Recently (IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 4, pp. 195-197, 1992), Kikuchi proposed preamplify-feedforward-homodyne detection as a technique for realizing subshot-noise sensitivity in binary phase-shift keyed optical communication. The present letter demonstrates that this system does not yield subshot-noise performance in small-angle analog phase modulation, and it offers no error-probability reduction in binary phase-shift keying. In both cases, preamplify-feedforward-homodyne detection requires twice as many signal-beam photons as ordinary homodyne detection to achieve the same communication performance.