: English SDH
Run Time: 91:57
Director: Ruggero Deodato
When a mysterious disease befalls young, virtuosic pianist Robert Dominici (Michael York), he begins a violent, murderous rampage, taunting authorities with his whereabouts. As Robert’s brain and body rapidly decay, Inspector Datti (Donald Pleasence) must race to find him before he kills again! (From Cauldron’s official synopsis)
Despite being remembered for two extremely transgressive, back-to-back horror films – Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and House on the Edge of the Park (Italian: La casa sperduta nel parco, 1980) – director Ruggero Deodato never completely tied himself to a specific genre. Furthermore, his films rarely qualify as specific genre exercises and I’m not sure if any can be characterized as gialli. Waves of Lust (Italian: Ondata di piacere, 1975) is an erotic thriller that shares some basic ideas with early gialli, House on the Edge of the Park repeats common giallo motifs, but in service of a home invasion movie, and Body Count (Italian: Camping del terrore, 1986) is a full-bore slasher. The best fit is probably The Washing Machine (Italian: Vortice mortale, 1993), an unfortunately titled, lascivious thriller made at a time when even slashers were waning in popularity.
Post-Body Count, he made Off Balance – more typically known as Phantom of Death (Italian: Un delitto poco comune, 1987) – a sort of genre mash-up/throwback that directly references gialli in an almost postmodern fashion, combining the archetypes with character-driven psycho-thriller tropes and effects-driven Hollywood horror. The kills are stylish, yet brutal, matching the tone of mid-’80s slashers, but the bigger narrative influence might actually be David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986). Both films chronicle tragic physical and mental deteriorations as the result of fantastical illnesses* and even deal with the threat of the diseases affecting unborn children. Cronenberg’s film is better and thematically stronger, but there’s enough pathos here to appreciate the increasingly ridiculous melodrama. In case you were taking it too seriously, though, the production attempts to cash-in on the ninjasploitation craze with a ninjutsu training subplot that is dropped halfway through the film.
The whole cast is actually above standard for an Italian horror film released in the mid/late-’80s. I don’t know a lot about York’s filmography, but he was fronting Richard Lester’s The Return of the Musketeers one year later in 1989, so I don’t think he was on a career downturn at the time. Donald Pleasence is another matter, because he was always an A-level talent making B-level content. He was in a number of Italian films in 1988, including Ignazio Dolce ‘Namsploitation flick Last Platoon (Italian: Angel Hill: l'ultima missione) and Augusto Caminito’s Nosferatu in Venice (Italian: Nosferatu a Venezia), as well as Dwight H. Little’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. He doesn’t have a lot of screentime and is showing his age, but still puts in the effort. If Pleasence represents the slasher films’ old guard, one-time scream queen Edwige Fenech represents giallo’s heyday. Fenech spent most of the ‘80s making sex comedies, so this would’ve been an exciting return for fans of her ‘70s thrillers. It would be her last theatrical appearance until Stefano Gigli’s Il fratello minore in 2000. Italian horror fave Giovanni Lombardo Radice also has a cameo.
Deodato’s creative output never surpassed the jaw-dropping audacity of Cannibal Holocaust, but his technical skills and standards remained surprisingly consistent. None of his later films are classics, of course, but even the most notorious among them – the Cannon-produced 1987’s Barbarian Brothers vehicle The Barbarians – has at least the polish of a professional straight-to-video product, unlike the bargain basement output of Claudio Fragasso, Bruno Mattei, and Joe D’Amato at the time. For Off Balance, he deftly borrows visual ideas from a variety of sources, such Dario Argento’s Tenebrae (aka: Unsane, 1982 – itself inspired by ‘80s American neo-noir) and Donald Cammell’s giallo-like psycho-thriller White of the Eye (1987) and makes them his own via unusual structural editing and soap opera sheen.
* In what I’m sure would be considered these days a wildly offensive bit of plotting, York’s character is actually afflicted by a fictional version of progeria that strikes late in life, hyper-ages the victim over a series of months, rather than years, and drives the afflicted insane.
Bibliography
Cannibal Holocaust: The Savage Cinema of Ruggero Deodato by Gian Luca Castoldi, Julian Grainger, and Harvey Fenton (FAB Press, 2011)
Video
Off Balance was originally available on VHS tape under the more common Phantom of Death title via Vidmark/Trimark. The only official DVD versions were all European PAL discs and it doesn’t appear to have made the streaming rounds in SD or HD. The film debuted in August of 2023 from Cauldron Films as a limited edition collection that included an original soundtrack CD, followed shortly by another, even more limited edition from Mediacs in Germany. This standard edition shares the LE’s 1.66:1, 1080p transfer, which was taken from the original camera negative and scanned in 2K. This is also a completely uncut version of the film, unlike the Vidmark VHS, which was mislabeled as “uncut.”
The image appears a little washed out at times, but don’t consider this is the transfer’s fault, because Deodato and cinematographer Giorgio Di Battista utilize so much hazy focus and diffused lighting. It’s meant to look hazy and Shameless Entertainment’s PAL DVD had the issue magnified by compression artifacts. Cauldron’s disc has tighter detail and texture, but avoids oversharpening effects. The improved dynamic range also helps to differentiate elements and shore up edges with nice, deep black levels. The general palette is light and beige with occasional primary and pastel highlight hues, I assume in an effort to recreate that Miami Vice, neo-noir look.
Audio
Off Balance is presented with English and Italian dub options, both in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio stereo. The film was reportedly mixed for a Dolby stereo release, but most home video versions have utilized the mono alternative. By the mid-’80s, some Italian features were finally beginning to shoot with sync’d on-set sound and, according to specs, Off Balance was one of them. This means that the English dub is the more accurate option and that we are hearing most of the cast’s original performances, including, obviously, York and Pleasance, but also Fenech, who I’m not sure had ever dubbed her own performance in English. Not surprisingly, the recording process didn’t go perfectly and the actors who aren’t dubbed tend to sound a bit quieter and more echoey than the ADR’d performances, music, and effects. Still, it’s worth watching the English dub over the more consistent, but less dynamic Italian dub.
Famed composer Pino Donaggio (who had just worked with Deodato on The Barbarians) adds a touch of class with his bold, romantic, string-heavy symphonic score, which is designed to match the tones of the classical pieces that York’s character plays as a concert pianist.
Extras
Commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth – The authors and critics – who previously collaborated on Howarth’s Make Them Die Slowly: The Kinetic Cinema of Umberto Lenzi (independently published, 2022), for which Ercolani wrote the forward – mostly dig into the careers of the cast & crew with focus on Deodato and the main cast in particular, but also discuss the making-of the film and state of Italian and European genre filmmaking in the mid/late ‘80s.
An Uncommon Director (32:50, HD) – Filmed in July 2022, this was one of the last interviews that Ruggero Deodato recorded before his passing in December of the same year. The director looks back on his ‘80s output, stopping to focus on Cannibal Holocaust, Cut and Run (Italian: Inferno in diretta, 1984), and Off Balance, which he suspects was meant to be directed by producer Luciano Martino’s brother Sergio. He didn’t put a lot of effort into making the film and was unhappy with the industry at the time, but enjoyed working with Pleasence and York. He ends the interview complaining about women these days.
English export and Italian theatrical trailers
The images on this page are taken from the BD and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.
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