It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It is so daring, it is so ambitious, it is so thrilling and weird and pointed and powerful. I never knew where it was going.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

When a predominantly female rock band are lambasted by their producer for failing to write a decent tune, their male drummer purchases an unpublished score written by violinist Paganini, who was rumoured to have murdered his wife and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for fame and fortune.The band use the music as the basis for their newest song, and decide to shoot the accompanying video in the very house in which Paganini sealed his Satanic deal. This proves to be a bad idea when they discover that evil forces are still at work in the old building, where time and space have their own rules and a mysterious masked murderer lurks, armed with deadly violin equipped with a spring-loaded blade."What a strange light," mentions one character to her friends as they investigate the spooky house at the centre of the Paganini Horror. "It's more than strange", comes the reply, "it's weird." This dreadful exchange of dialogue (one of many) is fairly representative of this late-80s Italian horror as a whole: it makes no sense whatsoever—not surprising since it was written and directed by Luigi Cozzi, the man who gave us dumb, Z-grade, trash sci-fi flicks Hercules and Starcrash, and the very daft Alien rip-off Contamination.Cozzi seems to be aiming at delivering a Dario Argento-style supernatural horror in the vein of Suspiria or Inferno, but being a total hack, only manages to emulate Argento's garish lighting with any degree of success. The plot is so muddled that even Argento's most outrageous work seems logical in comparison (believe it or not, one character is inexplicably killed by wood fungus!), the direction is basic at best, and the score is a diabolical mix of 80s pop-rock and classical music.Not one of the cast puts in a credible performance, with particularly bad acting from Pietro Genuardi as the band's video director Mark Singer, who is supposedly a top horror film maker, but who works with a single shoulder mounted camera, no crew and absolutely no sign of a script or storyboard; even Argento's muse Daria Nicolodi and Donald Pleasance are dreadful, with Nicolodi overacting wildly and Pleasance looking rather embarrassed to be involved.Don't go expecting much in the way of decent gore either: most of the deaths are pretty bloodless, and even the most gruesome moment—a woman's head crushed by an invisible wall—will have you laughing at the cheap effect, achieved by pressing the actress's face against a sheet of glass whilst running fake blood over her head.If it hadn't been for the fact that a couple of the women are very easy on the eye and happily squeeze into body-hugging outfits, I probably would have fallen asleep way before Cozzi calls it a day and wraps the film up with a simply awful surprise ending.

Amazingly entertaining and completely stupid Italian horror! A pop group purchase a mysterious unpublished Paganini melody from a mysterious old man. Turns out it's the evil melody he wrote to sell his soul to Satan! Or something. Anyway, when the band play their soft-rock-meets-synth-pop masterpiece "Paganini Horror" it's fated that Bad Things will happen!So along comes Paganini in a cool mask, with a gold switchblade violin and some infernal powers, to mess with the group and their manager because... well, because he feels like it. Or maybe because he really hates '80s Euro pop, which is understandable really.Then it turns out that the whole rigmarole has nothing to do with the group in a surprise ending which is partly surprising because of how little sense it makes (even for an Italian horror flick of the 80s!).The amazingly 80s music and costumes are rivalled only by the dialogue and dubbing in terms of entertainment value, so while Paganini Horror might not be the finest of horror films it's certainly among the funnest! OK, so not much happens, really – some running around, some screaming, some killing, all freed from the constraints of logic and storytelling – and it's both well-paced and fine to look at, while some of the gore effects are superb (and the others are, of course, superbly entertaining). The score is better than the band's songs allow the viewer to hope for, too, and the small, rather mismatched cast are somehow perfect for this sublime nonsense.The male drummer and video director are both completely ineffectual characters, the former played with some panache by Pascal Persiano, the latter portrayed in a flagrantly comedic style by Pietro Genuardi – but this movie's all about the women, and its the female cast who dominate from start to finish. Bonus! Two of the girls in the band are pretty hot (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli and Michele Klippstein), while the other one (Jasmine Maimone as singer/bandleader Kate) overacts with astonishing vigour, and Luana Ravegnini as their manager (less hot than the hot girls, but prettier and a better actor than Ms Maimone) alternates hilariously between being a hard-nosed boss-bitch and screaming along with the rest of the girls.The aforementioned twist ending is incredible, and made me marvel once more at the talents of the film's two big horror-genre names, top-billed Daria Niccolodi and guest star Donald Pleasance, for delivering such idiotic lines with such bravura seriousness.Pleasance is so gleefully sinister during his short screen time that his character comes across more charming than chilling (not surprising really!). Niccolodi's acting is as solid as ever, and she's sometimes lost amongst the screaming, overacting girls but it works because it's her character who delivers a lot of the important lines, and she's utterly pivotal to the greatness of the film's finalé.For all the wrong reasons, this is a classic of Italian horror!

As an avid lover of Horror made in Bella Italia, who has seen hundreds of Italian Horror productions, I must say that "Paganini Horror" is arguably not only THE dumbest, but also the most boring and tiresome Italian Horror film ever brought to screen (I am not counting Claudio Fragasso's disastrous "Troll 2", which is, In my opinion, not Horror, and neither is it really Italian). Not even the casting of the great Donald Pleasence and regular Italian Horror actress Daria Nicolodi can save "Paganini Horror", as this has absolutely nothing to offer except for mild amusement about all its ludicrous aspects. I did not have high expectations for "Paganini Horror" as fellow Horror lovers had already warned me about how ridiculously bad it was, yet I somehow wished I was in for a positive surprise, since director Luigi Cozzi is generally a gifted man, as films like his highly unusual, but equally highly memorable Giallo "The Killer Must Kill Again" (1975) prove. "Paganini Horror", however has nothing to recommend it for, which is too bad, since a Satanic Horror film about Paganini could have become something good, or at least highly entertaining, if someone had put a little more heart into it.After the producer of a mostly female Rock band keeps nagging about the lack of originality in their (terrible!) newest song, the only male band member, the drummer, purchases an unopened document with an unknown Paganini score from a sinister man (Pleasance). Supposedly based on this Paganini document, the band produce a new (and equally awful) song, and decide to make a video-clip in Paganini's old mansion - The mansion in which the famous violin virtuoso had once signed a pact with the devil... Sound cheesy, and it is, but not only is it very, very dumb cheese, even though the film is only 80 minutes long, the temptation to fast-forward becomes bigger with each passing minute after a while. Even the gore-effects are awful, there's an incredibly corny-looking electrocution sequence which is so crappy it really has to be seen to be believed. Apart from Donald Pleasence (one of my favorite actors) and Daria Nicolodi, the performances are also god-awful. Still Pleasence and Nicolodi raise the quality a little bit (but certainly not very much). Otherwise, this has little to no redeeming qualities. Avoid!

Yup, here it is...another movie that wasted 80 minutes of my life. Paganini horror is a typical and meaningless horror movie. Nothing special, unoriginal and pretty annoying most of the time. It's the kind of movie that is hidden on the lowest shelf at your local videostore, covered in dust. There's a reason why it's down there, by the way...Although I do believe Paganini Horror has a bit of potential in it, it fails to show it on every possible level. The story is about a female rock band who uses the old Paganini mansion as the location for their newest video clip. Paganini was a violin player who once sold his soul to the Devil himself, in order to become world famous. Satan is still present in the house and he terrorizes everyone who dares to enter the mansion...Pretty dumb of course but some of the aspects that are related to Satan ( like playing the violin -- symphony of the dead ) prove that some tiny elements in this movie show potential. But you cannot believe how cheesy the special effects and the make-up in this movie look !! Blue flashy lights stand as most of the "horrific" effects and the blood shed is rather limited. Even though this movie was shot rather recent - in 1989 - it looks incredibly dated and above all cheap !! And I don't mean the charming kind of 'cheap'...No, I mean the laughable and pathetic kind of cheap. The use of music is damn annoying as well. The stars are supposed to be talented singers and their hits are shown in the movie very detailed. Those are ideal "fast forward"-moments !! The songs suck and they don't really fit in a horror movie anyway...I keep on wondering how Donald Pleasance got involved in so many ludicrous horror productions !! This guy was such a great actor but he starred in so much crap ! Where does he find these roles ? Does his agent used to tell him stuff like : "Hey Donald, I've got another annoying Italian Cheese ball for you...interested ?" "Yeah sure, sign me up" It's really weird...I'd like to tell you his performance was the only positive aspect about Paganini Horror, but it's not. His acting is as terrible as the rest of the cast. Furthermore, the movie suffers from an amazingly stupid ending ! The ugliest girl survives and she has to face an utterly stupid plot twist...the poor thing. Anyway, you don't care about it anymore at that point. If you managed to sit through it till then, you'll laugh away the stupid ending as well.I always knew Satan was a musician. Can't really explain why but I always figured Him to be a violin player. It has a really spooky effect, if you ask me...That simple plot idea is the best thing this movie has to offer. I really advise you to skip it.