A girl rock group rips off more than a classical composer in the low-rent 1980s Italian horror film PAGANINI HORROR, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Rock singer Kate (Jasmine Main, THE BLACK CAT) is creatively-blocked and her mercenary producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli, PAPRIKA) is considering dumping her if she cannot come up with a hit. Drummer Daniel (Pascal Persiano, DEMONS 2) makes the acquaintance of the mysterious Mr. Pickett (Donald Pleasance, FATAL FRAMES) who sells him a legendary unpublished manuscript by violinist Niccolo Paganini written for a secret sect for use in occult rites. Daniel turns the melodic piece into a rock song, and the creepy background of the manuscript and the popular rumor of Paganini selling his soul to the Devil for fame and fortune inspires Kate to turn it into a horror-themed music video patterned after Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and hires "horror movie king" Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi, KILLER CROCODILE) as a one man crew to direct it while Lavina secures the location in La Casa de Sol, the villa in which Paganini purportedly sold his soul with the sacrifice of his bride. Backed by fellow performers Elena (Michel Klippstein) and Rita (Luana Ravegnini), and Daniel as Paganini in a golden demon mask, cape, and fedora armed with a clef-handled blade, their performance brings back the real damned soul of the composer who starts dispatching them with a golden Stradivarius housing a retractable blade while the others – including the villa's owner Silvia (Daria Nicolodi, INFERNO) – discover that the laws of space and time have altered and are preventing them from escaping.

One of a pair of low-budget horror films made during Argento acolyte Luigi Cozzi's post-Cannon Films days in collaboration with Daria Nicolodi – the other being the unofficial "Three Mothers" film THE BLACK CAT (originally DE PROFUNDIS but given the Poe title when Menahem Golan's 21st Century Film Corporation picked it up as a companion piece of their trio of slasher Poe films) – PAGANINI HORROR seems wild on paper and certainly had the potential, but it is let down in just about every aspect (especially from the producer of Lucio Fulci's sublime gore gothics earlier in the decade). The extremely low budget shows everywhere onscreen, from the gritty 16mm photography and ugly lighting to the bargain basement attempts at gothic and eclectic set dressing and the atypically disappointing make-up effects of Rosario Prestopino (THE CHURCH) and Franco Casagni (THE STENDHAL SYNDROME). The film might at least have been more entertaining had it taken a more parodic approach to the contrivances of the story that have scared characters quickly splitting up and deciding to follow creepy noises and trails of blood, which would at least have made the "twist" ending less cheesy. The synth scoring of Fabio Frizzi-collaborator Vince Tempera (VOICES FROM BEYOND) is reasonably atmospheric but his two songs for the film are blatant rip-offs of songs by Bon Jovi and Electric Light Orchestra. Cozzi's daughter Giada appears in a period flashback involving death by electric hair dryer! The more esoteric aspects of the narrative are thrown out as incoherent exposition, and one wonders if the aforementioned, more healthily-budgeted THE BLACK CAT as an attempt to refine what everything that was so rough-edged here (including the horror director character whose artistic inspiration awakens ancient evil).

Unreleased stateside or in most English-language territories, the only way to see PAGANINI HORROR in English for the longest time was a Japanese-subtitled VHS edition. During their "hartbox" DVD days, Germany's X-Rated Video put out a two-disc edition featuring the film's international cut with English, Italian, and German audio options in a non-anamorphic letterboxed transfer with an Italian-language, German-subtitled commentary by Cozzi on the first disc, and the film's censored Italian TV version on the second disc. Severin's Blu-ray was preceded by a couple months by 88 Films' Region B Blu-ray. The 16mm film has always looked ugly on home video, but Severin's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray milks the elements for all they are worth. Textures are still limited to the film gauge and the more saturated colors in wardrobe and gel lighting are still noisy, but some of the ugliness of the photography we discover from the extras is due to the Fuji stock, the pastel qualities of which do not mesh with any kind of saturated colors. The Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track may actually feature the voices of the actors as stated by Cozzi, although they were not trained as dubbing artists, and the film had them acting phonetically in English. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is louder and clearer, but it also reveals that the dubbed dialogue track was poorly recorded compared to the music and effects portion of the soundtrack. Optional English subtitles for the Italian track and SDH subtitles for the English track are included (neither tries to transcribe the song lyrics). The credits are in English unlike the German edition which had Italian ones.

The U.K. Blu-ray features interviews with Cozzi and actor Genuardi as does the Severin, but Severin has confirmed that these are entirely separate recording sessions from the British Blu-ray ones. In "Play It Again, Paganini" (30:31) recalls that the project originated in STARCRASH's German producer Nat Wachsberger wanting to exploit the anticipated fame of Christophe Lambert in GREYSTOKE with a Paganini biopic, and Cozzi scripted a fictionalized version. After the Tarzan film flopped, the project was dropped but dusted off when he was approached about a horror project first intended to be shot in Columbia where he shot parts of CONTAMINATION, and eventually optioned by De Angelis who wanted to shoot it in Florida! Cozzi reveals that he was also offered GHOSTHOUSE by Joe D'Amato while waiting for funding for PAGANINI HORROR but he turned it down when the distributor refused to let him make script changes (he also notes that Fulci regular Dardano Sacchetti also contributed to the PAGANINI HORROR rewrite). Of the film itself, he concedes that the budget was "ridiculously low" and that is reflected in the make-up effect, as well as inserting visual effects shots from HERCULES and STARCRASH that de Angelis then removed. The only thing he thinks is wrong with the film was that people were expecting peak Fulci rather than his own vision.