This Italian oddity, also known in English as "Off Balance", is finally available in an uncut version, although the DVD is unfortunately dubbed; however, since the two lead actors, Michael York and Donald Pleasance, are English, the net result is less disastrous than it might have been. Directed by Ruggero Deodato, one of the more reliable goremeisters, responsible for video nasties like "Cannibal Holocaust", there is an ample quota of nicely filmed red stuff.
York -- one might parenthetically ask here, whatever became of his career, since his leading man days -- plays a 35-year old lionized concert pianist. When his hair starts falling out in chunks, he discovers that he has been incubating an aging disease which unleashes his hidden psycho. The make-up effects as he becomes more and more aged and hideous are actually pretty convincing. Pleasence plays his typical late-career role of a frustrated policeman on the killer's trail, but always one step behind. When York's love interest, giallo stalwart Edwige Fenech, announces that she is pregnant, York feels he must kill her and the foetus as well since it will bear his tainted blood; this was preceded by a scene in which he sees a young child who suffers from the same ailment with the body of a youngster but the face of an elderly man -- which was enough to upset the best of us (although such oddities seem to be standard television fare nowadays). This is hardly a great film, but it certainly had its bloody moments, one of which was played twice to make sure that we understood its significance -- or something!
1 comment:
A very minor film, this, and I did not think it that well done. Michael York has
never struck me as a great talent and Donald Pleasance seemed to sleepwalk
through his 'baffled inspector' roles. There were some nicely composed shots
and, as you say, sufficient red stuff.
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