{"id":19950,"date":"2020-03-06T22:24:44","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T03:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19950"},"modified":"2020-03-07T01:17:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-07T06:17:37","slug":"br-paganini-horror-1989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=19950","title":{"rendered":"BR: Paganini Horror (1989)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Film<\/strong>: Weak<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong> Severin Films<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0A<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 October 29, 2019<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Horror \/ Supernatural Horror<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0A pop band in need of a hit single record a song based on a cursed manuscript by legendary violinist Paganini, thereby opening an inter-dimensional gate and unleashing a demonic fiddler. Or something like that.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a02 Interviews: “Play It Again Paganini: director Luigi Cozzi (30:30) + “The Devil\u2019s Music: actor Pietro Genuardi” (15:32) \/ Deleted Scenes and Alternate Ending (8:53) \/ Trailer \/ Soundtrack CD with first 3000 copies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1989 was a peculiar year for Luigi Cozzi, in that he worked on two films set within the environs of Venice: Paganini Horror<\/strong>, which he directed and co-wrote, and the disastrous Nosferatu in Venice<\/strong> (1988), a mess he was tasked with cleaning up \/ saving when the producer went through multiple directors and had to wrangle Klaus Kinski’s temper tantrums.<\/p>\n

Happily, Cozzi\u2019s name isn\u2019t on Nosferatu<\/strong>, but Paganini Horror<\/strong> isn\u2019t among the director\u2019s best work, due in large part to a painfully minuscule budget, and conflicting concepts of the final edit between director and producer.<\/p>\n

As Cozzi recalls in the lengthy interview on Severin\u2019s excellent Blu-ray release of this apparently rarely seen supernatural shocker, the original concept started as a loose biography of violinist Paganini to be shot in south America, but when financing fell through, Cozzi pitched a compact horror tale in which Paganini\u2019s cursed unpublished music brings the Devil back to a Venetian mansion, where he toys with victims before taking their souls.<\/p>\n

As developed with co-star Daria Nicolodi (Suspiria<\/strong>) and occasional writer-director Raimondo Del Balzo (Midnight Blue<\/strong>, Cop Target<\/strong>), Paganini Horror<\/strong> begins with a little girl (Cozzi\u2019s daughter Giada) performing Paganini\u2019s possessed music before she electrocutes her mother (Elena Pompei) in a ludicrously red bathroom.<\/p>\n

Flash forward a few decades, and the film restarts as a pop-rock group is being chastised by cruel manager Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli) for playing the same old, same old banalities, and wasting valuable time in a recording studio.<\/p>\n

Drummer \/ keyboardist Daniel (Pascal Persiano) decides to save the band not by writing a new song with a fresh collaborator, but meeting a certain Mr. Pickett (Donald Pleasence) in a ruined factory where the two swap cash for cursed sheet music that comes with a guarantee of being a Michael Jackson \/ Thrilleresque hit.<\/p>\n

Lead singer \/ violinist Kate (Jasmine Maimone), guitarist Elena (one-time actress Michel Klippstein), and bassist Rita (Luana Ravegnini) are immediately hooked on Daniel\u2019s piano rendition of the unpublished Paganini ditty, and the melody seems to quickly win over Lavinia, whose temperament radically shifts from poison-tongued eviscerator to team player. It\u2019s all agreed a video is mandatory to exploit the band\u2019s 110% hit song, and the group set up a shoot in a mansion rented from Sylvia Hackett (Nicolodi), an owner utterly clueless to the drafty malevolent spirits within her really dusty, moldy, structurally unstable estate.<\/p>\n

As soon as the video shoot is underway, ace horror director Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi) and the ladies are threatened by a masked and caped demon (Paganini? The Devil? Mr. Pickett?) who tests his golden violin and its large retractable blade on Rita\u2019s taut tummy.<\/p>\n

Cozzi fans and connoisseurs of goofy supernatural Italian thrillers will find patches of fragrant fromage throughout the film, but its budget and hastily assembled script ultimately deny viewers a truly palpable cult film experience. Pleasence\u2019s scenes are occasional, brief, and feel oblique until the end, but the main cast is gorgeous.<\/p>\n

Franco Lecca\u2019s Venetian footage varies in quality, from fuzzy, clumsy shots of the canals in the opening scenes to a more effective docu-style as the camera follows Pleasence through piazzas and up to a massive bell tower overlooking a harbor. On the plus side, Cozzi had a fantastic location for his ensemble character thriller \u2013 an abandoned religious school is ripe with long hallways, staircases, enormous attics, plenty of peeling paint, and overgrown foliage \u2013 and perhaps due to Nicolodi\u2019s involvement with the script, the men are soon dispensed to Hell, leaving the women to fight for their lives as the Devil and his secret mole tear the group apart until there\u2019s one remaining survivor.<\/p>\n

On the down side, it\u2019s an amateurishly concocted script with frequently terrible performances. A handful of deleted scenes collected from a dub of Cozzi\u2019s longer edit contain spinning planets (perhaps outtakes from the prior and bigger budgeted Starcrash<\/strong> or The Adventures of Hercules<\/strong>?), eerie skies, and lightening strikes, and Daniel\u2019s piano performance of the forbidden theme for the ladies was original interpolated with bland stills of Paganini and sheet music.<\/p>\n

These cosmic minutia do affect what probably felt like a major narrative distraction to the producer, but the final cut is no less disjointed: around the midpoint, the group eventually converge in a dingy room with a giant pink-hued giant hourglass\u2026 and walls sporting a framed picture of Einstein (!) and his theorems scattered across the walls\u2026 Nerd graffiti.<\/p>\n

From this scene alone, the audience\u2019s initial deduction could be that Sylvia\u2019s home is the epicenter of an Einstein cult who once gathered in a secret guest room to chant fragments of his theories in the hope of moving planetary masses into unnatural alignment, enabling the magnification and control of the Nobel Prize winner\u2019s theories\u2026 or just bafflement, especially when the floor caves in for no reason other than to separate Rita from the group, scald Mark\u2019s hand and end his cinematographic career, and infect Elena with a parasitic fungus which Rita immediately<\/em> recognizes from a type of rare wood used by Stradivarius for his violins. (The sideline as to whether Elena is destined to become a human violin, or just moldy mush is sadly never explored.)<\/p>\n

Sergio Montanari\u2019s editing keeps the pacing tight, but he can\u2019t hide a few gaping continuities, such as Lecca\u2019s inconsistent lighting within the mansion and day for night sequences, and the prop master\u2019s lone flashlight that manages to pass among characters above and below ground.<\/p>\n

Severin\u2019s fine transfer brings out both detail and some lush pastel colours, but the layers of narrative nonsense are worsened by repeated shots of the terrified survivors which evoke clich\u00e9d reaction shots from a 1950s creature feature; instead of a rubber monster, the ladies shriek and recoil from smoke, lights, and murky sounds which seem antithetical to the survivors being set up as strong-willed women.<\/p>\n

The \u2018twist\u2019 finale may have made slightly more sense had Cozzi\u2019s planetary and aberrant weather imagery been retained: observing incoming victims from an invisible dimension, Pickett states the house is the epicenter of ongoing torment for his mole.<\/p>\n

Severin\u2019s recent interview with Genuardi is very genial \u2013 the actor made his film debut in a production that was obviously fun and inspiring \u2013 and Cozzi provides a good overview of the film\u2019s production, casting, and Pleasence\u2019s peculiar role as the grinning, perpetually delighted devil (or an agent of the devil, or the agent\u2019s chauffeur moonlighting after hours and pocketing some souls from private deals with cursed minions).<\/p>\n

Vince Tempera\u2019s score is largely adequate \u2013 a recurring suspense track is more successful than up-tempo cues \u2013 and the bonus CD (previously released in 2019 by Beat Records) with early Blu-ray pressings offers all cues plus three vocal tracks in super-crisp stereo: two versions of the ditsy \u201cStay the Night\u201d and one of the rather zippy \u201cThe Winds of Time\u201d which features the \u2018cursed\u2019 Paganini music.<\/p>\n

Perhaps due to the film\u2019s poor reception among critics and limited international release, Cozzi would direct just one final feature, the 1989 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s The Black Cat<\/strong>. His subsequent work spans documentaries, often tied to collaborator \/ mention Dario Argento (Dario Argento: Master of Horror<\/a><\/strong>), and the films Roma Fantastica <\/strong>and Blood on M\u00e9li\u00e8s Moon <\/strong>(2016).<\/p>\n

Unlike their co-stars, actresses Michel Klippstein and Luana Ravegnini had short careers in film, with the latter appearing in Quelli del casco <\/strong>(1988) and Paparazzi<\/strong> (1998). Jasmine Maimone\u2019s own modest filmography includes the movie-within-a-movie in Lamberto Bava\u2019s Demons<\/a><\/strong> (1985) and Cozzi\u2019s last genre feature The Black Cat<\/strong> (1989). Maria Cristina Mastrangeli had a small role in the Augusto Caminito produced, Tinto Brass directed erotica Paprika<\/strong> (1991) and Cozzi\u2019s Blood on M\u00e9li\u00e8s Moon <\/strong>(2016).<\/p>\n

And in perhaps the strangest postscript, after Nosferatu in Venice<\/strong>, Klaus Kinski\u2019s next film was… Paganini<\/strong> \/ Kinski Paganini<\/strong> (1989).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2020 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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