Paganini Horror

Director- Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi)

Cast- Daria Nicolodi, Jasmine Maimone

Country of Origin- Italy

Distributor - Severin Films

Number of Discs - 2

Reviewed by - Scott MacDonald

Date- 10/30/2019

    Over the last decade I have fully come around to the cinema of Luigi Cozzi (credited as Lewis Coates on this film).   When I first saw films like Contamination in the late 90's, I thought they were abysmal, and nothing like the Italian horror films I had been coming to love at the time. However, going back to them now I find them to be delightful, and almost always entertaining. Star Crash is a firm favorite, and I've now seen a 35mm print of Contamination. One film of  Cozzi's I had yet to see was his Paganini Horror from 1989.

    Paganini Horror started out as potential vehicle of Highlander's Christopher Lambert, and was slated to be a more serious take on the life of Paganini similar to Ken Russell's Mahler or the Music Lovers (at least that was my takeaway).  The film never got off the ground,  and went through numerous iterations before Cozzi could come up with the funding to shoot it as an horror film with Paganini as the villainous supernatural killer.

    The film follows Kate who is in a band that has seen better days. Their work is not appreciated by their producer. One day their drummer Daniel makes a deal with Mr.Pickett played by Halloween's Donald Pleasance. The band receives an unpublished work by Nicolo Paganini, and promptly go to an old manor house to shoot a Thriller-esque music video for the song.  Unfortunately for the group Paganini comes back to life, and kills the group one by one with a violin of death!

    Paganini Horror was AMAZING. This film though quite low-budget, really offers a fun time. It uses its limited location to great effect. FX aren't great, but they work well here. Performances are pretty par for course for the material, but it never takes away from the film (Donald Pleasance of course is great in his limited role). The music for the film by Vince Tempera (Fabio Frizzi?) is fitting to the overall tone of the film, and the cheesy rock numbers really make this seem almost a parody of late 80's rock culture.

   Paganini Horror is presented by the always reliable Severin Films in a very solid 1080p HD transfer. It's not perfect and it definitely shows the limitations of the material used, but it appears quite natural with solid detail, and decent color reproduction (though some of the colors do appear somewhat noisy. Audio is handled by an English dub track in HD Mono, and an Italian HD Mono track with subtitles.  Everything here sounds about as it should loud, and mostly clear without any obvious issues. Extras include a fantastic interview with Luigi Cozzi and one with actor Pietro Genuardi.   There is also deleted and alternate scenes, a trailer, and a CD soundtrack. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.