Paganini Horror

"Paganini Horror" isn't a masterpiece,but it is a solid horror flick that will keep almost all horror fans entertained.The acting,apart from Daria Nicolodi("Deep Red","Tenebre")and Donald Pleasance("Phenomena","Halloween"),is pretty bad and the rock music is extremely cheesy and annoying.Director Luigi Cozzi("Il Gatto Nero")desperately tries to create some spooky atmosphere and,in my opinion,he partially succeeds.The film is full of rich,glowing colors,and the gore effects are pretty well-done(for example nasty head explosion,violin stabbings etc).All in all I really enjoyed this one,so check it out for yourself.

I really enjoyed this trashy 80's Italian horror from director Luigi Cozzi, once on the DPP video nasty list for his film Contamination (1980). This film is more silly and nonsensical than nasty, in fact it's quite fun with some bad over the top acting, except for Donald Pleasance and Daria Nicolodi, with some nice bits of gore, colourful imagery and dodgy special effects.

A female rock band practice their music in an old mansion once owned by the famous classical Italian composer who supposedly sold his soul to the Devil 200 years ago. When they play an unpublished piece of his music they accidentally open up a portal to hell and reawaken the maestro.

Italian horror movies have a certain style and ambience to them, sometimes indulgent but usually entertaining enough with some interesting ideas and bravura set pieces to hold the attention and, of course, bad dubbing. They even saw fit to dub English actor Donald Pleasance who has an uncharacteristically deep voice here and makes a guest appearance rather than having a starring role. Nicolodi comes off best, a Dario Argento regular, who co-wrote the script with Cozzi.

Once Paganini is awakened he returns as a mad slasher complete with a knife wielding violin who sets out to kill everyone and drag them to hell. There are plenty of unintentional funny moments and a few intentional ones too, especially the last scene after Paganini gets exposed to sunlight.

Cozzi tries to create some atmosphere but the loud rock music gets in the way so it's not as scary as it could have been but the moments of colourful gore make up for it.

Some musical broads decide to record an unpublished Paganini song which ends up opening a portal to hell or something. Paganini Horror is bad. The story is incoherent and idiotic. It's like I get where they were going with it but they just throw in random $#!+ all over the place that doesn't make sense to the story. Some of the killing sequences were fun and bloody but this is one of those rare occurrences to where the bad acting was actually a lot more entertaining than the violence. I literally almost crapped blood with laughter from it. It also has some pacing issues like two music sequences of some rocks songs (one of them, a deliberate rip off of a Bon Jovi song) some may or may not like but at least you get to see a chick in tight pink spandex revealing the curvature of her succulent buttock so that counts for something. Plus the effects are poorly shot and looks r·tarded. In the end... (sigh) I think it's a genuine $#!+show masterpiece of unintentional humor and weirdness. I struck gold with this one. Loved it.

This one has been hard to find for years (at least in semi-watchable form), so I'm happy to say I've finally seen it and it's ok. A dubbed Donald Pleasance plays a creepy music peddler or something who gives an all-girl pop band an old piece of sheet music that was apparently composed by a crazed composer who used human heartstrings for strings on his violin. They end up in a secluded country estate owned by Daria Nicolodi to shoot a music video for their newest hit and they end up opening up a portal to hell or something to that extent.

To be honest, this movie was confusing as all hell. I never knew what was going on or what the rules were, but it's a pretty short movie and there are some fun effects and sequences that kept my interest. It's definitely far from the worst horror movie I've ever seen, but it's hard to not see it as a missed opportunity. The ending has a fun twist, too.

Do you want the bad news or good news? Bad news is there isn't much good news for this Italian horror flick. The good is some of the scenes and direction feel proper for a good giallo as well as the killings , soundtrack is decent, and you have Donald Pleasance giving a decent cameo with a twist, as well as Daria Nicolodi, and the girl at the beginning. The bad is the English dub makes the dialogue very bad in turn making it look like bad acting, too much unnecessary dialogue takes away from the atmosphere of the film. The producer is the most hated character was hoping for her to die first, but her death was pretty impressive. Not the worst film I've seen but wasn't as good as I was expecting as the plot sounded promising. 2/5.