User reviews

A mainly female rock band film their latest music video "Paganini Horror" at the former home of the famous composer but in doing so open a portal to Hell.I had been tempted to buy this on blu ray but instead opted to watch it online and I am glad that I did because this is an awful movie. Having seen other reviews I kept my hopes low but hoped that there may be some redemption in the form of sex, blood and cheesiness. Sadly this wasn't the case. Our female musicians all look like models, but the characters are very annoying and get to keep their clothes on. Horror legend Donald Pleasence has a small part yet in the English language version he has been dubbed - BADLY! It sounds like somebody trying but failing miserably to do a Pleasence impersonation. As a fan of his I found this to be an abomination and unforgivable.The film is has 1980's cheese but not in a good way. The gore is pretty minimal, some sets are strangely draped in curtains (I think they were trying to mimic the look of Suspiria) and as already mentioned zero nudity. One of the few good points is Italian Scream Queen Daria Nicoldi among the female cast. Italian horror movies had nosedived by the late 1980's, this being a prime example

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.

The female rock and roll band formed by Kate (Jasmine Main), Elena (Michel Klippstein) and Rita (Luana Ravegnini) want to release a new album, but their producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli) refuses since their songs are very poor. Their friend Daniel (Pascal Persiano) buys a piece of music from a stranger called Mr. Pickett (Donald Pleasence) that explains that the music was written by Paganini himself and never released. Lavinia believes that the music will become a hit and she hires the filmmaker Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi) to make a videoclip in a manor she has hired from her acquaintance Sylvia Hackett (Daria Nicolodi). Soon Rita and Daniel disappear and the floor collapses beneath Kate that also vanishes in the hole. The survivors try to flee from the real state but they discover that they are trapped in hell.

"Paganini Horror" is a trash so lame and ridiculous that becomes funny. The awful story and screenplay associated to ham performances with a cast that overacts most of the time, highlighted by the dreadful dubbing in English and terrible cinematography make this movie a classic of the trash genre. There is no explanation why the members of the band are doomed to hell. I do not understand why Daria Nicolodi and Donald Pleasence accepted to include this film in their filmographies. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Paganini Horror"

It is pretty terrible and rather a shame. Paganini was born in 1782 and he became such a great player that he was known as 'The Devil's Violinist' which it seems it was believed to be a gift from the devil. It was a great idea that Luigi Cozzi supposedly discovers some lost music and turns it into an 80s girl band so they can have a hit song. They rather make a sad noise with big hair and then run around and screaming because one after the other is lost. And that is about it with some blood but not much and then some small scenes with Donald Pleasence and the splendid Daria Nicolodi is sadly rather running around with the others and holding hands, and screaming.

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.

Pure 80s rock, leaning heavily on Jon Bon Jovi and Pat Benatar, and a score that arguably brings to mind Claudio Simonetti and Goblin; great special makeup and practical effects, weak and outdated post-production visuals; terrific filming locations, art direction, and costume design. And for good measure, Donald Pleasence! If you want 80s horror, you've got it; if you want Italian horror, by Jove, you've got it. The style, the aesthetics, and the sensibilities about blood, gore, and violence could scarcely be more clear-cut. Unfortunately, so are the flaws that take little time to start placing upper limits on our enjoyment. One might reasonably suppose that the music video we see being filmed is extra kitschy in accordance with the norms of a format that is prone to kitsch: almost senseless movement and camerawork, bad acting, questionable costume design, tiresome cinematography, and dubious direction. One might suppose this, if not for the fact that the same traits seem to be applied throughout the entirety of 'Paganini horror.' The premise sounds promising, but the finished product doesn't take long to begin doing downhill. I don't think this is very good.

I assume it's Luigi Cozzi with his direction that can be blamed more than the cast for performances that uniformly come across as tawdry, unconvincing overacting. Either way, the actors do not come off well, and neither does Cozzi, even in terms of the fundamental orchestration of shots and scenes. The dialogue is rotten, the characters are empty shells, the scene writing can't begin to hold water, and even the story is desperately thin beyond the root premise. Once events especially pick up following the said music video, the pacing from one happening to the next is sometimes so swift and haphazard as to kill whatever tension and thrills one may hope to extract; the result is nearly farcical. Even when it's not ogling women's bodies Franco Lecca's cinematography is sometimes so bewilderingly ill-advised as to be laughable. The music quickly becomes rather repetitive and dull, and even if it weren't it couldn't help this mess. Under these circumstances it becomes impossible to care about anything that is done well, especially when some of those qualities, like the special makeup, are at time marked by perplexing choices that are themselves flimsy and overdone.

There actually was significant potential here in the root idea. That potential is sadly squandered in the face of atrocious, amateurish writing, wretchedly overwrought acting, floundering direction, and so on, and so on. In no time it becomes all but entirely unwatchable - heavy-handed, gawky, gauche, exhausting, and at some points even lacking coherence or cohesiveness. How anyone has ever enjoyed this is mysterious to me. Whatever it is you think you're going to get out of 'Paganini horror,' I regret to inform you just won't find it here. Spend your time with anything else; this is just a waste.

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 movie is so bad.... The acting, the story, the dialogues, the special effects, the direction, the sound.... Everything in this movie is soooo bad that I LOVE it!! It's supposed to be a horror movie but it's the best and funniest comedy I ever seen!! I can't stop laughing every time I'm watching it and I'm so in love with it that I ended up buying the video! If you want to laugh for 80 minutes, watch it!! The best line?? "Spirito del Male.... TI DETESTO!" - Italian people will understand.

While I cannot put into words how poor this movie is, I can try to put to right one thing not one reviewer so far has tried to do: Pagliani's "lost" sonata was actually a total ripoff of Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight" from their album "Time", released in 1981 (it exists, Google it, and yes IMDb spellchecker, that IS a word).

Which leads one to wonder, considering the quality of this movie and other horrors from Italy, can Italian directors make unique original films without stealing from others? Pod People was a direct ripoff of ET (even going so far as copying the logo), War of the Planets ripped off so many sci fi movies that they actually ripped themselves off in the sequel "War of the Robots", the list goes on and on!

But a note for note clone of a popular album from a popular band from the early 80s? Really, Italy? You couldn't just use an actual obscure song from Paganini (or for that matter, anything that hasn't been played to death, we'd likely not notice)? You could have used Pagliacci and most wouldn't have noticed.

Maybe it was just the atrocious dubbing. Maybe the translators were underpaid. That one star is for the costume department. There were some funky dresses. How on earth did this movie even get made?

It's not a surprise that Luigi Cozzi, after this movie, never shot a film again (except for two documentaries). This thing is not worth being called a movie (I've directed better films with my friends). The attempt of the director to give the film a photography reminiscent of the chromatic games of Suspiria is simply pathetic, and is nonetheless the better thing of the movie. However this film made me laugh so much with my friends that I should forgive its uselessness and its ugliness. We had a lot of fun. There are two sequences in Paganini Horror (one at the beginning, the other close to the ending) so silly and dumb that you can't do nothing but laugh.. unfortunately the rest of the movie can be quietly trashed away, its boringness is something unbelievable (especially during the music scenes). Maybe this film owes its only appeal to the bad acting of the actors, the principal cause of hilarity. But even the script is wonderful: the invisible barrier is surely the lowest (or highest) moment of the film...

Yup, here it is...another movie that wasted 80 minutes of my life. Paganini horror is a typical and meaningless horror movie. Nothing special, unoriginal and pretty annoying most of the time. It's the kind of movie that is hidden on the lowest shelf at your local videostore, covered in dust. There's a reason why it's down there, by the way...

Although I do believe Paganini Horror has a bit of potential in it, it fails to show it on every possible level. The story is about a female rock band who uses the old Paganini mansion as the location for their newest video clip. Paganini was a violin player who once sold his soul to the Devil himself, in order to become world famous. Satan is still present in the house and he terrorizes everyone who dares to enter the mansion...Pretty dumb of course but some of the aspects that are related to Satan ( like playing the violin -- symphony of the dead ) prove that some tiny elements in this movie show potential. But you cannot believe how cheesy the special effects and the make-up in this movie look !! Blue flashy lights stand as most of the "horrific" effects and the blood shed is rather limited. Even though this movie was shot rather recent - in 1989 - it looks incredibly dated and above all cheap !! And I don't mean the charming kind of 'cheap'...No, I mean the laughable and pathetic kind of cheap. The use of music is damn annoying as well. The stars are supposed to be talented singers and their hits are shown in the movie very detailed. Those are ideal "fast forward"-moments !! The songs suck and they don't really fit in a horror movie anyway...

I keep on wondering how Donald Pleasance got involved in so many ludicrous horror productions !! This guy was such a great actor but he starred in so much crap ! Where does he find these roles ? Does his agent used to tell him stuff like : "Hey Donald, I've got another annoying Italian Cheese ball for you...interested ?" "Yeah sure, sign me up" It's really weird...I'd like to tell you his performance was the only positive aspect about Paganini Horror, but it's not. His acting is as terrible as the rest of the cast. Furthermore, the movie suffers from an amazingly stupid ending ! The ugliest girl survives and she has to face an utterly stupid plot twist...the poor thing. Anyway, you don't care about it anymore at that point. If you managed to sit through it till then, you'll laugh away the stupid ending as well.

I always knew Satan was a musician. Can't really explain why but I always figured Him to be a violin player. It has a really spooky effect, if you ask me...That simple plot idea is the best thing this movie has to offer. I really advise you to skip it.

Bad. But not bad enough to be good.

The acting is definitely below average. The one exception is Donald Pleasence, but he's only in like 3 scenes.

The characters are much dumber than the average dumb horror movie character. However, this creates a fun random quality. The film is quite unpredictable - this is its main strength. You have no idea what will happen next. And some of these random moments are pretty great. There's an underground secret passage and flesh melting fungus. But the film does not save the best for last. It's ending is underwhelming compared to the chaos that came before it.

But my biggest problem with this film is the music and sound design are simply not good enough. The premise of the film is a haunted song and selling your soul to the devil for fame. Nailing the music is an absolute must, and they did not deliver.

Well, this is certainly a horror but not in the way intended. Sure I factored in that it's from the 80s which is a totally different aesthetic for horror movies than the 1970s which I prefer, and that still didn't manage to cover many of the flaws. Pieces this ain't, it's not even on the level of Slumber Party Massacre. It's not fun, or tongue in cheek it's just bad. The only good thing I can say about Paganini Horror is that by contrast it makes the heavy metal themes of Argento's Opera look genius (and the latter is nowhere near my favorite Argento film).

First of all, we're treated to a repetitive mainstream pop song in the first few scenes which the music producer promptly rolls her eyes at, which suggests to the viewer that better music is coming. Not on your life. The actual track for Paganini Horror doesn't even sound spooky or Gothic, it could have been a Bananarama music video.

And while the opening scene is pretty promising, it's the best thing that happens for a full 40 minutes in, where I gave up and realized that I couldn't bear another moment of this cringe fest.

"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.

It's pleasing to note that inventive Italian genre film-maker, Luigi Cozzi's reputation has improved greatly over the years. The spiffing HD edition of his gloriously gooey Goblin-scored Sci-fi splatter sensation 'Contamination' deservedly garnered many new appreciative Sci-splatter fans. Maestro, Cozzi's frequently misunderstood, garishly orchestrated, grisly-Gothic Giallo is an eccentric, enjoyably off-beat slasher serenade that occasionally hits a bum note. Lesser film-makers merely recycle trends, the inventive genre iconoclast, Luigi Cozzi ventures haphazardly into hysterical dimensions of creepy celluloid phantasmagoria hitherto unimagined by more conventional fright-makers!

'Paganini Horror' orchestrates a tasty riff on the familiar terror trope of a fear-flocked Faustian pact for fame and fortune. Daria Nicolodi & Luigi Cozzi's sinisterly surrealistic shocker finds drummer Daniel (Pascal Persiano) foolhardily purchasing satanic sheet music from the monumentally shady-looking pact-maker, Mr. Pickett (Donald Pleasence). His band, energised by this singular piece of previously unheard Paganini music, enthusiastically records the infamous violinist's supposedly 'lost' work. This provides the malign musical catalyst that heralds a demented aria of golden Stradivarius-delivered death! The bouncily nubile rock group's crimson-splashed, slasher-themed video shoot becomes an operatically grisly snuff symphony. The delightfully ghoulish-looking, Paganini slays them all like a fiddle, his phantasmal fury culminating memorably in a hair-raisingly gruesome crescendo of surrealistic slayage! The diabolically dissonant 'Paganini Horror' remains a golden Giallo oddity about a highly strung, symphonically sinister sadist that still savagely slashes its way to the very top of the schlock-tastic 80s slasher charts!

Starring Daria Nicolodi and the great Donald Pleasence, and directed by Luigi Cozzi (probably best known for cult Italian Star Wars ripoff Starcrash). This is one of the most bonkers Italian horror films I've seen (which is saying something!). An all-female rock band is struggling to come up with their next hit. Daniel, one of their backing musicians, has an idea and arranges to meet a mysterious 'Mr Pickett' (played by Pleasence). Pickett sells Daniel an unpublished piece of music by the real life early 19th century Italian composer/violinist Niccolo Paganini. Daniel takes the piece back to the band, who like it and - as it's in the public domain - write a song around it. What they don't know is that the piece of music is cursed, a curse secretly invoked by Pickett as soon as the deal is done. The band's manager decides to capitalise on the legend that Paganini sold his soul to the devil for ability and fame, and shoot a horror-themed video for the song at a large manor house where - supposedly - Paganini once murdered his bride. But as the shoot gets underway Paganini's restless spirit begins to stalk the house, killing-off band members and their entourage in all manner of gruesome ways.

The photography of the whole movie looks like an 80s pop video - with visual effects to match. The girls playing the band are very attractive but can't act to save their lives. Nicolodi plays the manor house's owner and fares a little better. Pleasence - of course - gives the best performance of the film; it's a shame his scenes aren't longer, but he does appear in each of the three acts. There's quite a bit of blood and gore, although surprisingly no nudity. The story has a lot of holes and unexplained coincidences, and the (pretty unoriginal) twist needs more explanation regarding exactly how it applies to each of the characters. As for the song that the band create around the Paganini piece, it is literally the ELO song Twilight from their 1981 album Time. And I mean literally. It doesn't just 'sound like it', or 'bring it to mind'. It's the exact same tune, with a virtually identical arrangement; the only difference is the words. If you listen to the two in succession (the movie's song plays in its entirety over the end credits) you'll see what I mean. I've never heard a more blatant ripoff (then again, this is Italian cinema). Still, despite the flaws (and being an outraged ELO fan!), the movie is fun in a really stupid way. 7/10.

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.

Ok its a low budget supernatural thriller. Dont expect a lot, but its camp so enjoyable if youre into it. The outfits sow off 80's Italian design that takes a lot of clues from 1980's LA scene. The plot wasnt confusing but thats not what this film is about anyway. Its seems to be a pulpy vehicle for... the soundtrack? Overdecorated mansions? Nice hair?

So fun fact, the lost Paganini song is a direct rip off of ELO's Twilight from their 1981 album, Time.

I can just imagine Jeff Lynne watching this and going "here, hold on a minute!" .

And Donald Pleasence is the king of quick appearances in low budget horror movies. He can show up, run lines, grab his check and be home for dinner. He knows what kind of movies hes in.