[dougal]

Made at the tail end of the eighties this film almost tries too hard, too many times and ultimately falls short too often. Able to attract recognisable Hollywood stars and presumably with an eye on the lucrative US market Ruggero Deodato teams up Michael York and Donald Pleasance in an everyday tale of a pianist afflicted with a degenerative disease who decides to get back at the world by killing the young women he meets. (The identity of the murder is revealed in the second reel so that's not giving that much away.)

York gives a decent performance as Robert Dominici, the aforementioned pianist, and manages to portray his descent into madness as he faces the disease that is literally killing him before his eyes. Deodato nicely juxtaposes the efforts of Inspector Datti against York's killing spree, with Donald Pleasence descending into madness as York taunts him about his failures, culminating in him running into the street gurning and ranting "Where are you? I kill you" at no one in particular.

The murders are suitably graphic (as you'd expect in a piece of Italian cinema) with the impalement of Dominici's girlfriend pushing her through a glass door being particularly balletic in it's composition, showering the scene with the requisite red stuff. The make up on York works well, with subtle ageing being added in each scene virtually from the opening credits but ultimately suffers from the bane offilmmakers lives - it's very difficult to make up a young actor to play an old person (or this this case an aged one!)

Where the film falls down is it's pedestrian and confusing plotting and too often lack lustre cinematography and direction. Subplots and red herrings are introduced in true giallo style but they are all soon forgotten or sink into mangled logic. Fabio Sartore turns up as a suspect who we're supposed to believe is York's best friend, despite them never sharing any screen time (that I can recall), but then promptly disappears. Similarly what appears to be a subplot regarding York stalking Datti's daughter simply drifts away to nothing. And are we really meant to believe that data protection in Italy is so lax that a doctor will happily give out the name and address of a patient to someone who happens to be suffering the same disease?

Artistically the best scenes are those set in Venice during the Carnival but this setting is woefully underused in a rush to return to the big hair, big shoulder pads and sub-dynasty styling that was, it seems, in vogue in Italy at this time. Presumably the title 'Phantom of Death' was meant to invoke 'The Phantom of the Opera' in lines with these scenes as Dominici is able to hide behind a mask for a time but so little is made of it the title switch becomes meaningless.

Take away the odd giallo touches and the graphic slayings and you're not left with much more than an average made for TV movie with a couple of good performances at it's heart. It's not a bad film andfills in 90 minutes OK but you'd really expect more from Deodato.