Blu-ray Review: Paganini Horror (1989)

November 9, 2019

Written by DanXIII

Daniel XIII; the result of an arcane ritual involving a King Diamond album, a box of Count Chocula, and a copy of Swank magazine, is a screenwriter, director, producer, actor, artist, and reviewer of fright flicks…Who hates ya baby?

After a piece of sheet music makes a young girl chuck a hairdryer into her mamma’s bath water we cut to a (mostly) female rock n’ roll outfit performing a song with almost the exact same melody as Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name… and thus we begin the headlong plunge into cinematic insanity known as Paganini Horror!

So that band? Well their management think they suck as of late… now if only they had something new they could play that would really appeal to every eager earhole world wide! Well as fate and a cameoing Donald Pleasence would have it, they are brought just such a piece; a forgotten work from the legendary Italian Violinist Paganini… I wonder if that could be that shit we saw earlier… nah!

Anyway; our heroines trek out to a remote castle to film some slick-ass fright flick style “video clips” for their new masterpiece and before long are plunged into a deadly, surreal nightmare from which they can not escape!

Look; this is a rock n’ roll horror film (one of my fav genres of all time; hell, I just wrote and directed my own heavy metal monsterpiece… cummin’ soon!) co-written (along with Raimondo Del Balzo and Daria Nicolodi; who acts in the picture as well) and directed by one of my all-time idols, Luigi Cozzi (Starcrash, Contamination, and Ferrigno’s Hercules pictures)… so for yours cruelly this one was a ghoulish given to be a smash hit!

Full of babes, neon colored gel lighting, gooey effects (along with creatively bizarre kill sequences) and a narrative that would be right at home in a fever dream (or horror comic book), Paganini Horror is campy to the extreme, and irresistibly fun to boot. It also has a great, Phantom of the Opera vibe thanks to the cloak and mask clad presence of Paganini himself who wanders the hellish halls of the monstrous mansion our protagonists find themselves trapped in toting a bladed violin as a weapon!

On a personal note; it also has that cool as fuck, hand drawn lightning effect that screams ’80s to me in the best way possible… your mileage may vary.

Along with all of that off-kilter awesomeness mentioned above, our putrid pals at Severin have included a few bonuses on this Blu-ray release! Included are: interviews with Cozzi and actor Pietro Genuardi, a collection of deleted scenes (featuring an alternate ending), and the film’s trailer. Additionally, if you are one of the first three thousand mother fuckers to slap your dough down for this release, you’ll get your ass a bonus CD soundtrack!

If you love violin violence, arterial spray, and a whole mess of eerie enjoyment, ya just got to park your ass in the orchestra seats for Paganini Horror!

 

 

 

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