Paganini Horror

Violin Violence

Paganini Horror
Italy 1988 Directed by Luigi Cozzi
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

I’ll be honest, I was expecting a lot more out of Paganini Horror than what the movie delivers. The reason why is because it has a good pedigree. For starters it’s directed and co-written by Luigi Cozzi who directed both the wonderful Star Crash (reviewed here) and the very entertaining Contamination. Also, Cozzi wrote and co-wrote a number of interesting gialli including one of my favourites, The Killer Must Kill Again (can we have a Blu Ray of that one already please?) and two of Dario Argento’s early films, The Cat O’ Nine Tails (reviewed here) and Four Flies On Grey Velvet (reviewed here).

Secondly, the film was co-written by Dario Argento’s former muse (and mother of Asia Argento), Daria Nicolodi, who co-wrote Suspiria (reviewed here) and also has a major role in Paganini Horror, as the owner of the house in which most of the movie is set.

So, yeah, with that kind of collaboration, what could go wrong? Well lots actually but it’s perhaps not that the film is actually bad, it’s just that it could be almost interchangeable with a lot of Italian horror movies of the time, including the directors own mis-step of a movie (in my opinion), The Black Cat (reviewed here).

The story starts off with a young girl killing her mother by deliberately dropping a hairdryer in her bath tub. It’s actually a very ‘over the top’ electrocution, with big electrical arcs and a woman whose flesh burns amongst all the pyrotechnics (I doubt if a simple accidental, water-based electrocution from such a household item would be quite as spectacular in real life). Jump to the present day and we have a mostly female rock group consisting of lead singer Kate (played by Jasmine Maimone), two guitarists and a drummer named Daniel, working on recording a new song. Their producer says the song is no good and an argument erupts between Kate and her producer. The day’s recording is cancelled and Kate goes home to try and find inspiration.

However, Daniel buys a bizarre scroll from a shady character played by Donald Pleasance (in well ‘over the top’ form) for a stash of cash so Kate can have a song (yeah, great and obvious solution there folks). After undoing the suitcase holding the scroll (with double combination locks of 666), Paganini’s ‘lost song’ is unearthed and he gives it to Kate for her next hit. Within a few minutes of bizarre and over the top exposition, filled with monumental coincidences of good fortune for the sake of brevity... the whole troupe, including the producer, set off for an out of the way haunted house belonging to Daria Nicolodi’s character, to shoot a rock video for the song with a famous horror director. I can’t tell you how ridiculous this two or three minutes of expository dialogue is but they even manage to name check Michael Jackson and compliment him on his video to Thriller.

Meanwhile... Donald Pleasance is wandering around Venice, climbs to the top of a tower and starts throwing the money off it, repeatedly calling the folding money ‘Little Demons’ as he tosses more and more of it into the streets. Yeah, there’s obviously something not quite right about his character, is there?

Okay, so once the video shoot starts off, a masked figure who, it seems, is the dead spirit of Paganini himself, starts picking off the group and their entourage one by one, handily using a knife blade which pops out of the bottom of his violin on occasion. At this point Nicolodi tells a story that Paganini originally killed his wife and used her intestines to make his violin strings after making a deal with the devil... I’ve not fact checked this myself but, yeah, seems unlikely.*

There are lots more electricity deaths and various stabbings and crushings and, also, a woman who is covered in a fungal mould said to be specific to the kind of wood Paganini’s violins were made from. There’s one nice moment when the blood flying from a stabbed woman hits a light around a vanity mirror and shorts it out, which seems almost a nod to the iconic light bulb moment in Argento’s Tenebrae (reviewed here). There’s also a huge attempt at integrating the idea of ‘the harmony of the spheres’ and a room with a picture of Einstein and a big, bizarrely lit hour glass which seems to be a portal to alternative dimensions. Apparently Cozzi wanted to make more of this concept with a longer cut of the movie, to tie the various, strange proceedings together but, the producer wanted it to play more like a straight horror piece than science fiction... although I think it all comes across in it’s own, muddled way.

The film is definitely trying to be a ‘Suspiria light’, I would say. Various colour washes of bright reds, blues and lime greens etc are used throughout in certain sequences and Vince Tempera provides a kind of progressive rock based score which is typical of Italian horror movies of the time. It’s not as catchy or as listenable as Goblin, for sure but, it’s certainly trying to serve the same function.

There’s a lot wrong with the film too, I reckon. It’s possibly just the audio looping but it’s got some of the worst acting I’ve seen in an Italian horror film for quite some time. And the constant hysteria of the ladies as they spookily explore the house for long periods of time, without even bothering to pick up a weapon such as a heavy guitar for the most part, is quite grating and hard to take.

Some of the deaths have some bad moments too. When one girl is crushed as if by invisible glass in a room while the others look on, her head explodes and the blood splashes on the sheet of Paganini’s music. Except, we’d already seen this sheet of music go up in flames a minute or so before. And then, later, when one woman is stabbed by a character, we see the knife enter her fake flesh in close up with the blood oozing but, when we cut to the long shot, the knife is just sticking out of her black top and nowhere near any visible flesh so... yeah, maybe a quick insert from footage originally intended for elsewhere in the movie, perhaps?

All in all, I’d say Paganini Horror is an entertaining distraction of a movie but it’s not so good as to be that interesting and not nearly bad enough to get sucked into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. I had a certain amount of fun with it for a first time watch but really didn’t find anything to write home about and it’s not something I’d recommend to most people, even fans of mid to late 1980s Italian horror movies, to be honest... which is probably the only target audience this film has. But I was happy enough to see it and 88 Films have put a nicely restored transfer of it out on Blu Ray so, good for them. A fairly good label but not so great a movie, I would say.

*Having now had to time to fact check this... I have learned that it is indeed a rumour which was circulating about him and he also was said to have trapped his wife's soul in said, intestinal violin.