The usually insipid and unexceptional Michael York gives a surprisingly good performance -- intense, anguished, severely tormented and even fairly touching -- as a melancholy pianist suffering from a rare ailment which causes him to age at an alarmingly accelerated rate, making poor Mikey transform into an increasingly ugly, balding, rot-toothed, wizened old pruneface ghoul. Mike subsequently goes lethally batty nuts and starts viciously killing beautiful young ladies who possess the youthful vitality and pulchritude he's rapidly losing. Late, great fright flick favorite Donald Pleasence, who often gave feverishly wired, riveting, fabulously idiosyncratic performances in almost every last movie he acted in, proves to be curiously phlegmatic and underwhelming as the concerned homicide detective investigating the brutal murders York commits.
While the killings are nastily satisfying (women have their throats cut wide open so blood can spew forth in a thick arterial crimson torrent), there are a few fairly steamy and explicit sex scenes, and the production values are both solid and polished, "Phantom of Death" fails to make the cut as a total success due to draggy pacing, uninteresting characters (although York is rather pitiable, he's overall far too arrogant to be wholly sympathetic and Pleasence's obsessive policeman never rises above the level of a flat one-note cipher), so-so make-up f/x, and a grindingly predictable by-the-numbers plot. Ruggero Deodato's direction manages to be competent throughout, but never amounts to anything more than merely acceptable and surprisingly unremarkable; the distinctly mean, unrelenting kick-you-in-the-teeth potent ferocity which distinguished such previous pictures as "Jungle Holocaust," "Cannibal Holocaust" and "The House on the Edge of the Park" is largely absent here. The gorgeous Edwige Fenich looks positively smashing as York's caring French girlfriend, plus there are nifty cameos by legendary spaghetti splatter whipping boy John Morghen as a priest and Deodato himself as a creepy dude at a train station. To sum up, this one's strictly decent and diverting, but nothing terribly special or noteworthy.
While the killings are nastily satisfying (women have their throats cut wide open so blood can spew forth in a thick arterial crimson torrent), there are a few fairly steamy and explicit sex scenes, and the production values are both solid and polished, "Phantom of Death" fails to make the cut as a total success due to draggy pacing, uninteresting characters (although York is rather pitiable, he's overall far too arrogant to be wholly sympathetic and Pleasence's obsessive policeman never rises above the level of a flat one-note cipher), so-so make-up f/x, and a grindingly predictable by-the-numbers plot. Ruggero Deodato's direction manages to be competent throughout, but never amounts to anything more than merely acceptable and surprisingly unremarkable; the distinctly mean, unrelenting kick-you-in-the-teeth potent ferocity which distinguished such previous pictures as "Jungle Holocaust," "Cannibal Holocaust" and "The House on the Edge of the Park" is largely absent here. The gorgeous Edwige Fenich looks positively smashing as York's caring French girlfriend, plus there are nifty cameos by legendary spaghetti splatter whipping boy John Morghen as a priest and Deodato himself as a creepy dude at a train station. To sum up, this one's strictly decent and diverting, but nothing terribly special or noteworthy.