Paganini Horror (Severin Films Blu-ray Review)

Is Paganini Horror Trash or Treasure?

Blu-ray Distributed By: Severin Films / October 29, 2019

From producer Fabrizio De Angelis (ZOMBIE, THE BEYOND, KILLER CROCODILE), writer/director Luigi Cozzi (CONTAMINATION, STARCRASH) and co-writer/star Daria Nicolodi (DEEP RED, TENEBRAE) comes one of the most hard-to-find shockers from Italian Horror’s greatest decade: When an all-girl rock band records an unpublished song by Niccolò Paganini – the 19th Century composer said to have sold his soul to the Devil – they will unleash a skintight spandex nightmare of extreme violins, cheesy power ballads, SUSPIRIA-influenced lighting and outlandish Satanic havoc that QuietCool calls “serious fun…it drips with as much love as it does with blood and gore.” Jasmine Maimone (DEMONS), Pascal Perciano (VOICES FROM BEYOND) and the legendary Donald Pleasence (HALLOWEEN, NOSFERATU IN VENICE) co-star in this “kooky, stylish and definitely recommended flick” (DVDExotica.com), now transferred in 2k from the original negative.

Jimbo’s Take (3 / 5)

Who was Niccolò Paganini? Well, the real life Paganini wasn’t a composer that sold his soul to the Devil. If director Luigi Cozzi had his original wish, he would have directed a straightforward biopic of the legendary Italian composer/musician starring Christopher Lambert.

But as often happens in the entertainment industry projects fall apart, move around from hand to hand, and eventually get spit out as something unrelated and bastardized from its original form.

And that’s the short version of how Paganini Horror started out as a Christopher Lambert drama, but eventually morphed into an Italian version of Night of the Demons (1988).

I only compare it to Night of the Demons because both films have a pretty threadbare plot. I’m not at all suggesting that Cozzi ripped it off, even though he’s often been accused of such practices. A group of people wind up in a haunted house, unwittingly unleash hell, and the group is picked off one at a time. We’ve seen it before in The Evil Dead, Night of the Demons, and now here again in Paganini Horror.

However, this time it’s not a group of kids looking to camp out in a cabin in the woods, or party during Halloween. This time we have a smoking hot, spandex clad, female rock group looking to break out with the next big hit single. But their manager hates what they’re producing. So in an act of desperation they buy a long lost Paganini composition from a mysterious figure (Donald Pleasence), produce their new hit, and rent an old mansion to shoot their music video. What could possibly go wrong?

The vengeful dead spirit of Paganini, of course! Risen from the grave to kill each and every person in more grisly and unique fashion. And despite the movie’s obviously limited budget, the kills are varied, inventive, and fun! A true highlight of the movie.

However, some of Cozzi’s creative decisions may have you scratching your head. To start, the English dub is more awkward than one usually expects from these Italian horror films. It was pretty common for filmmakers to have the actors speak in their natural language and then hire a professional dubbing coach to provide dialogue that better matches how the mouth’s move. In Paganini Horror, however, Cozzi has his actors try to deliver English. The result is something that is close, but your brain knows it’s not quite right. An actress may swell or stick out her tongue too much. Or the actor rounds their mouth too wide. It makes the whole thing a little unsettling especially when you add in poorly performed English dubbing.

Even stranger is Cozzi has chosen to dub over Donald Pleasence’s iconic voice. At first I couldn’t tell if they used a different actor or just changed the pitch to give the character a deeper, more demonic tone. I’m pretty sure it’s still Pleasence performing his own dialogue, but with a voice as distinct as his, anything else coming out of his pie hole feels jarring. On the plus side, Pleasence steals the show any time he’s on screen.

Honorable mention goes to Daria Nicolodi who does her professional best among a group of young, inexperienced actors.

And one more thing that takes this movie to ‘enjoyable WTF status’ is the music. Paganini’s fictional, lost composition should be so hauntingly beautiful that it opens hell. One might expect this music would be quite captivating. Chilling even.

The music is fucking terrible. Uninspired and generic. It’s a classic case of expectation and reality being in stark contrast with one another. And Cozzi’s ‘music video’ sequence is cringe inducing. But, I’m not going to beat up on Cozzi and company too much because it’s a low budget film. They clearly don’t have the resources to hire a master, much less license and actual piece of Paganini’s music. So logically I let this slide. But your brain probably won’t.

By the time Cozzi’s Paganini biopic script got churned up and spit out, I’m surprised the mere mention of Niccolò Paganini was even retained. They could have easily made up a fictional composer and the movie would lose nothing. Unless, of course, the producers were banking on name recognition. Except many of these movies are made with American audiences in mind. And most dumb Americans are probably thinking a ‘paganini’ is a delicious grilled sandwich on Italian bread.

And despite all of this I still find the movie fun. Dump fun, perhaps. But still fun. Then again, I also find these oddities to be charming. It’s not going to win any awards, but if you enjoy badly dubbed Italian horror films treading precariously close to rip-off territory, then you are going to love Paganini Horror.

The Tech Stuff (3.5 / 5)

Cozzi expresses in the blu-ray supplements that the producer, in an effort to save money, bought Fuji film instead of Kodak stock. Fuji tends to have a cooler hue, leaning toward blues and greens. Kodak, the industry standard, tends to be warmer with what we perceive as more natural tones. So the final product is an interesting one because Cozzi and company decided to light Paganini Horror with a wide color pallet, lots of primary colors, somewhat resembling the surrealism of films like Suspiria.

Severin’s transfer is a solid one too. According to their site it’s a new 2K transfer from the original negative. The image retains a consistent quality throughout, featuring healthy grain levels, nice detail, and a strong color pallet. Overall, a really nice looking movie.

Setting aside the artistic choices that lead to poor dialog dubbing and cheesy audio looping, there are no problems with either the English language or Italian language mono tracks. I watched the entire movie in English. I only sampled the Italian track and it felt ‘softer’? Maybe ‘duller’ is a better word? I don’t feel like I’m expressing this adequately. But the differences are minor and both get done what needs doing.

Extras (3 / 5)

No commentary, which is a bummer. But the interview with director Luigi Cozzi (about 31 mins) largely replaces that personal request. He covers a wide range of topics regarding the movie. He starts from inception to finale. He also addresses the criticisms he receives about being a rip-off director. And I’ll admit that after hearing his perspective, I appreciate his work in a new way.

An interview with actor Pietro Genuardi (about 16 mins) is less informative but is a nice ‘fly on the wall’ perspective from a guy who was brand new to the film industry at the time. He speaks more on his pleasant memories of the director, and the ‘total fucking hotness’ of his costars.

The deleted scenes and alternate ending (roughly 9 mins) are from Cozzi’s personal video workprint that he assembled for producers before they axed his, shall we say, more science-fiction interpretation of the movie’s events. Producers obviously didn’t want that shit getting in the way of straight horror. The alternate ending puts a new twist on the film’s finale as well. Dialogue is in Italian without subtitles.

Play It Again Paganini: Interview with Director Luigi Cozzi
The Devil’s Music: Interview with Actor Pietro Genuardi
Deleted Scenes and Alternate Ending
Trailer
CD Soundtrack (Limited Edition exclusive)

Trash or Treasure? Overall Recommendation

Don’t believe the naysayers. Paganini Horror is a fun little movie. Yes, the voice acting is poor, and the music is cheesy. But Luigi Cozzi knows that he’s making a pretty straight-forward haunted house movie with beautiful people that die in horrible and unique ways. Paganini Horror feels like the cheaper knock-off of Night of the Demons (1988). But I mean that in all the best ways.