Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen eighty nine Italian rock and roll haunted
Speaker 3: house thriller Paganini horror directed by Luigi Kotzi, who we
Speaker 3: actually just talked about a few weeks ago in the
Speaker 3: podcast because he was also the director of Star Crash,
Speaker 3: which will come up again in the making of section
Speaker 3: of this episode. I want to lead off today by
Speaker 3: I wonder if you have any counter examples to this, Rob,
Speaker 3: because I think of all the films we've ever covered
Speaker 3: on Weird House, this might be the most quintessential example
Speaker 3: of to combine sort of two different showbiz cliches, a
Speaker 3: hatchwork script emerging from development. Hell, can you think of
Speaker 3: any other contenders that are really like as much to
Speaker 3: the same degree as this one?
Speaker 2: Maybe not as much as this one? Yeah, because this one,
Speaker 2: this one really feels fractured in all over the place.
Speaker 2: It feels like a like a corporate brainstorming session for
Speaker 2: a music themed horror film that it should have gone
Speaker 2: through various other stages, but they ended up just filming
Speaker 2: the list. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Oftentimes that some sort of
Speaker 2: you know, behind the scenes like reorganizing of things can
Speaker 2: certainly make for some memorable a memorable mismatch in tone
Speaker 2: or style. One film that we're going to refer to
Speaker 2: a few different times is, of course, Extraterrestrial Visitors, known
Speaker 2: to MST three k Fens as pod People, one of
Speaker 2: one of my favorite films that we've discussed in Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema, just straight up in and of itself. But
Speaker 2: like that's a film that is would it's unique tone
Speaker 2: comes in part because they've had there's one movie they
Speaker 2: set out to shoot and then they kind of pivoted
Speaker 2: to try and capture the et audience as well. So
Speaker 2: it feels a little too cute and a little too
Speaker 2: horrific at the same time. So I can think of
Speaker 2: plenty of examples like that where there's some sort of
Speaker 2: a pivot, some sort of a shift or two different ideas,
Speaker 2: maybe a little tug of war behind the scenes. But
Speaker 2: off the top of my head, nothing really as fractured
Speaker 2: as this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say the difference there is that with
Speaker 3: pod people or extraterrestrial visitors. Yeah, it's a shift in tone,
Speaker 3: you can. Like. It starts off with the idea that
Speaker 3: they're going to make this as a bloody, brutal horror movie,
Speaker 3: and then they're like, well, maybe we can make it
Speaker 3: a more family friendly affair, and so you get something
Speaker 3: that's kind of bow with that's the same that doesn't
Speaker 3: really work as either or maybe works too well, who knows. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this one is more like totally different ideas for different movies,
Speaker 3: all just thrown into a blend together. So do you
Speaker 3: want a slasher movie where people get stabbed with a violin?
Speaker 3: We got you covered here that this movie has that
Speaker 3: for at least ninety seconds of screen time. Do you
Speaker 3: want a haunted house movie where people run around dark
Speaker 3: hallways calling out the names of friends who have mysteriously vanished.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many people actually love that as
Speaker 3: often as we get it, I know if that's anybody's
Speaker 3: favorite kind of thing. Kate, where are you?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Tina?
Speaker 2: Where are you?
Speaker 3: But it's got that too, all right? Sorry, I didn't
Speaker 3: mean to step on you. There were you trying to
Speaker 3: stick up for wandering around dark hall.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I like it. I enjoy films
Speaker 2: in which it happens. So I'm always like, it's going somewhere.
Speaker 2: They're going to find something, or they're not going to
Speaker 2: find something. Either way, we're leading up to something.
Speaker 3: Fair enough, Okay, another thing? Do you want like a
Speaker 3: Twilight Zone style are we still alive or are we dead?
Speaker 3: Is this hell? Are we trapped in behind? And an
Speaker 3: invisible barrier kind of thing? Well that's in there too.
Speaker 3: Do you want some kind of science fiction thing about
Speaker 3: like time loops and wormholes might sneak past you, but
Speaker 3: that's part of this as well. How about would you
Speaker 3: like a sold my soul for rock and roll type
Speaker 3: movie about a hell raising rock band who may or
Speaker 3: may not be dabbling in satanic pack always?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What about a melt movie about a flesh eating
Speaker 3: fungus that just turns you into you know, like red oatmeal?
Speaker 2: Sure about that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like all of that's in here. It's all
Speaker 3: in this movie. I think there are probably some things
Speaker 3: I'm not even thinking of that I'm leaving out. Did
Speaker 3: I miss anything, big rob Oh?
Speaker 2: I mean there's some things that are there's a lot
Speaker 2: in this film. I think we're already alluding to that
Speaker 2: is not fully executed, and so there are teases of
Speaker 2: things where it makes you think you're going in a
Speaker 2: direction like you think, oh, this is going to be
Speaker 2: a gate Way to Hell movie. Yeah, but it's not.
Speaker 2: But for a little bit it seems like it's going
Speaker 2: to be. So it it has shades of that for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think this is kind of the ultimate
Speaker 3: assembled from spare parts movie. And while I think as
Speaker 3: a result of that, some parts of like the second act,
Speaker 3: really drag and feel kind of directionless. I think it's
Speaker 3: because of that that amalgamated nature that some parts of
Speaker 3: the movie just feel like they're not going anywhere. It
Speaker 3: has that wandering middle problem. It also has a lot
Speaker 3: of upside in the in like some gorgeously weird and
Speaker 3: unexpected images and twists. This movie hits you with things
Speaker 3: that you did not see coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, you get some bonkers turns and twists here,
Speaker 2: but again, a lot of times most of them are
Speaker 2: dead ends. They'll they'll introduce an element that seems like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is what this movie is about, this is the
Speaker 2: this is the killer Violin movie. But no, it's not
Speaker 2: really a killer violin movie, it's something else, and then
Speaker 2: it's another thing after they pivot from that.
Speaker 3: So the name of the movie Paganini Horror suggests that
Speaker 3: in some very significant way it's going to be about
Speaker 3: Paganini for various reasons that we'll get into. It's not
Speaker 3: very much, really, but I think it will still help
Speaker 3: us understand the making of story of the movie. To
Speaker 3: talk a bit about who Nicolo Paganini was. So. Nicolo
Speaker 3: Paganini was a nineteenth century Italian virtuoso violinist and composer
Speaker 3: who is often described by music historians as the precursor
Speaker 3: to the modern rock star or pop musician. So, for example,
Speaker 3: instead of having a wealthy patron or being a sort
Speaker 3: of court composer on retainer, he made money as a
Speaker 3: touring musician. So he would travel around Europe and play
Speaker 3: sold out shows, and he was incredibly famous. He was
Speaker 3: allegedly mobbed by fans in a way that almost resembles Beatlemania.
Speaker 3: His public persona was also seen as kind of wild
Speaker 3: and somewhat dangerous, like a rock star often is. There
Speaker 3: were rumors that his unparalleled skill at the violin had
Speaker 3: come from making a pact with the devil, and this
Speaker 3: is not the only time you get a story like
Speaker 3: this in the history of music. There's Robert Johnson, who
Speaker 3: you know, they told the story but he met the
Speaker 3: devil at the crossroads, and the other historical musicians where
Speaker 3: people say, oh, they were so good at their instrument,
Speaker 3: they must have made a deal with the devil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well led Zeppelin tales and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So lots of people allegedly actually believed this story,
Speaker 3: like it wasn't just something you told for fun. Oh
Speaker 3: like that's cool. Like allegedly some people thought he actually
Speaker 3: did some demonic stuff or he's an agent of Satan
Speaker 3: in some way. And he was also known for kind
Speaker 3: of a hard partying lifestyle. I don't want to give
Speaker 3: the wrong ideas about that. It wouldn't be like the
Speaker 3: drug kind of thing that we think of with rock
Speaker 3: stars and the sick season seventies. But he was known
Speaker 3: for a flamboyant personality, a gambling habit, and a lot
Speaker 3: of romantic affairs. And he also had a somewhat gothic appearance,
Speaker 3: so he was thin, with pale skin and dark hair,
Speaker 3: and he liked to dress in all black. His performances
Speaker 3: were also sort of rock and roll in character. So
Speaker 3: he didn't just show off his violin skills by performing
Speaker 3: classic pieces of music. He performed specially composed pieces of
Speaker 3: music that were designed to show off skills that nobody
Speaker 3: else could do and unusual performance techniques that were unique
Speaker 3: to him. So he invented some violin playing techniques that
Speaker 3: nobody had really done before, or at least nobody was
Speaker 3: known for doing before. And you can think think of
Speaker 3: this as comparable to famous rock guitar players who were
Speaker 3: known for kind of stunt guitar solos, like Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 3: or Eddie Van Halen.
Speaker 2: So one might be tempted to sort of think of
Speaker 2: him like, you know, coming out of it, certainly coming
Speaker 2: out of like past centuries in which music belongs to
Speaker 2: the people and music is something that you know, it's
Speaker 2: in every household, it's in every town, a lot of
Speaker 2: shared songs, and for the most part, it doesn't really
Speaker 2: matter who's doing it. And even in courts, you know,
Speaker 2: the particular king or queen or you know, a high
Speaker 2: ranking individual is going to have a musician or musicians
Speaker 2: that work for them and play the songs they want
Speaker 2: to play. But here we have a specialist who is
Speaker 2: playing his own music in ways that only he can
Speaker 2: do in amassing a personal following.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's like he's so skilled at the instrument
Speaker 3: that he's playing pieces that basically nobody else can play,
Speaker 3: you know, with the kind of like speed, or with
Speaker 3: these techniques like plucking with the left hand. And and
Speaker 3: there are these stories about how he would sometimes before
Speaker 3: a concert do this stunt where he would intentionally fray
Speaker 3: a couple of his vilein strings so that they would
Speaker 3: during the performance, so in the middle of the song
Speaker 3: the string would break, and then he would finish the
Speaker 3: piece of music anyway, playing it on the remaining strings
Speaker 3: or on a single string.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, some great showmanship there.
Speaker 3: Yes. So he lived from seventeen eighty two to eighteen forty.
Speaker 3: And there's also this whole crazy story about what happened
Speaker 3: to his body after death. I didn't read very deeply
Speaker 3: into this, but basically, he died without having last rites performed,
Speaker 3: and then wherever it was he died, the local religious
Speaker 3: authorities would not permit him to be buried and consecrated ground,
Speaker 3: so his coffin and his embalmed remains inside kept getting
Speaker 3: shuffled around and stored in places like I think there
Speaker 3: was an olive oil press or a cement factory. And eventually,
Speaker 3: like many decades after his death, his family finally managed
Speaker 3: to get his body buried in a cemetery and I
Speaker 3: think Parma, Italy. But yeah, so a strange, interesting guy.
Speaker 3: You can imagine that his life story would make for
Speaker 3: a really interesting movie. How much of this factors into
Speaker 3: Paganini Horror? Basically not at all, except for the part
Speaker 3: about the rumors of a deal with the devil. That's
Speaker 3: pretty much it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the film. The film holds your hand only a
Speaker 2: little bit. It seems to lean on some implied knowledge
Speaker 2: of Paganini that the viewer is supposed to already have
Speaker 2: downloaded and ready to go. But and part of that, maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, could be understandable.
Speaker 3: This is an.
Speaker 2: Italian film, maybe the intended Italian viewer would have been
Speaker 2: more familiar than certainly maybe the average international film goer today.
Speaker 2: Paganini has been the subject of various dramatic works over
Speaker 2: the years, including multiple film adaptations. Is played by Roxy
Speaker 2: Roth in nineteen forty five as a song to remember
Speaker 2: Stuart Granger in nineteen forty six, is the Magic bow
Speaker 2: Kloss Kinsky in eighty nine's Kinski Paganini, a notorious film
Speaker 2: that Kinsky wrote and directed as well. It also proved
Speaker 2: to be his last film, and then more recently, David
Speaker 2: Garrett played Paganini in twenty thirteen's The Devil's Violinist, which
Speaker 2: also features Jared Harris in a role.
Speaker 3: So the Kinski Paganini movie, which he wrote and directed
Speaker 3: and starred as Paganini, is called Kinsky Paganini.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't know the full history on it.
Speaker 2: That part of that would have been just like we're
Speaker 2: going to capitalize on Paganini and then also Kinsky, who
Speaker 2: I'd have to check. I'm not sure if you had
Speaker 2: died when the film was released. This is like a
Speaker 2: post death renaming of the film or whatnot. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's got It's pretty notorious as being like you can
Speaker 2: imagine late in life klaus Kinski having full command over
Speaker 2: the direction and writing and acting of a film. It
Speaker 2: is uh And this is one that I think there
Speaker 2: are stories that he tried to get Werner Herzog to
Speaker 2: directed for him, and her said, no, I don't want
Speaker 2: any part of this. So yeah, I I I'm in
Speaker 2: no hurry to see it for myself. But it is
Speaker 2: it's rather notorious because of you, because of what it is. Uh.
Speaker 2: And it is Kinski's last film. I think there are
Speaker 2: also a number of parallels that one would draw perhaps
Speaker 2: between I mean, perhaps rather incorrectly, between the figure of
Speaker 2: Klaus Kinski and the figure of paganin Well.
Speaker 3: It just makes me think of that movie where William
Speaker 3: Shatner plays Mozart called Shatner Mozart.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: Is there's such a help that Mozart?
Speaker 2: I would not, Uh, I mean, I'm picturing it now,
Speaker 2: and then let's let's try and plant the seeds of
Speaker 2: this thing so people have false memories of it.
Speaker 3: Uh. Elevator pitch on. This is the band from Pod
Speaker 3: People Goes to Hell.
Speaker 2: I would say, I would say, so, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Similar vibe. It's a It is a horror movie about
Speaker 2: a band. Though, here's a question I had for you, Joe,
Speaker 2: does this band have a name? I don't recall being named.
Speaker 3: I don't think they say the name of the band
Speaker 3: in the movie I was watching for I was listening
Speaker 3: for it on my second viewing, like, when do they
Speaker 3: tell you the name of the band? And I didn't
Speaker 3: find it, so either it went past me a second time,
Speaker 3: or they really in the movie don't say what the
Speaker 3: band is called.
Speaker 2: Or maybe it's one of those things where it's it's
Speaker 2: all about Kate. It's all about the lead singer, so
Speaker 2: it's just Kate and her band or the Kate Band
Speaker 2: or what have you.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I like the rest of the band.
Speaker 3: And man, they're really making the drummer Daniel, he's doing
Speaker 3: all the work and they're making him go do the
Speaker 3: deals with the devil while they just get to hang out.
Speaker 2: And they didn't ask him to do that. He that
Speaker 2: was yeah, but he meant well, he was like, I
Speaker 2: can fix this. I know, I know a dude who
Speaker 2: has a scroll. But but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 2: At this point, you were probably wondering where can I
Speaker 2: watch Paganini Horror. It's widely available, Joe. I believe you
Speaker 2: watched it on the Severn Blu ray and you can
Speaker 2: speak more to its contents. I watched it on an airplane.
Speaker 2: I've been flying a lot this month for some reason.
Speaker 2: I watched it on the streaming platform Eternal Family, which
Speaker 2: is partnered with Severn and various other media companies. This
Speaker 2: one was a good airplane viewing experience.
Speaker 3: I have to say the making of this film is
Speaker 3: a wild, bizarre story, so I'm going to be talking
Speaker 3: pretty extensively about that in just a minute here. And
Speaker 3: one of my main sources is one of the extras
Speaker 3: on the Severn Blu ray, which is an interview with
Speaker 3: the director of Luigikotzi.
Speaker 2: Excellent. All right, well let's get into the people here.
Speaker 2: I guess starting with Luigikotzy. Is this a Lewis Coates film.
Speaker 2: I believe that's the way Lewis coach. Yes, that's the
Speaker 2: way he is credited in the actual opening credits. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he's the director co writer on this one. Born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty seven. This is our third Coats the movie, following
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three's Hercules starring Lufarigno and seventy eight Star Crash,
Speaker 2: which of course we just did a few weeks back.
Speaker 2: He's probably best known internationally for Star Crash, as well
Speaker 2: as his work with Dario Argento and the notorious nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty alien Cash in Contamination.
Speaker 3: This just keeps coming up, and we should just.
Speaker 2: Go ahead and watch it. At some point. This film
Speaker 2: Paganini Har emerges in nineteen eighty eight. This is after
Speaker 2: his two picture Hercules series eighty three and eighty five,
Speaker 2: Lufarigno starring in both of those, and it's before his
Speaker 2: eighty nine Sinbad film, which also starred Lufarigno, and then
Speaker 2: also before eighty nine's The Black Cat, which will come
Speaker 2: up various times during the credits because there are various
Speaker 2: people involved in this film that were also involved in
Speaker 2: The Black Cat. Yeah, as we'll continue to discuss, I
Speaker 2: say I have to say, for my money, Paganini Harr
Speaker 2: fils very original compared to these other films we've looked at.
Speaker 2: It's full of interesting but again only partially explored themes
Speaker 2: and concepts and all sorts of jarring shifts as the
Speaker 2: movie kind of loses its interest in one newly introduced
Speaker 2: concept and then rushes over to explore another one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I agree that this is probably the messiest
Speaker 3: Luigi Cosi film I've seen, but it's also the most original.
Speaker 3: And I think that's funny because normally Cotsey I don't
Speaker 3: want to be mean to him, but in multiple sources
Speaker 3: he seems to be quite defensive about the idea that
Speaker 3: his films are derivative of other films, like that Star
Speaker 3: Crashes in some way inspired by Star Wars. Like in
Speaker 3: some moments he kind of admits that it is, and
Speaker 3: in other moments he's he's like, no, it is its
Speaker 3: own original thing.
Speaker 2: Well, we always, I think, have to we have to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that it's it's always more complicated than that, because
Speaker 2: it's not like any given director or writers like I
Speaker 2: want to make a film like Star Wars, and then
Speaker 2: and then they do, like it's you know, generally, these
Speaker 2: are creative individuals who have certain ideas, but then there
Speaker 2: is the market, and there are producers, and there's money involved,
Speaker 2: and so sometimes the way you get to make your
Speaker 2: film is by saying, hey, I have something like Star Wars,
Speaker 2: and then maybe along the way someone says, can you
Speaker 2: make it more like Star Wars? Though, And there's so
Speaker 2: many different factors involved, so I can imagine where you know,
Speaker 2: it can be both way for somebody.
Speaker 3: That's exactly the case, actually, and that is how he
Speaker 3: frames it in his Sometimes when he admits that some
Speaker 3: elements of the films are derivative of these more famous films,
Speaker 3: he's like, that's how I could get funding he gets
Speaker 3: into it and in this interview that I'm about to
Speaker 3: talk about as well, So maybe I'll just go ahead
Speaker 3: and discuss this interview. So I think this is probably
Speaker 3: the best place to try to tell this long, convoluted
Speaker 3: story of the making of Paganini Horror. And my notes
Speaker 3: here are going to be based mainly on two sources.
Speaker 3: One is this extra on the Severin disc called Play
Speaker 3: It Again Paganini, which is an extended interview with Cotzy.
Speaker 3: My other is a book called Italian Gothic Horror Films
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty nine by the Italian film
Speaker 3: historian Roberto Curti. I would note that both of these
Speaker 3: tellings are going to be primarily Cotzy's version of events,
Speaker 3: so I can't vouch for him being correct about everything.
Speaker 3: But Kurt Curtie's account also seems to largely rely on
Speaker 3: interviews with Cotzi to get the information about how all
Speaker 3: this happened. But this is the version of the story
Speaker 3: we've got. So Kotzi claims he came up with the
Speaker 3: idea for Paganini Horror in nineteen eighty six or eighty seven,
Speaker 3: and he says it began with a French American producer
Speaker 3: named Nat Wachsberger, who was also the producer of Star
Speaker 3: Crash as well as of films like Diamond Bikini in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, and they came to Rob Las Vegas
Speaker 3: and I will know that Cotzy calls him French American,
Speaker 3: but online sources say he was born in Belgium. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure what nationality he identified, but anyway, Cotesy had
Speaker 3: worked with Waksburger already on Star Crash, so they had
Speaker 3: a relationship. And the situation was Waksburger came to Cotsey
Speaker 3: and said, hey, I have made a deal with a
Speaker 3: certain French actor, a man I don't know if anyone's
Speaker 3: heard of, but he's known as Christophe Lambert to make
Speaker 3: a to make a biographical film about Nicolo Paganini. So
Speaker 3: when I got to that, I watched this after I'd
Speaker 3: already watched the movie Paganini Horror, and I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, the movie I just watched actually started
Speaker 3: with a biopic about Paganini that was going to star
Speaker 3: Christoph Lambert. Can you imagine and how you get from
Speaker 3: point A to point B?
Speaker 2: I mean, Lambert can play any European and also Americans like,
Speaker 2: there's no he can't be stopped, and he's a master
Speaker 2: of the tongue of the accent. I don't think so so.
Speaker 3: Waksburger was anxious to work with Lambert because Gray Stoke,
Speaker 3: The Legend of Tarzan, was about to come out and
Speaker 3: everybody thought it was going to be a huge hit.
Speaker 3: Waksburger's bet was that Lambert would be a big deal
Speaker 3: after this movie was released, and he wanted to lock
Speaker 3: him down for the next project.
Speaker 2: You know, I had to look into this a bit.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever seen Gray Stroke in its entirety,
Speaker 2: but Stoke, Yeah, sorry, Gray Stroke a different film. Gray
Speaker 2: Stoke was certainly a critical hit, though when it came out.
Speaker 2: It's the first Tarzan movie nominated for Academy Awards, including
Speaker 2: Best Screenplay, Best Makeup, and Best Supporting Actor nomination for
Speaker 2: Sir Ralph Richardson, who we discussed in our episode on
Speaker 2: Dragon Slayer. His role in the Tarzan movie here was
Speaker 2: his final role, and the film also certainly made money.
Speaker 2: I'm always a little I'm not as good with the
Speaker 2: monetary side of understanding how pictures do or don't do,
Speaker 2: you know, but it seems like it made a fair
Speaker 2: amount of money, and it is also generally pointed out
Speaker 2: as the film that launched Christoph Lambert's international career. Highlander
Speaker 2: would never have swung a sword if Gray Stoke had
Speaker 2: not swung from a vine.
Speaker 3: This is funny because I cannot adjudicate here, I can't
Speaker 3: fact check whether the movie was a success or not.
Speaker 3: But the funny thing is that Cotzy later characterizes it
Speaker 3: as a total flop, like Gray Stoke. He says, just
Speaker 3: a failure. So I don't know if he's if he's
Speaker 3: judging it on a different metric there, or if he's
Speaker 3: just wrong about that. But so Waksburger hired Cotzy to
Speaker 3: write a script for this movie about Paganini's life, and
Speaker 3: Cotzy admits that the story he came up with was
Speaker 3: probably not going to be of the highest level of
Speaker 3: historical accuracy. It would be a somewhat fictionalized version of Paganini.
Speaker 3: And I would have loved to see that mckn you imagine.
Speaker 3: I wish we could have seen that movie, this sort
Speaker 3: of star crash, Raiden flavored Paginni biopic, But it was
Speaker 3: never meant to be, Cotzy says, quote, my script was
Speaker 3: well received. But as we were about to finalize the details,
Speaker 3: Gray Stoke was released and it fluffed. It was a
Speaker 3: total flop. This alarmed Waksburger, who panicked and decided to
Speaker 3: shelve the project because he didn't believe in using Limbert anymore.
Speaker 2: If true, that is of course ridiculous, because how many
Speaker 2: films after this were made. You know, maybe not at
Speaker 2: the highest level, but so many films afterwards were made
Speaker 2: in large part because Christoph Lambert was attached to them.
Speaker 3: You know, Oh he's an A list nineties bad but yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So funding was gone scrammed. But Cotzy says by this
Speaker 3: point he'd already spent a lot of time studying Paganini
Speaker 3: and like researching him and putting all this work into
Speaker 3: the script. So anything else he could do with it, well,
Speaker 3: along comes a saving angel, a younger producer named Ugo Valenti.
Speaker 3: Cotzy had recently directed the horror film Contamination again this
Speaker 3: is the one with the alien style eggs, and this
Speaker 3: movie had been shot in Colombia, in South America. Ugo
Speaker 3: Valenti wanted to do another project like that, a horror
Speaker 3: movie shot in South America, and he comes to Cotzy,
Speaker 3: and he's like, got any ideas. Cotzy says, well, I've
Speaker 3: got this biopic about the life of the violinist to
Speaker 3: Nicolo Paganini that I wrote for Christoph Lambert. Let me
Speaker 3: see if I can rewrite this into a slasher movie.
Speaker 2: You know, is on one level that's ridiculous, But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, it's not a bad idea, and you
Speaker 2: see shades of that film in Paganini Horror. It's just
Speaker 2: kind of obscured by all the other ideas that are involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I admire it. I cannot lie. I admire it,
Speaker 3: just I feel like I would not have the courage
Speaker 3: to push forward like that. But he says, well, actually, so.
Speaker 3: The way Kurtie explains it in his book is that
Speaker 3: first Kotzy transformed his Paganini script into a science fiction film,
Speaker 3: using some ideas left over from the Paganini research, but
Speaker 3: then cramming them into this original story of like a
Speaker 3: sci fi haunted house quote where time killed you, making
Speaker 3: you age or rejuvenate, suddenly turning you into a newborn
Speaker 3: child and then an egg cell. So I'm sort of
Speaker 3: imagining like a science fiction horror Benjamin Button where you
Speaker 3: reverse age to death instantly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm digging this as well. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna imagine imagining a sort of a mash up
Speaker 2: between some sort of Italian haunted house film and I
Speaker 2: don't know, House of Leaves or something. Yeah.
Speaker 3: If you if you regress all the way to an
Speaker 3: egg cell, do you just stop there or do you
Speaker 3: split apart into a sperm cell and an unfertilized egg cell,
Speaker 3: and then do you further split apart into I don't know,
Speaker 3: amino acids and.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, I think so, I think Okay, I
Speaker 2: mean it depends on how s the sciences. It might
Speaker 2: have you, like turning into apes and dinosaurs. I don't
Speaker 2: know that would be good.
Speaker 3: So, according to Kurtie, the new producer, Ugo Valenti, did
Speaker 3: not like this direction, and he had Cotzy rewrite the
Speaker 3: script and wanted to add like Slasher Gore scene splatter stuff,
Speaker 3: thinking that this would help them secure more funding. Also,
Speaker 3: Valenti hired, according to Cotzy, hired a well known Italian
Speaker 3: artist and illustrator named Zoskioti to make a poster for
Speaker 3: the film. This is classic poster first filmmaking, where you
Speaker 3: get a poster before you even have a finished, finalized script,
Speaker 3: and I just want to fly. I had never read
Speaker 3: much about Inzoskiot before, but I briefly did a just
Speaker 3: kind of dive into a lot of the posters he made.
Speaker 3: This guy made like thousands of movie posters over his career,
Speaker 3: and they're those great classic hand painted horror movie posters
Speaker 3: from the seventies and eighties you see on a lot
Speaker 3: of a horror movies, like the VHS box art or
Speaker 3: the you know, theatrical posters from this time. It is
Speaker 3: such a downgrade to go from these great vulgar works
Speaker 3: of art to that standard you know, box art style
Speaker 3: of the nineties and two thousands, where it's like a
Speaker 3: row of actor headshots with an exploding background. I love
Speaker 3: these old painted covers. I wish we got more like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that so many re releases
Speaker 2: and new releases on physical media at any rate are
Speaker 2: you know, have gone back and fully fully embraced the
Speaker 2: old poster art. You know, sometimes they go in new
Speaker 2: directions and have some you know, cool new art as well,
Speaker 2: and I'm down for that certainly, But new slipcases and
Speaker 2: so forth. But this is a complete side tangent. But
Speaker 2: one of my big disappointments is you never see this,
Speaker 2: to my knowledge anyway, with books with like physical books,
Speaker 2: like just thinking about someone as popular as Stephen King,
Speaker 2: for example, they were all these like classic Stephen King
Speaker 2: paperback covers that I remember from from my childhood and
Speaker 2: you know, my middle and teen years especially, and as
Speaker 2: far as I know, like they never bring those back.
Speaker 2: It's always some new cover for new paperbacks, and those
Speaker 2: classic paper book covers are just like you know, they're
Speaker 2: just left to the old editions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I also love that old style anyway. So
Speaker 3: Cotzy talks a bit about where this image came from.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I would recommend you look up
Speaker 3: the Paganini horror poster. I think it's pretty great.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's got this skeleton playing a violin.
Speaker 3: Skeleton with one eyeball and gray hair playing a violin,
Speaker 3: and there's blood dripping from the bow. And there's a
Speaker 3: man and a woman standing in front of a haunted
Speaker 3: house with like sheet music blowing in the wind. I
Speaker 3: can't zoom in. Is this this guy in this lady
Speaker 3: or are they in the movie. They don't look very familiar.
Speaker 2: They don't look tremendously familiar. Now, yeah, so it really
Speaker 2: does feel like a different picture is on the poster,
Speaker 2: which makes sense since this again is poster first.
Speaker 3: So the image of the house used on the poster
Speaker 3: was one that Cotzy himself found on the cover of
Speaker 3: a book about the paranormal, and so they brought that
Speaker 3: in and then you know, some different design elements, but
Speaker 3: it's a beautiful poster. So at this point Cotzy and Valenti,
Speaker 3: they've got a poster and they've got like a three
Speaker 3: to four page story treatment for the way they want
Speaker 3: to do the story. Now. So the producer Valenti was like, Cotzy,
Speaker 3: come to Colombia with me to meet this local businessman.
Speaker 3: I know this is the guy who's going to co produce.
Speaker 3: Then Cotzy tells in this interview, he tells a long
Speaker 3: story about going around in Colombia trying to figure out
Speaker 3: who they're going to work with their I'm not going
Speaker 3: to go into all the details, but the very truncated
Speaker 3: version is there are all these changes like, oh, you
Speaker 3: can't work with the same crew you used on contamination,
Speaker 3: You've got to use these other guys. And then Cotzy's
Speaker 3: running around location scouting with this potential producer, who he
Speaker 3: says has armed bodyguards with him at all times, and
Speaker 3: Cotzy speculates that this guy was involved in drug trafficking,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't offer direct evidence. Ultimately, the deal falls through,
Speaker 3: so the Paganini horror movie shot in Colombia never happens.
Speaker 3: So Cotzy and Valenti they go back to Italy and
Speaker 3: Valenti is like, you know what, write the script anyway,
Speaker 3: we'll get more financing. We'll figure that out later. But
Speaker 3: Curtie says, after what they put together failed to attract backers, Valenti,
Speaker 3: the producer quote just gave up the film ando industry
Speaker 3: and left for Santo Domingo, where, according to Cotzy, he
Speaker 3: set up a successful prawn factory. Okay, there you go,
Speaker 3: So enter a new producer. We got to get a
Speaker 3: new one this time. It's a guy named Carlo Mayeto.
Speaker 3: Carlo Mayetto was an Italian producer and the husband of
Speaker 3: none other than Janet Agrin, the actress we talked about
Speaker 3: in our episodes on Ful Cheese. City of the Living Dead.
Speaker 3: She's in that, and she's also one of the leads
Speaker 3: in Hands of Steel. Were here in that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, fans might remember us dwelling on her bizarre music
Speaker 3: video called Teddy Bear, Gimme Gimme Teddy Teddy My Teddy
Speaker 3: Bear one of the weirdest things I have ever seen.
Speaker 3: So Maeto optioned the movie, and Cotzi went on to
Speaker 3: do some other projects, including working with Dario Argento. It
Speaker 3: sounds like the Paganini script kind of got passed around
Speaker 3: from desk to desk for a while, just more development.
Speaker 2: Hell.
Speaker 3: Eventually it ended up with producer Fabricio DeAngelis of Fulvia Film,
Speaker 3: who had done financial backing for some Luccio Fulci movies,
Speaker 3: and Fabricio D'Angelis is the final the name you'll see
Speaker 3: on Paganini Horrors. That was ultimately the producer. DeAngelis called
Speaker 3: Cotzy in early nineteen eighty eight and he said, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're going to make this movie, but it's going to
Speaker 3: be shot in Miami later this year. Eventually we will
Speaker 3: come back to this. Cotzy managed to Convincedangelist not to
Speaker 3: set Paganini Horror in Miami, since he said it would
Speaker 3: not make sense for Paganini to be in Florida. Cotzy
Speaker 3: kind of he thinks about it for a second, and
Speaker 3: then he says grotesque. Even why not?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. It seems like we're so
Speaker 2: far into the speculative here. Why couldn't his ghost be
Speaker 2: in in Florida?
Speaker 3: For some reason, some things you just can't let go. Also,
Speaker 3: there's another thing, like in between the time when Dangelist
Speaker 3: gets involved and when they actually shoot the movie, Cotesy
Speaker 3: was he has this whole He tells this bizarre shaggy
Speaker 3: dog story about another horror movie that he was initially
Speaker 3: hired to direct, but he wanted to make changes to
Speaker 3: the script and the producer would not agree because he
Speaker 3: had a computer program that showed him with charts and
Speaker 3: how the script was already perfect. And I was like,
Speaker 3: this is nineteen eighty eight. What I want to know
Speaker 3: what this computer software in nineteen eighty eight was that
Speaker 3: analyzed a screenplay to tell you if it's good or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think we even had Clippi at that point.
Speaker 2: Did we know?
Speaker 3: What is he talking about?
Speaker 2: I want to know?
Speaker 3: But anyway, so finally they're moving ahead with making Paganini horror.
Speaker 3: So Cotzy wanted to shoot in Venice. The producer said,
Speaker 3: we can't afford to shoot in Venice. That's way too expensive. Instead,
Speaker 3: I'll give you like a couple of days of shooting
Speaker 3: in Venice. That's what we can afford. It's very expensive there.
Speaker 3: So he got some nice exterior shots in Venice canals
Speaker 3: and things, and then they also filmed a bit in
Speaker 3: Rome on a sound stage, and then other parts of
Speaker 3: the movie at this abandoned house the main house in
Speaker 3: the movie, which he claims was part of a former
Speaker 3: church or college that belonged to an order of nuns.
Speaker 3: And it's sort of near this road that goes around
Speaker 3: the outside of Rome, kind of like two eighty five
Speaker 3: around Atlanta, And he says it was good location for
Speaker 3: shooting because it was abandon nothing going on there. In
Speaker 3: the meantime, more writers are brought on to make further
Speaker 3: changes to the script. I got to get some more hands,
Speaker 3: more cooks in the kitchen here, so we get Raymondo
Speaker 3: del Balzo, Daria Nickelodi who will come back and talk
Speaker 3: about and Dardano Sacchetti or maybe pronouncing that room Sacchetti.
Speaker 3: Maybe they come in and they work on the script.
Speaker 3: Curti says that the final script was significantly in part
Speaker 3: due to Cotzy's collaboration with Daria Nickelode. She had worked
Speaker 3: with Cotzi before on a movie he directed that was
Speaker 3: released under multiple titles, including The Black Cat and De Profundus,
Speaker 3: and it seems to be kind of an unofficial sequel
Speaker 3: to Suspiria and Inferno. There's some positive talk about this
Speaker 3: one from users on letterboxed. I kind of want to
Speaker 3: check that one out. But Cotzy claims that Nickelode's main
Speaker 3: story contributions to Paganini Horror were quote the esoteric scenes
Speaker 3: like the one about the pact with the Devil. I
Speaker 3: thought that was kind of interesting because like, that's the
Speaker 3: main biographical stuff that's brought in from Paganini, and he's
Speaker 3: the one who wrote the Paganini movie. So now I'm
Speaker 3: confused about what came in from that. If she wrote
Speaker 3: that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean maybe she'd. It had been messed
Speaker 2: around so much you needed somebody to come in and
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, let's ground this a little bit around
Speaker 2: the character of Paganini. We need just a little bit
Speaker 2: of narration, a little bit of storytelling about who this
Speaker 2: guy was and what sort of evil he was up to.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Kurtie here also notes the inclusion of ideas that
Speaker 3: were recycled from an Italian TV series that Cotzy worked
Speaker 3: on in nineteen eighty seven called Turno d Note, meaning
Speaker 3: night Shift. At least one of these episodes of night
Speaker 3: Shift that he made is called La Casa dilo Strativari
Speaker 3: the you know, the house of Stratavaria, of the Stratavarius violins.
Speaker 3: I can imagine which part of the movie that probably
Speaker 3: contributed to so, Cotesy claims. DeAngelis demanded last minute changes
Speaker 3: to the script right before they started shooting. Particularly, he
Speaker 3: was told to cut out some of the splatter scenes
Speaker 3: that would be costly and time consuming to set up.
Speaker 3: So we got a gore in gore out situation here,
Speaker 3: and then to make up the difference of what was lost,
Speaker 3: Cotesy says, quote, I tried to rebalance from this, rebalance
Speaker 3: the script by inserting some of the weirdest and more
Speaker 3: fantasy oriented things from my previous version. The result was
Speaker 3: definitely not a horror movie, but a fantasy or a
Speaker 3: fantastique with lots of irony and lots of theories on
Speaker 3: music and time. I see what he's going for there,
Speaker 3: But and he says this in the other interview, He's
Speaker 3: like it's not a horror movie. I don't know why
Speaker 3: he's insisting that. I mean, obviously this is trying to
Speaker 3: be a horror movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I've run across various director interviews where they,
Speaker 2: you know, they'll they'll be talking about a film that's
Speaker 2: obviously hard and they're like, actually, it's really science fiction
Speaker 2: or it's really historical fantasy, and yeah, I mean, yeah, genres,
Speaker 2: genre definitions can be a little silly at times, but
Speaker 2: come on, this is the horror movie.
Speaker 3: A few other things about the making of Kotzy complained
Speaker 3: about the in his words, ridiculously low budget for special effects.
Speaker 3: Terribly low given that they had a very low budget.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm pretty impressed with some of the
Speaker 3: gore effects scenes, Like the fungus melt scene is pretty
Speaker 3: pretty good. The exploding behind a glass wall scene is
Speaker 3: pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think the gore looks looks fine. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was nothing in here was was so amazing that
Speaker 2: I was like, oh man, who was the team that
Speaker 2: made this happen? But on the other hand, nothing was
Speaker 2: so bad that I was laughing at the effect or anything.
Speaker 3: Cutzi goes on a lot in the interview about various
Speaker 3: compromises to his vision for the film. He's got some
Speaker 3: you know, some grievances about he didn't it wasn't what
Speaker 3: he wanted it to be, Like, he was not allowed
Speaker 3: to work with his preferred director of photography, though he
Speaker 3: has nothing but good things to say about the the
Speaker 3: DP that did end up coming on the film. You know,
Speaker 3: he worked with this guy named Franco Leka, who he
Speaker 3: says was great. He says the producer bought the wrong
Speaker 3: kind of film for them to shoot on, but they
Speaker 3: just had to go with it because it's what they
Speaker 3: already had. He said, they planned to shoot it on Kodak,
Speaker 3: but they had to use Fuji, which, in his telling,
Speaker 3: tends to have cooler, more pastel like colors. I did
Speaker 3: a little googling and seems like maybe that's sort of true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if if that is indeed the case, I can
Speaker 2: maybe see that in the finished product. You know, it
Speaker 2: does have maybe especially the scenes in Venice.
Speaker 3: Yeah kind of Yeah, cooler, grayer color palette, a little
Speaker 3: bit less of that that saturated orange you get from
Speaker 3: some of these Italian films. Let's see, he tried to Oh,
Speaker 3: he says, they they shot in this old house for
Speaker 3: about three weeks, and then they did the exterior scenes
Speaker 3: in Venice Last, which he describes as being almost like
Speaker 3: a vacation after spending all this time in the frigid,
Speaker 3: moldy old house. Oh and then he brings up something
Speaker 3: that we actually, I don't know how we haven't mentioned
Speaker 3: this yet. You know, we like a movie with with
Speaker 3: some good extra line deliveries, some line deliveries that go
Speaker 3: a little over the top. I can appreciate a good
Speaker 3: bit of overacting. This movie has levels of over annunciation
Speaker 3: on some of the lines and the dubbing that are
Speaker 3: just astounding. Like I love it. It's it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of the you know a lot
Speaker 2: of times we're like, yeah, you know what, you can
Speaker 2: watch the dub, or you can you can watch it
Speaker 2: with subtitles. I don't know. I was only the version
Speaker 2: I watched only had the option for the English dub,
Speaker 2: and I highly recommend going that route. It is. It
Speaker 2: is laugh out loud funny. And I was watching it
Speaker 2: by myself on an airplane. Yes, yes, I was probably
Speaker 2: getting some weird looks.
Speaker 3: The scene where she's talking about we will make a
Speaker 3: video clip to go with our song, just like Michael
Speaker 3: Jackson did with Thriller.
Speaker 2: Yes, a video clip. I did have to look that up,
Speaker 2: by the way, And in Italian a music video is
Speaker 2: a video clip, or that's one of the main terms
Speaker 2: for it. But still there's still accounting for the way
Speaker 2: that it is enunciated in.
Speaker 3: The dub, like the mouths are coming open, as if
Speaker 3: there's like somebody cranking a jack in between the teeth.
Speaker 3: It is awesome, but so Cotzy says he takes full
Speaker 3: responsibility for the weirdness of the dubbing in the film,
Speaker 3: but then I thought kind of strangely. He identifies the
Speaker 3: main problem with the dubbing being that the younger actors
Speaker 3: and actresses were dubbing their own lines as oppose to
Speaker 3: having professional voice actors come and dub over them, and
Speaker 3: since the young actors didn't have much experience with dubbing,
Speaker 3: he says, they came off as quote overacting a bit.
Speaker 3: But again, I wouldn't I wouldn't change it, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: try anything. But he defends the principle of having actors
Speaker 3: dubbed their own lines because he says, if you have
Speaker 3: someone else come in and do the dubbing. The actors
Speaker 3: are only quote half actors, but we have seen plenty
Speaker 3: of examples of him having other people come in and
Speaker 3: dub lines. I think, I think Donald Pleasance is dubbed
Speaker 3: by something.
Speaker 2: Oh, Donald's Pleasance is clearly dubbed by someone else, and
Speaker 2: that's to his detriment, you know, because yeah, Donald Pleasance
Speaker 2: has a certain kind of delivery and his voice. His
Speaker 2: voice is almost as iconic as someone like Peter Lourie's,
Speaker 2: you know, so you want to hear Donald Pleasance's voice.
Speaker 2: So it's a little weird hearing someone else's English language
Speaker 2: voice coming out of him. Probably less weird if you're
Speaker 2: used to hearing him dubbed anyway. But I don't know
Speaker 2: the whole half actors. I mean, there are plenty of
Speaker 2: examples of actors that we love who are almost always dubbed,
Speaker 2: like Paul Nashy, for example. So but I guess I
Speaker 2: see where I see where he's coming from here, especially
Speaker 2: as far as the young actors are going. So the
Speaker 2: young actors are doing their own dubbing when maybe we
Speaker 2: should have had some pros come in and do it
Speaker 2: for them. And then on the flip side, Donald pleasants
Speaker 2: they couldn't get him back to do his own dubbing.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so he says, uh, Paganini Horror. This is
Speaker 3: a quote actually in translation of Obviously he's speaking Italian
Speaker 3: in this interview, so this is all the translated subtitles.
Speaker 3: He says, Paganini Horror was poorly received, and I can
Speaker 3: tell you why because it came out when Fulci was
Speaker 3: at the peak of his fame, Fulci and his cinema. Therefore,
Speaker 3: I think he uses the word full chi simo. Therefore,
Speaker 3: the people who went to see it expected something in
Speaker 3: the style of Luccio Fulci, only the film was made
Speaker 3: by Luigi Kotsi. It was something completely different from their expectations.
Speaker 3: Also because the film is full of ironic touches and
Speaker 3: like Americans would say, inside jokes. So you know, he's
Speaker 3: saying it's made with the sense of irony. I can
Speaker 3: pick that. I think, yes, they are making it with
Speaker 3: the sense of irony. I don't really see this at all.
Speaker 3: It's funny that sometimes he's he really wants to distance
Speaker 3: himself from the idea that that you know, his film
Speaker 3: could be taken as a as a knockoff of something else.
Speaker 3: But here he's like people thought it was a copy
Speaker 3: of Fulci, And I don't see why anybody would have
Speaker 3: thought that. This doesn't really seem like a copy of
Speaker 3: Fulci to me.
Speaker 2: No, No, I didn't really get that sense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I don't know. Maybe there's something in the marketing,
Speaker 2: you know, certainly that like the guy did the poster arts,
Speaker 2: certainly did poster arts for for Fulci films, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I would say in general, throughout these interviews, Cotesy speaks
Speaker 3: with I don't know, I could be wrong about this,
Speaker 3: so I you know, caveats ah blah blah blah, all that,
Speaker 3: but he speaks with what seems to me like a
Speaker 3: subtle resentment about Fulgi.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean to be clear, Fulci, by most accounts,
Speaker 2: was not an easy guy to work with, you know,
Speaker 2: not a monster as far as I'm aware, but a
Speaker 2: very driven guy obsessed with realizing his own particular vision.
Speaker 2: Though I don't think these two ever actually work together,
Speaker 2: so I think maybe it was. I mean, it's kind
Speaker 2: of alluding to it, like Fulci was botanists at that point,
Speaker 2: like he was the top guy when it came to
Speaker 2: Italian horror and or one of the top guys at
Speaker 2: any rate, and he was compared to him, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a certain amount of resentment either you know, directed
Speaker 2: or misdirected at Fulci based on perhaps an unfair comparison
Speaker 2: that was made.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe kind of Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, but you know
Speaker 3: another he actually Coasey tells a very nice story about
Speaker 3: how initially reviews of Paganini Horror were overwhelmingly negative and
Speaker 3: even he says, you know, when the Internet came around,
Speaker 3: he would would go on the Internet and see negative
Speaker 3: comments about it on the web. And then he said,
Speaker 3: I don't know what changed at this time, but he
Speaker 3: says around the year two thousand and five, he says
Speaker 3: he started meeting people who would who would come up
Speaker 3: to him and say they loved the movie, that they
Speaker 3: thought it was a masterpiece. And Kotzi himself says, it's
Speaker 3: not a masterpiece, but I'm glad they liked the film.
Speaker 3: And then he goes on this bit about how, you know,
Speaker 3: he's had other films that people characterized as being knockoffs,
Speaker 3: like that Star Crash was a knockoff of Star Wars,
Speaker 3: but he argues, no, it's not. We may have used
Speaker 3: the fame of Star Wars to try to secure funding,
Speaker 3: but people can now see Star Crash is its own film,
Speaker 3: which I could say is maybe partially overstating it, but
Speaker 3: also is partially true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be both things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and then also talking about about alien and
Speaker 3: contamination in similar ways. And so ultimately he's like, this
Speaker 3: film was not a ripoff of Fulci and he's and
Speaker 3: it's its own thing, and he wanted to make it
Speaker 3: really about science fiction more than horror. I don't know
Speaker 3: how successful on that front he was, but he's very
Speaker 3: into science fiction and was interested in these time loop
Speaker 3: type things that you get in the middle of the movie.
Speaker 3: And so that's the thing that you can sense in
Speaker 3: these interviews that he's really excited about, is like the
Speaker 3: science fiction stuff in there that he's like, I think
Speaker 3: you get the feeling that he wishes he could have
Speaker 3: taken that to you know, let that be its own thing.
Speaker 3: But ultimately he said, this is a quote from that
Speaker 3: Curtey book. He says, quote, there I was with this beautiful,
Speaker 3: ambitious script, and they handed me a sixteen millimeter camera
Speaker 3: which was broken, gave me a villa to set the
Speaker 3: story in and said, start shooting in conditions like these,
Speaker 3: not even the best film director in the world could
Speaker 3: have done any better. So he's proud of his work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it should be proud. It's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. I highly recommend this movie for the folks
Speaker 2: who dig this thing. I mean, because I don't know.
Speaker 2: You still see reviews online where someone's like, this is
Speaker 2: not a very good Shallo film, and I think you're
Speaker 2: going into it the wrong expectations there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are different kinds of movie experiences you can
Speaker 3: go looking for. This is certainly not as not tightly
Speaker 3: executed storytelling and like some of the other great Shallo
Speaker 3: movies we've talked about, like Deep Red or Footprints on
Speaker 3: the Moon or anything like that, but it is a
Speaker 3: great time. There's a lot of fun in here, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of talent on display, even though the
Speaker 3: film is I think even Cozy would acknowledge a mess.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, all right, Well, let's talk about some of
Speaker 2: the other folks above. We've already talked about Daria nickelode
Speaker 2: a bit here nineteen forty nine through twenty twenty. She
Speaker 2: is again a co writer on this or when we're
Speaker 2: at least one of the writers, one of the main
Speaker 2: credit writers, and she also has a role in the film,
Speaker 2: playing Sylvia Hackett, the current owner of the spooky mansion
Speaker 2: Lacasa des Soul. Italian actress and frequent Argento collaborator, she
Speaker 2: starred in five films directed by Argento between seventy five
Speaker 2: and eighty seven, Deep Red, Inferno, Tenebray, Phenomena, and Opera.
Speaker 2: She met Argento on Deep Red, which of course we
Speaker 2: previously did an episode on, and the two became romantic partner.
Speaker 2: She was the mother of Asia Argento, and she has
Speaker 2: screenplay credits on Suspiria and Inferno, but may have contributed
Speaker 2: to others during her time with Dari Argento. Her other
Speaker 2: film credits include Mario Baba's final film Shock from seventy seven,
Speaker 2: and her writing credits also include eighty nine's The Black Cat,
Speaker 2: which we've already mentioned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the one I want to come back and
Speaker 3: check out.
Speaker 2: All right, For the rest of the cast, I'm going
Speaker 2: to deviate from billing order to try and lay out
Speaker 2: our characters in a concise way. This is a movie
Speaker 2: about a ban and we may not know that band's name.
Speaker 2: But let's meet the band. Okay, okay, So first of all,
Speaker 2: let's talk about Kate. Kate is our lead singer, and
Speaker 2: she is played by Jasmine MEEMONI sometimes I think she's
Speaker 2: credited here is Jasmine main Age unknown as far as
Speaker 2: I could tell, model turned actress, born into the profession
Speaker 2: to actor parents. She was miss Roma in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: only active on the screen from seventy eight through eighty nine,
Speaker 2: according to the databases, in mostly action and horror titles,
Speaker 2: beginning with seventy eight's Fearless and including eighty five's Demons,
Speaker 2: in which she's in the horror movie within a movie.
Speaker 2: So I think, like she gets stabbed by the director
Speaker 2: in that film. And she was also an eighty five
Speaker 2: Scandalous Gilda and eighty nine's The Black Cat her final
Speaker 2: film role, and also features a film with it, a
Speaker 2: film in which she is murdered.
Speaker 3: Yes, incredibly intense presence in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, she's awesome. I really enjoyed her. I was like,
Speaker 2: I gotta check out some of these more movies that
Speaker 2: I guess she's barely in, but you know, like the
Speaker 2: rest of the band obviously beautiful, but also very intense
Speaker 2: in her performance, like kind of a skull trying to
Speaker 2: leave the face performance. At times, she's really giving it
Speaker 2: her all. And yeah, I mean reading a bit about her,
Speaker 2: it sounds like she was in the running for various
Speaker 2: other roles in various other notable Italian genre pictures of
Speaker 2: the day, but was maybe she didn't get those roles,
Speaker 2: or maybe she was just very choosy about the roles
Speaker 2: that she was taking hard to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well bravo. I enjoy her greatly in this.
Speaker 2: So that's Kate. Kate's essentially, she's sort of our protagonist.
Speaker 3: She's the leader of the band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, leader of the band. She's the front woman. So
Speaker 2: fair enough. All right, let's move on to the rest
Speaker 2: of the band. The lead guitarist is Elena, played by
Speaker 2: Michelle Klipstein, age unknown. This is her only film credit.
Speaker 2: I tried to look her up just in case, well
Speaker 2: maybe she's a real musician and she was in some
Speaker 2: of their band, but I couldn't find anything on discods
Speaker 2: about her either.
Speaker 3: I can't. Is she the one who gets stabbed with
Speaker 3: a violin that has a knife in it?
Speaker 2: I think so? The you know, as is often the case,
Speaker 2: the rest of the band is sometimes the rest of
Speaker 2: the band, and you can lose track about who's who. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because the bass player is Rita played by Luana Ravignini
Speaker 2: born nineteen sixty eight, So at least we know the
Speaker 2: age and this individual Italian actress who's other limited credits
Speaker 2: include eighty seven's Sweets from a Stranger. And then we
Speaker 2: have the drummer Daniel played by Pascal Persiano born nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty Italian actor who previously appeared in eighty six's Demons
Speaker 2: two and went on to act in eighty nine's The
Speaker 2: Sweet House of Horrors. This was a full Chy TV
Speaker 2: film and ninety one's Voices from Beyond also a full
Speaker 2: Chief film, and he also did some later erotic film
Speaker 2: work as well.
Speaker 3: Which guy was this in Demons Too? Is he one
Speaker 3: of Is he one of the exercise fitness guys.
Speaker 2: That would make sense. I'm struggling to remember if I've
Speaker 2: seen Demons Too, but that's oh, he was, you know,
Speaker 2: young fit guy, and I think was kind of a
Speaker 2: body guy, so that would make sense.
Speaker 3: So Demons won the premises. People go to a movie theater,
Speaker 3: they watch a movie about demons, and the demons come
Speaker 3: out of the movie and attack the people in the theater.
Speaker 3: Fabulous demon fabulous, Yes, yes, demons too. The same thing happens,
Speaker 3: except it's not a movie theater. It's an apartment building.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: And I can't remember where demons. I can't remember where
Speaker 3: the demons come out of. And maybe somebody's watching a
Speaker 3: movie on TV.
Speaker 2: There is something on TV. Yeah, and yeah, actually I
Speaker 2: think he is somebody on a TV program based on
Speaker 2: so that would make sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, then I was misremembering that. I just remember
Speaker 3: prominently there's there's some memorable character in there who's like
Speaker 3: a fitness guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, all right, So that's the band. That's your
Speaker 2: basic band. Lead singer, lead guitarist, bass player, drummer. And
Speaker 2: then we have their manager, Lavinia.
Speaker 3: Is she their manager? What is She's just like professionally
Speaker 3: mean to them.
Speaker 2: Yes, she is so nasty. I love it, but she
Speaker 2: is just so unrealistically nasty. We'll get into the main
Speaker 2: scene here in a bit, but their manager at Lavinia
Speaker 2: is played by Maria Christina mastro Galli born nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: Italian French dancer turned actress. Still active, appears appeared to
Speaker 2: be in a few different more recent and more obscure
Speaker 2: Luigi Kotsey films. But she also pops up. She has
Speaker 2: popped up in some serious dramatic work as well, at
Speaker 2: least you know, further down the cast. But yeah, she's great.
Speaker 2: She's so nasty. We'll get into We'll get into her
Speaker 2: when we talk about like the scene where we meet
Speaker 2: the band for the first time.
Speaker 3: She has she just had an amazing clip reel. If
Speaker 3: you were a director, like a casting director, who is
Speaker 3: trying to hire somebody for a role, to tell other
Speaker 3: people that they're nothing, Yes, and I need I need
Speaker 3: an actress who can say you'll never be anything, your
Speaker 3: creativity is finished.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She's the master of negative reinforcement. If that's what
Speaker 2: you're looking for in a manager, if that's what brings
Speaker 2: out the best in you, then this is this is
Speaker 2: who you need to hire on.
Speaker 3: She makes it like almost the whole movie. She's there
Speaker 3: to the end.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And she gets a she gets a good death.
Speaker 3: Good best best death in the film. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, is that a quality kill?
Speaker 2: I think that would be a quality kill. Yes, okay,
Speaker 2: all right, we mentioned Donald Pleasance. Donald Pleasance plays the
Speaker 2: mysterious mister Pickett. We're not going to spoil too much
Speaker 2: about mister Pickett, but we'll get into him. We'll get
Speaker 2: into the plot. Pleasants lived, of course nineteen nineteen through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, legendary British actor who played everyone from
Speaker 2: Blofeld Sam Loomis to the President of the United States.
Speaker 2: This is our third Donald Pleasants film. We talked about
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six as The Devil's Men, we talked about
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven's The Prince of or nineteen eighty seven's
Speaker 2: Prince of Darkness. So we've discussed him more in depth before.
Speaker 2: But to place this film within his filmography, this was
Speaker 2: one of eight TV in film credits he had from
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, including workin Yeah he Stayed Busy, Ye
Speaker 2: did various sorts of films, So his eighty eight films
Speaker 2: included the notorious Vampire in Venice that of course had
Speaker 2: Kluskin skyan it, Halloween four, the TV movie The Great
Speaker 2: Escape to the Untold Story, which was apparently a sequel
Speaker 2: to the excellent nineteen sixty three film, which also featured
Speaker 2: Donald Pleasants in a memorable role. I assume he's reprising
Speaker 2: that same character here.
Speaker 3: Huh yeah, a sequel to The Great Escape that okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was a major TV film, has
Speaker 2: got a good cast, but I've never seen it. I've
Speaker 2: only seen the original. But at this point we're really
Speaker 2: close to late era Donald Pleasance here, so it's entering
Speaker 2: a time period where not much is going to really
Speaker 2: stand out, aside from some lesser entries in the Halloween franchise,
Speaker 2: and even the schlocky Euro titles are few and far between.
Speaker 2: At this point, I would say Donald Pleasance is perfectly
Speaker 2: fine here, but again dubbed by another actor. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like when we talked about Christopher Lee in the
Speaker 2: Mario Bava Hercules movie Hercules in the Haunted World.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't use his voice. Unbelievable choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I imagine some of that comes down
Speaker 2: to some combination of budget and scheduling, Like you've got
Speaker 2: to get a very busy working, you know actor that
Speaker 2: you could we'll get into press barely afford to begin with,
Speaker 2: and you can really bring them back to dub their
Speaker 2: own lines, especially when the English langue, which market is
Speaker 2: maybe not the primary market.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I assume most listeners know this
Speaker 3: at this point if you've been listening to our shows
Speaker 3: about movies like this. But a lot of these movies
Speaker 3: don't have live sound, and this would be another example.
Speaker 3: So you know, all of the dialogue is dubbed. It's
Speaker 3: not just going across languages. It's like it's totally dubbed,
Speaker 3: all dubbed. So Kotzi explains in the interviews, Actually he's
Speaker 3: totally upfront about this that he had a strategy that
Speaker 3: he employed in most of his scripts. So he would
Speaker 3: always write one character who he planned to be played
Speaker 3: by a more famous actor, So for example, Christopher Plummer's
Speaker 3: character in Star Crash, and then he would have them
Speaker 3: appear three times in the movie, once at the beginning,
Speaker 3: once in the middle, and once at the end, so
Speaker 3: that the audience would have the feeling of this more
Speaker 3: famous actor going all the way through the plot. But
Speaker 3: really he would be able to shoot their scenes in
Speaker 3: between one in three days, therefore saving money. In this case,
Speaker 3: it was Donald Pleasants. Cotzy says that fortunately he takes
Speaker 3: a moment just to say, actually, it works out pretty
Speaker 3: well doing this, because when you hire these older famous
Speaker 3: actors shooting tends to go much faster because they don't
Speaker 3: need things explain to them multiple times, and they do
Speaker 3: great work on the first take.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Right. You bring in somebody of
Speaker 2: the caliber of Donald Pleasants or Peter Cushing and like
Speaker 2: they know their lines, they hit their marks, and yeah,
Speaker 2: they can often do it in one take and then
Speaker 2: you're onto the next. Yeah, all right, let's see. Other
Speaker 2: is some less important characters, but memorable. We have Mark Singer,
Speaker 2: the horror Director, King of Horror, the King of r Yes,
Speaker 2: even though he appears to be only like, like what twenties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a twenty year old King of Horror.
Speaker 2: I guess it's possible. There are probably some precedents for that.
Speaker 2: He's played by Pietro Genuardi, who lived nineteen sixty two
Speaker 2: through twenty twenty five Italian actor. This was his first film,
Speaker 2: but subsequent credits included eighty nine's Killer Crocodile in ninety
Speaker 2: four Cemetery Man. Not to be confused with the beast
Speaker 2: Master Mark Singer. The beast Master is m A r C.
Speaker 2: This is m aar K m a r K Singer.
Speaker 3: They so in this movie. The character Mark Singer is
Speaker 3: the famous King of horror, the director of the world's
Speaker 3: greatest horror films. But they're going to bring him in
Speaker 3: to shoot a video clip, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, They're like, yeah, he's I don't know how
Speaker 2: they got him, but somehow they were able to afford him.
Speaker 2: He's enthusiastic about It's like, yeah, let's do it, let's
Speaker 2: make this. It is brought up that this will be
Speaker 2: the equivalent of Michael Jackson's thriller.
Speaker 3: So there's an extra on the severing disc that's also
Speaker 3: an interview with Pietro Jenuardi where he talks a bit
Speaker 3: about his experience making the movie, which he describes almost
Speaker 3: exclusively in very positive terms. It seems like he had
Speaker 3: a great time making this movie and felt great about it.
Speaker 3: He said he had just gotten out of acting school
Speaker 3: in Rome and Paganini Horror was his first important acting experience,
Speaker 3: and he tells this anecdote about how he got the role.
Speaker 3: He says, so he's a young actor, he had just
Speaker 3: moved to Rome from elsewhere. In this case, I think
Speaker 3: he had originally come from Milan, and a big concern
Speaker 3: when you're a young actor is getting an agent to
Speaker 3: represent you. At this time. So he says he went
Speaker 3: knocking on a lot of doors trying to find an
Speaker 3: agent to represent him, and one day he goes for
Speaker 3: a meeting with this particular agent. It's the very first
Speaker 3: time they're ever meeting, and the agent, you know, he
Speaker 3: goes to this guy's office and the agent tells him,
Speaker 3: you know what, let's send you for an audition today.
Speaker 3: Let's send you for this role in Paganini horror. And
Speaker 3: the agent secretary is like, oh no, no, we can't
Speaker 3: do that. We're supposed to send them, We're supposed to
Speaker 3: send them this other actor that we already represent. But
Speaker 3: the agent was mad at this other guy because he
Speaker 3: had flaked out on something recently and had been making
Speaker 3: a fuss. So the agent said, here's this kid, Genuardy,
Speaker 3: send him instead. So it sounds like he got this
Speaker 3: role on his very first day of looking for an agent,
Speaker 3: purely by coincidence and basically out of spite. So good
Speaker 3: good career note, kids, it can pay to be at
Speaker 3: hand when somebody with power is mad at somebody else.
Speaker 3: Beyond this, Genuardy says that he really has very little
Speaker 3: experience with horror, except that he loves Argento and he
Speaker 3: says even today he is scared every time he has
Speaker 3: to get into an elevator because of the scene with
Speaker 3: the necklace in Deep Red. But he says making the
Speaker 3: movie was a very positive experience. He describes Luigi Kotsi
Speaker 3: as a pleasure to work with, very funny and polite,
Speaker 3: and he makes this comment a couple of times in
Speaker 3: the interview that this was a contrast with his work
Speaker 3: on some other genre films where he kind of describes
Speaker 3: the directors as abrasive and domineering over the actors. He
Speaker 3: says Cotsey, by contrast, was very pleasant, quote, a gentleman
Speaker 3: through and through. He tried in the interview. It's funny
Speaker 3: because he's trying to remember the plot of Paganini Horror,
Speaker 3: which he admits that he hasn't seen it in thirty years,
Speaker 3: so he did not like rewatch it before the interview.
Speaker 2: Rewatching may not have helped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he says, you know, I don't remember much opportunity
Speaker 3: for characterization. But he still had a great time working
Speaker 3: on it. He was amazed at the people who were
Speaker 3: doing the special effects, like at their craft. He was
Speaker 3: really interested in how they made a latex cast of
Speaker 3: his head because they have to set him on fire.
Speaker 3: He had very positive things to say about Daria Nickelode.
Speaker 3: He says she was polite and respectful to him. And
Speaker 3: as I said, he makes this aside a couple of
Speaker 3: times about mentioning people being respectful to him when he
Speaker 3: was a young actor, and he says, you know, this
Speaker 3: really used to be the exception and rather than the
Speaker 3: rule in the industry. But he said, I don't know
Speaker 3: if he's correct about this, but his perception is that
Speaker 3: the film industry now is very different. He thinks that
Speaker 3: compared to when he was young. Now generally like directors
Speaker 3: tend to treat actors better, and actors in bigger roles
Speaker 3: are more respectful to actors in smaller roles. There's less
Speaker 3: hostility than he remembers from when he was young. I
Speaker 3: hope that's true.
Speaker 2: Good to It's always nice to hear somebody reflect positively
Speaker 2: on one of these films, you know, especially given that
Speaker 2: we're often talking about lower budget films and films from
Speaker 2: previous decades, and you just kind of hope that everything
Speaker 2: went okay behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean that's his point of view. Who
Speaker 3: knows what other people would say, But I hope everybody
Speaker 3: had a great time making peggingy Newhorn. He says, I
Speaker 3: think the word is He says he's really astounded that
Speaker 3: people are still interested in this film. Not that he
Speaker 3: thinks it's worthless, but it's just not something he expected
Speaker 3: people would care anything about thirty years later. And then
Speaker 3: there's a quote where he says something like, it's the
Speaker 3: kind of cinema that had no money, but it's also
Speaker 3: the kind of cinema that did miracles. And I think
Speaker 3: specifically he's talking about sort of the craft of like
Speaker 3: what people could pull together with very little resources.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good I like the way you put that.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's let's wind out the people involved
Speaker 2: in behind the scenes here to the limited extent that
Speaker 2: we can get into them.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: I'm going to mention in passing that the character of
Speaker 2: the mother, I'm not going to say whose mother, though
Speaker 2: I really do not know if I was supposed to
Speaker 2: know whose mother it was early on. It's the opening
Speaker 2: scene of the film. The mother is played by Elena
Speaker 2: Pompeii born nineteen sixty six. Other credits include nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: six as the minds of killiman Jar and then Finally,
Speaker 2: the score for Paganini harr is by Vince Tempera born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six, Italian composer best known for his work
Speaker 2: with Luccio ful chie On. The pictures include. Some of
Speaker 2: these are going to be pictures that you might some
Speaker 2: listeners might not be as familiar with because they include
Speaker 2: four of The Apocalypse from seventy five. That's a western,
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy five comedy, and I think it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be like a goofball comedy. Dracula in the Provinces.
Speaker 2: I included the poster here for you, Joe. It includes
Speaker 2: illustrated poster art of a mustachioed vampire biting a woman
Speaker 2: on the butt. Yeah, so this is not the full
Speaker 2: chy Dracula movie that some of you might be imagining.
Speaker 2: This is supposed to be just a wide comedy. But anyway.
Speaker 2: Timpera also scored The Psychic in seventy seven.
Speaker 3: I've seen that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Silver Saddle in seventy eight. I've heard that is
Speaker 2: perhaps the best of fol Chee's westerns. And also eighty
Speaker 2: nine is the House of Clocks.
Speaker 3: Seen that one, that one's not sober, that's my best Later.
Speaker 2: Days fold cheese. Yeah, but he also apparently was an
Speaker 2: uncredited writer on one track for seventy nine Zombie, which
Speaker 2: was mostly officially credited to Fabio Frizzy, but perhaps yeah,
Speaker 2: he had something to do with one of the tracks there.
Speaker 2: Other credits include seventy six as Teenage Emmanuel and the
Speaker 2: Black Cat, which we've already mentioned. I'm going to say
Speaker 2: great electronics score in my opinion, and I think one
Speaker 2: of the film's strongest qualities. So no matter where you're
Speaker 2: going with the plot and these different elements, in a way,
Speaker 2: I feel like Paganini Harror is grounded in these serene,
Speaker 2: haunting synth ambient pieces that kind of like reminds you
Speaker 2: it's like, no, something coherent and spooky is going on,
Speaker 2: and it kind of like brings you back to that.
Speaker 3: I thought you would like those parts. I like those
Speaker 3: parts too. Yeah. With the there's a very subtle synth
Speaker 3: score and these these kind of swirling pads that are
Speaker 3: used a lot in the the more atmospheric scenes that
Speaker 3: I think work quite well, and they're a big contrast
Speaker 3: to the diegetic pop music that's in the film, which
Speaker 3: we will also talk about in a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this soundtrack The score has at least previously
Speaker 2: been available on vinyl from the label Subost. There's a
Speaker 2: band camp listing for the soundtrack, but I don't think that.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's region blocked, but I don't think it was
Speaker 2: put out digitally. I think it was only put out
Speaker 2: as a physical vinyl addition. But if you can listen
Speaker 2: to it and give it a go, I really liked it.
Speaker 4: I wish it was available for my stream.
Speaker 3: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: I think this is one where we're not going to
Speaker 3: try to narrate the whole movie scene by scene. It'll
Speaker 3: make more sense if I go ahead here and give
Speaker 3: a basic summary of the whole movie, and then we
Speaker 3: can come back and talk about some specific scenes in
Speaker 3: more detail, especially scenes early on. So warning that spoilers
Speaker 3: are incoming if you would like to go into the
Speaker 3: Paganini horror without anything ruined. So the basic premise is
Speaker 3: that this eighties glam rock band. Do we ever learn
Speaker 3: the band's name? I think no. The answer is now
Speaker 3: consisting of three women, Kate, Elena, and Rita, and this
Speaker 3: one guy named Daniel are having trouble coming up with
Speaker 3: a new single. That will make their record label happy.
Speaker 3: So the drummer Daniel meets with a shady character named
Speaker 3: mister Pickett played by Donald Pleasance, who sells him a
Speaker 3: piece of sheet music composed by Nicolo Paganini but never
Speaker 3: before published or played in public, and the music is
Speaker 3: called Pagandini Horror. Their manager Lavinia that this is their
Speaker 3: it stinks person. She says, hell, yeah, this is a hit.
Speaker 3: I like it. So they plan to shoot a music
Speaker 3: video for the Paganini song the famous horror movie director
Speaker 3: Mark Singer at a creepy old mansion called Lacasad Soul,
Speaker 3: which is owned by a lady named Sylvia. So they
Speaker 3: go to the mansion and then they spend the rest
Speaker 3: of the movie there at the mansion, enduring various horrors
Speaker 3: and getting killed in different ways. So we get some
Speaker 3: slashings and stabbings. These are kind of music themed slashings sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because in fact, the murder weapon, as we've alluded
Speaker 2: to already, we have is this cursed violin with human
Speaker 2: gut strings. The strings at least allegedly made from the
Speaker 2: intestines of a human victim, though it doesn't look like that,
Speaker 2: and it just looks like violin. They look like violin strings,
Speaker 2: but this violin also has an extendable blade that shoots
Speaker 2: out the base of the violin, you know, almost like
Speaker 2: it's some sort of a James Bond gimmick, but also,
Speaker 2: I guess more tellingly, like it's some sort of Gallo
Speaker 2: murder weapon. But also it's in the correct spot on
Speaker 2: the violin that it would seem designed to like shoot
Speaker 2: into the violinist jugular whilst they were playing. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: we never get this, Like it seems like that's clearly
Speaker 2: what we're setting up for, and I'm like, oh man,
Speaker 2: I can't wait till that happens. That's going to be
Speaker 2: pretty groovy. And then it doesn't.
Speaker 3: It's a trap violin, but I think we only ever
Speaker 3: see it used offensively as somebody stabbing somebody else with.
Speaker 2: The in the most unimaginative way. Now that you mentioned, though,
Speaker 2: that he lifted some plot elements from this previous TV
Speaker 2: production about Stratavarius or some sort of haunted Stratavarius violin,
Speaker 2: it does make me wonder, is that where we get
Speaker 2: to see the jugular booby trapped violin stabbing somebody. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but I'm really curious.
Speaker 3: Now, Well, it could be that, but I was guessing
Speaker 3: that the Stratavarius TV episode was what provided the idea
Speaker 3: about the melt fungus that comes from the wood used
Speaker 3: to make Strativarius violin, which is when that scene comes
Speaker 3: up in the movie later that it is so amazingly specific.
Speaker 3: So this is one of the deaths in the film.
Speaker 3: One of the girls in the band disappears and you know,
Speaker 3: her friends are looking around for her. She's nowhere to
Speaker 3: be found. And then later she turns up melted. It's
Speaker 3: like Emil and RoboCop and them like, yeah, yeah, She's
Speaker 3: just like Hi, I've melted now, and they're like what
Speaker 3: is this? And I think it's Daria Nickelode looks at
Speaker 3: her and says, oh, I know what that is. That's
Speaker 3: the fungus that comes from the wood that was used
Speaker 3: to make Strata various violins, which is a flesh eating fungus.
Speaker 2: So possibly leftovers. It's like we've served alongside the Evening's offerings. Okay.
Speaker 3: I tried to look up as like, what is that
Speaker 3: based on anything real? I don't think so. I think
Speaker 3: it may be very very loosely inspired by a sort
Speaker 3: of theory people had about like what makes stratavarius violins
Speaker 3: sound so special? And there was a theory for a while.
Speaker 3: I think that it was because of like climate, you know,
Speaker 3: periodic climate changes in Europe leading to different growth patterns
Speaker 3: in the trees that had like would have had denser
Speaker 3: wood at a particular time when the wood was being
Speaker 3: harvested to make the violins. But I don't even think
Speaker 3: that that theory is much subscribed to anymore. That wouldn't
Speaker 3: have much to do with melt movie fungus. But anyway
Speaker 3: that I was like, where does that come from? So
Speaker 3: there's that. There's a lot of running around and people
Speaker 3: getting lost, you know, we alluded to this earlier. People
Speaker 3: like getting lost in the house. Other people are like
Speaker 3: where are they? Can we find them? And running through halls.
Speaker 3: There are these hell tunnels like pits that open in
Speaker 3: the earth and drop you into hell and electrocute you,
Speaker 3: shoot you with electricity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it becomes very confusing about Okay, is this person
Speaker 2: now in the hell realm or are there just somewhere
Speaker 2: else in the house. Hard to say.
Speaker 3: Some people crawl into tunnels and then come out of
Speaker 3: the tunnels and it's not clear whether they went somewhere
Speaker 3: else or they're still in the same place. There are
Speaker 3: invisible walls, like they some characters try to leave the
Speaker 3: house in a car and end up smashing the car
Speaker 3: like smashing into an invisible wall around the house, and
Speaker 3: the car cutches on fire and they die. There's also
Speaker 3: I would say the best quality kill in the movie
Speaker 3: is the fate of Lavinia, the band's manager at the end,
Speaker 3: who is crushed by an invisible wall. So she's up
Speaker 3: against a wall you can see, and then suddenly she's like, uh, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I move my microphone. Sorry, but she's doing mime stuffy
Speaker 3: death death by mime. And then there's a clear pane
Speaker 3: of glass pressed against her face so you can see
Speaker 3: her being smoosed and she's like uh uh and then
Speaker 3: scanner style her head explodes. I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 3: And that was awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really well done, and especially knowing that they were
Speaker 2: on very limited budgets for the special effects, so yeah,
Speaker 2: that's all terrific. But then also you have Kate getting
Speaker 2: locked in a big casket like standing base case, even
Speaker 2: though nobody's playing the standing bass or anything that large,
Speaker 2: but hey, you can fit the lead singer of a
Speaker 2: pop band in there and then you can set it
Speaker 2: on fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but she does survive that.
Speaker 2: Yes she does, though it seems like she might not
Speaker 2: for a minute there. We mentioned that this film involves
Speaker 2: the devil, but it also involves what the perhaps the
Speaker 2: litch of Paganini himself, like some sort of a masked
Speaker 2: ghoul who is going around killing people with the violin
Speaker 2: or seemingly unclear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the ending is there, Well, the ending, don't
Speaker 3: we discover that the Paganini ghul is Donald Pleasance? Am
Speaker 3: I wrong about that?
Speaker 2: I think you may be right. You might be right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I apologize if I'm getting that wrong. That's embarrassing
Speaker 3: if I am. But truly, it is hard to remember
Speaker 3: some details about this movie, even having seen it multiple
Speaker 3: times now. I do remember at the end, Kate gets
Speaker 3: an explanation, she gets the whole villain monologue. So mister
Speaker 3: Pickett Donald Pleasant arrives at the house after all of
Speaker 3: her friends have been killed in these weird, bizarre ways
Speaker 3: through the house all night, and she he gets there,
Speaker 3: He gets out of a car and he's like, Hi,
Speaker 3: I am Satan and you're trapped in hell forever because
Speaker 3: you sold your soul for wealth and fame and that
Speaker 3: I don't like people who do that. And then he
Speaker 3: stabs her.
Speaker 2: But she did she get the wealth and fame. It
Speaker 2: seems like they haven't even finished the music video and
Speaker 2: he's already claiming her soul for all eternity. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean that's a good point. Yeah. Usually these packed
Speaker 3: with the devil stories the person they get the rewards
Speaker 3: up front. It's just that the bill comes due later.
Speaker 3: But she doesn't even get the rewards up front.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it'd be one thing if it was
Speaker 2: just fame, because you could be like, oh, well you
Speaker 2: will be famous for this. But I don't think she
Speaker 2: really gets the wealth.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so that's basically the whole plot, But we
Speaker 3: should zoom in on a few things. I definitely want
Speaker 3: to talk about a couple of scenes early on. I
Speaker 3: want to talk about the prologue, and I want to
Speaker 3: talk about the scene and the music studio.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, so okay, so no, good.
Speaker 3: Well prologue first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean basically, we start off with some wondrous, wonderful,
Speaker 2: you know, atmospheric scenes of a little girl wandering the streets,
Speaker 2: and then eventually, you know, taking one of the canal
Speaker 2: boats and through the canals of Venice. It's unclear at
Speaker 2: first what time zone we're actually in, Like is this
Speaker 2: the past? Is this the present?
Speaker 3: Like, oh, because she's dressed weird. Yeah, the little girls
Speaker 3: dressed like a Puritan. She looks like little you know,
Speaker 3: Prudence Proctor is out here wandering around in the Puritan village.
Speaker 2: Is she a ghost? We don't know. And there's all
Speaker 2: this hazy synth music played on top of it. It's
Speaker 2: really nice. But yeah, I was unsure, like where we
Speaker 2: were in time, in space. I mean, I knew in
Speaker 2: space we were in Venice, but in terms of time,
Speaker 2: I had very vague ideas of what was going on. Likewise,
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to be sure for a long time
Speaker 2: which grown up character this character, this little girl ends
Speaker 2: up becoming. And likewise, when we meet this this little
Speaker 2: girl's mother, I had no idea whose mother this is,
Speaker 2: whose prologue this really was. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: that was by design, if that was an error on
Speaker 2: my part, or just part of the sort of messiness
Speaker 2: of this film.
Speaker 3: No, I think it's intentional mystery and even intentional misdirection.
Speaker 3: At first. So I think the answer is we discover
Speaker 3: it's Daria Nickelode's character.
Speaker 2: But where I guess at first we're to think maybe
Speaker 2: it's Kate.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, they misdirect you and make you think it's Kate.
Speaker 3: Well I'll explain why that why I think that is
Speaker 3: in a minute, but so just quick fact about this
Speaker 3: girl wandering around Venice and the Puritan hood. This girl
Speaker 3: is Luigi Kotsi's daughter, which I thought was a great choice,
Speaker 3: like we need a super creepy kid in the opening
Speaker 3: scene to commit mattress side. Oh I know, I'll use
Speaker 3: my own child. So this, this strange girl wanders around
Speaker 3: Venice and she gets in the gondola. She gets she
Speaker 3: goes down the canal, then she gets dropped off at
Speaker 3: a mansion. This is the house that will later re
Speaker 3: featured in the music video part of the movie. And
Speaker 3: then we go inside the house and we pan over
Speaker 3: the child's ghastly toys. What is it about children's toys
Speaker 3: in these old Italian movies always look so creepy even
Speaker 3: when they're not supposed to, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean though, this one is like a
Speaker 2: what a doll with a skull's face or something, so.
Speaker 3: One of them. Yeah, that one's supposed to look creepy,
Speaker 3: I think. So she's playing the we pan over that
Speaker 3: she's playing this song on the violin, practicing her violin.
Speaker 3: The song is called the Witches Dance. And while the
Speaker 3: little girl plays the violin down the hall, her mother
Speaker 3: gets undressed and gets into the bath.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And some pied editing here on this just robing
Speaker 2: and getting into the bath, yes, but they pulls it off.
Speaker 3: Two things stand out about this bathroom. One is blood
Speaker 3: red tiles on the walls. Cotsey mentions that he had
Speaker 3: the idea personally to have the bathroom tiles in this
Speaker 3: room painted red. He said his set designers thought this
Speaker 3: was weird, but he stands by it. He thinks it works.
Speaker 3: It's a good idea, and I stand by it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Also, this bathroom is the echo weeest room on earth.
Speaker 3: The little girl comes in and the mom and the
Speaker 3: girl start talking, and it sounds like they are inside
Speaker 3: a steel barrel the size of a football stadium. It's
Speaker 3: just like infinite echoes. And the mom and the girl talks.
Speaker 3: So the girl says she finished her violin practice for
Speaker 3: the day. Her mom tells her, Oh good, you can
Speaker 3: now go play, and she says, you know, one day
Speaker 3: you're going to grow up to be a famous musician,
Speaker 3: just like your father. We're not told who he is.
Speaker 3: But the little girl has this sinister looking doll with
Speaker 3: a gold skull mask on its face. The girl dips
Speaker 3: the doll's hair into her mom's bathwater and gets all wet.
Speaker 3: Then the little girl gets a hair dryer and starts
Speaker 3: blow drying the doll's hair while the mom watches. They're
Speaker 3: sitting there smiling at each other while the girls got
Speaker 3: the hair dryer, like, yes, where's this going m And
Speaker 3: then the girl smiles and throws the hair dryer into
Speaker 3: the bath so zap. This is an electrocution with classic
Speaker 3: you know, animated electrical zigzags shooting up into the mom's face.
Speaker 3: And then the mom is literally cooked. She looks like
Speaker 3: she has been cooked on a cast iron skillet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know your creepy backstory saying here, and
Speaker 2: that's pretty well executed. And also it feels it feels true.
Speaker 2: You know, as a parent, I know that kids hate
Speaker 2: being reminded that they need to practice their musical instruments,
Speaker 2: that they need to do their due lingo and so forth.
Speaker 2: So this is perhaps going on inside the head of
Speaker 2: many a child, though most children do not actually heave
Speaker 2: a toaster or hair dryer into the.
Speaker 3: Bathtub thankfully not. Yes, uh, so here what we cut
Speaker 3: from directly from the prologue. In fact, cut from a
Speaker 3: shot of the mother's fried face to the the opening
Speaker 3: you know rock song the music number.
Speaker 2: Yes this uh, this is the first track that we
Speaker 2: hear from Kate and the rest of the band. And
Speaker 2: I have to say, when I was listening to it,
Speaker 2: I was I was like, you know, this song is
Speaker 2: a is a real banger. I'm digging this. They're rockin
Speaker 2: it's uh, it's the lyrics are stay the Night High
Speaker 2: and sol You and the rout Row. It's the apparently
Speaker 2: actually saying rock and roll. I had to pull up
Speaker 2: the subtitles to get that. But stay the Night High
Speaker 2: and so You and the rut Row.
Speaker 3: I would think I was hearing like you can row.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: This song is great? Is bon Jovi, But it's great.
Speaker 2: It is absolutely John Bovi's You Give Love a Bad Name.
Speaker 2: And I didn't catch it a first, Like watching on
Speaker 2: the playing, I'm like, this is great, Like this is
Speaker 2: not like the comparison to Pod People. What was the
Speaker 2: song in pod People?
Speaker 3: Idiot control here the here the Engines roll? Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: idiot controlled.
Speaker 2: Terrible song by a terrible band. But in this case
Speaker 2: it's like, especially not realizing at the time that it
Speaker 2: was actually a John Bovy bon Jovi rather rip off,
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, this is great, but it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's clearly you give love a bad name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's like they they nabbed one of
Speaker 3: the hookiest hooks in rock music. It's like an impossible
Speaker 3: to miss hooky hook.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so yeah, they're performing it. And this is
Speaker 2: to be clear, this is not a concert. This is
Speaker 2: a recording session in a studio. Yes, but but the
Speaker 2: gals and Daniel are performing with full concert theatrics. You know,
Speaker 2: their costumes. You know they're tight pants on despite.
Speaker 3: All facing the same direction and dancing. Where is stage light?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Again, this is sort of recording session, so they could
Speaker 2: be wearing their sweats. They could be We've all seen
Speaker 2: actual footage of professional musicians recording and it generally looks
Speaker 2: pretty gross, you know, because it's not about the performed
Speaker 2: the visual performance. It's about getting the music down right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I can respect that. Maybe they've got
Speaker 3: that purest mentality where they're like, no, we're going to
Speaker 3: record it live, multi track, we're doing it all at
Speaker 3: the same time. But I think even the bands that
Speaker 3: have that kind of mentality instead of trying to one
Speaker 3: track at at a time, even the bands with that
Speaker 3: mentality are not going to have stage lights on them
Speaker 3: while they're recording.
Speaker 2: They're not going to bite the head off of a
Speaker 2: bat in the recording session. You save that for the tour.
Speaker 3: But so, as you said, now, they do not say
Speaker 3: it's not part of the movie that hey, this song
Speaker 3: is exactly the same as you give love a bad name.
Speaker 3: They don't seem to acknowledge that. So I think it
Speaker 3: is supposed to be an original song. So I would
Speaker 3: think a like pop rock producer would be pretty happy
Speaker 3: with the song they're laying down, be like, wow, that's
Speaker 3: a great hook. Do you give love of name?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Like, in this movie, these characters have delivered a song
Speaker 2: that is as good as John bon Jovi's greatest hit,
Speaker 2: and yet right after they finished, or even before they finish,
Speaker 2: like Lavinia cuts them off and says like enough of that,
Speaker 2: and proceeds to absolutely rip Kate a new one over
Speaker 2: her just complete creative bankruptcy in coming up with this song.
Speaker 2: She says things so cruel, so hateful that they would,
Speaker 2: I think realistically tend to be the last things ever
Speaker 2: said in a creative relationship. And you see it professional
Speaker 2: or unprofessional, like there are things that that Lavinia says
Speaker 2: that there just would be no coming back from. And
Speaker 2: and it's just just awful, just awful, but laugh inducingly back.
Speaker 3: It's so crazy like and I would even note that
Speaker 3: as mean as these lines are in the written form,
Speaker 3: the line deliveries make them sound ten times more venomous
Speaker 3: than they are on the page. I wrote down some
Speaker 3: of the comments, did she They're in the middle of
Speaker 3: the song. They don't even finish it, Lavinia says, stop
Speaker 3: the tape, Paul. It's a complete waste of time. It's
Speaker 3: the same old stuff. There's nothing original about it. And
Speaker 3: they get into an argument where Kate's trying to say, like, uh, oh,
Speaker 3: I know what your problem is. You don't like the
Speaker 3: violin in the song. And I was thinking, did I
Speaker 3: hear a violin in that? I didn't hear it?
Speaker 4: One?
Speaker 2: I certainly didn't see one. There's no violin in this song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think that's also probably trying to be
Speaker 3: a misdirection to make the audience think maybe Kate is
Speaker 3: the girl from the prologue. Yeah, yeah, practicing the violin.
Speaker 3: But then Lavinia says, it's not the violin, it's the
Speaker 3: whole song that doesn't make it. There's something missing. I know,
Speaker 3: the difference between a hit and the mundane, and you know.
Speaker 3: So she goes on this whole rant about how she
Speaker 3: is not creative anymore. She says, you keep doing the
Speaker 3: same stupid things over and over again. And Kate's defense
Speaker 3: against the Kate's defenses are not good. She goes, I
Speaker 3: cannot make million selling records all the time.
Speaker 2: The thing I love about Kate in this is like
Speaker 2: Lavinya is so nasty to her, and then Kate decides
Speaker 2: to fall. Kate should buy all rights at this point,
Speaker 2: storm out, or like slap her in the face. You
Speaker 2: would expect that in a film, but instead she suddenly
Speaker 2: opens up and becomes vulnerable about the challenges of the
Speaker 2: creative process. So this person is just so.
Speaker 3: Mean to her.
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, I don't know, I just can't seem
Speaker 2: to come up with anything else, and then Lavinia lays
Speaker 2: into her again.
Speaker 3: She just twists the knives. She's like, this isn't it, honey.
Speaker 2: Maybe their relationship just really is this toxic? And maybe
Speaker 2: there are creative relationships this toxic out there. I hope not,
Speaker 2: because this is awful.
Speaker 3: So are we to understand this is not like a
Speaker 3: struggling band on the come up. This is a super famous,
Speaker 3: super successful band that has fallen into a creative and
Speaker 3: financial slump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where the best they can do is produce music
Speaker 2: on the level with Jon bon Jovi's greatest hits.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, okay, so yeah, so that's what's going on.
Speaker 3: But then meanwhile, you get these close ups of Daniel
Speaker 3: the drummer in the back of the room. He's like
Speaker 3: watching this drama and it's like, I've got to do
Speaker 3: something about this. You could tell his heart is aching.
Speaker 2: It's like those scenes in Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase's
Speaker 2: character is talking about how someone should kidnap his boss
Speaker 2: and yeah, and cousin Eddie's in the background to like,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like maybe, But in this case,
Speaker 2: Daniel's like, you know, I know a guy who has
Speaker 2: a cursed scroll that can help us with our current
Speaker 2: creative problems.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Leavinni is still over there, given more, just throwing
Speaker 3: him out, like maybe you're all washed up, already finished.
Speaker 2: Yeah, find someone who can write something from for you,
Speaker 2: you know, talent talent hack.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the next scene, Daniel, the band's drummer, who
Speaker 3: has been watching all this unfold, he gets on a
Speaker 3: boat and he rides out into some harbor. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: sure where this was. Is this venice, you.
Speaker 2: Think, I guess?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, yeah, he gets dropped off in this abandoned
Speaker 3: industrial area with these old, crumbling factory buildings. He cuts
Speaker 3: through a chain link fence and then he wanders into
Speaker 3: a foundry ruin to meet a man named mister Pickett.
Speaker 3: Mister Pickett is Donald Pleasance, and this is the first
Speaker 3: time we see him.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when he starts talking, though,
Speaker 2: he's going to have a deeper, bubbler voice than you're
Speaker 2: accustomed to.
Speaker 3: Doesn't sound a bit, doesn't even sound close to Donald Pleasant.
Speaker 3: He's in a trench coat and a fedora, sitting in
Speaker 3: the rubble in front of a rusty refrigerator. Clutching a briefcase,
Speaker 3: and his trench coat seems a little too big for him,
Speaker 3: like the sleeves are swallowing his hands. He's a he's
Speaker 3: got this childlike smile throughout the movie where he's almost
Speaker 3: kind of like a like a kid in a toy store.
Speaker 3: You know, he's just looking around, like excited to see things.
Speaker 3: Interesting performance choice. I don't know exactly what he was
Speaker 3: going for there, but maybe that's just what it's like
Speaker 3: to be satan. Yeah, you are perpetually a child about
Speaker 3: to be treated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's actually to the limited extent
Speaker 2: we can admire the work of Donald Pleasant in this film.
Speaker 2: It is I can imagine him maybe making a choice
Speaker 2: to play it up this way because a lot of times,
Speaker 2: especially in some of these lower budget you know, euro pictures,
Speaker 2: you know, genre pictures, you have the sort of the
Speaker 2: standard what you might think of as a standard Donald
Speaker 2: Pleasant delivery, where he's a very tribe villain who is
Speaker 2: very stoic about everything. I have a scroll that I
Speaker 2: will now sell you, And in this he's got a
Speaker 2: bit of the trickster about him, even early on, before
Speaker 2: we have any idea that he is actually the literal devil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So it's not you may God
Speaker 3: watch over you all. It's something sillier and the like
Speaker 3: fly little Demon scene illustrates that as well. We'll get
Speaker 3: to that in a minute. But so he's hanging out
Speaker 3: there and Daniel shows up and he says, hey, couldn't
Speaker 3: we have met somewhere a little less out of the way,
Speaker 3: And Pickett says no, No, He says, this place is perfect.
Speaker 3: So they've worked out some kind of transaction ahead of time.
Speaker 3: On the telephone. Daniel hands Picket a Duffel bag. Picket
Speaker 3: hands Daniel a briefcase. He instructs him on how to
Speaker 3: open it. Can you guess what the briefcase combination is?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: It's six sixty six, of course, of course.
Speaker 3: He gets He lines him up, pops it open. Inside
Speaker 3: is a rolled up piece of parch with a wax seal,
Speaker 3: and Picket says the original score his own personal seal.
Speaker 3: Daniel just rips into it. He breaks open the seal
Speaker 3: and unfurls the paper and it is a piece of
Speaker 3: sheet music. This is the Paganini song in the movie.
Speaker 3: And we cut to Daniel's apartment where he is playing
Speaker 3: the song for his bandmates while they stand around the piano.
Speaker 3: Actually it's not his bandmates, it's Kate and then Lavinia,
Speaker 3: the manager or the producer. I guess they've made up. Yes,
Speaker 3: suddenly it's okay and he plays the song on the
Speaker 3: piano and Lavinia is like, yes, hell, yes, this will
Speaker 3: be a hit, really good. And many people have pointed
Speaker 3: out I didn't catch this because I wasn't as familiar
Speaker 3: with the song. I'd heard it before, but I didn't
Speaker 3: make this connection. But I saw people online pointing out
Speaker 3: that this song sounds a lot like a song by
Speaker 3: Electric Light Orchestra called What's twilight called Twilight. That's right,
Speaker 3: Twilight by ELO. I looked it up and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Oh it's exactly the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Likewise, I'm familiar with certain ELO tracks, I wasn't
Speaker 2: familiar with this one, but when I looked it up,
Speaker 2: I'm like, yep, that's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh boy, well, I mean, you know YLO, that's
Speaker 3: a Paganini elo.
Speaker 2: It's always one of the challenges when you have media
Speaker 2: within within media, when you have like something that is
Speaker 2: supposed to be a great work within what is maybe
Speaker 2: a lesser work totally, you know, be it a like
Speaker 2: a sitcom about stand up comedy or in this case,
Speaker 2: a horror movie about popular music. It's a real challenge.
Speaker 2: How do you create the idea of a great work,
Speaker 2: like something that is like significantly and genuinely good. One
Speaker 2: way is just to borrow something from the world of
Speaker 2: successful media, and that's what they did here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. This
Speaker 3: is a problem. A lot of people are tempted to
Speaker 3: write stories about, you know, the most beautiful poem ever written,
Speaker 3: or the most beautiful piece of music or something, but like,
Speaker 3: how do you instantiate that? I think a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of the best works that have a plot
Speaker 3: element like that include it by only alluding to it.
Speaker 3: They don't ever let you experience it directly. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: they leave it to the imagination, and I think that
Speaker 3: that often is a good choice, even if you are
Speaker 3: capable of producing a very good song or whatever that
Speaker 3: it kind of can demystify that kind of story element
Speaker 3: to have it physically realized in the story anyway. So
Speaker 3: it's but it's a it's a good pop melody because
Speaker 3: it's yello, right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So both of the original songs from Kate and the
Speaker 2: band here are are really great, so it is convincing
Speaker 2: at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the bon Jovi and Elo so Daniel. He
Speaker 3: explains to them the song is originally by Nicolo Paganini.
Speaker 3: He says, I have the original parchment, the real thing.
Speaker 3: And then Lavinia says, oh, well, if it's by Paganini,
Speaker 3: even though it's in the public domain, we can't use
Speaker 3: it because it's already well known. And she's adamant what
Speaker 3: the public wants. The public does not want more of
Speaker 3: the same. They want something that is totally completely freak new,
Speaker 3: brand new. They've never seen anything like it, which you know,
Speaker 3: obviously that's what people want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't want to they don't want to rehash. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Kate says, hold it, Lavinia, this song was
Speaker 3: never published before. Paganini wrote the song two hundred years
Speaker 3: ago for a secret sect that held mysterious ceremonies at night.
Speaker 3: Don't you know about it? And she explains the whole
Speaker 3: story of how Paganini sold his soul to the devil
Speaker 3: in exchange for fame and wealth.
Speaker 2: Which again, this is what we alluded to earlier. This
Speaker 2: is This feels like a bit in the movie that
Speaker 2: very much ties a lot of things together. Yes, I
Speaker 2: mean doesn't completely tie everything together, but in the same
Speaker 2: way that I think that the score kind of grounds
Speaker 2: the movie, This one little nugget of explanation and storytelling
Speaker 2: kind of grounds things to some degree and gives you,
Speaker 2: at least I don't know, a marked trail to follow
Speaker 2: through the plot.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Kate says, it's going to be fantastic, sensational.
Speaker 3: No one has ever done anything like it before except
Speaker 3: Michael Jackson with Thriller and his fantastic video clip. And
Speaker 3: then Daniel says, we could do the same. And this
Speaker 3: is one of those moments where the over anunciation of
Speaker 3: the lines is almost overwhelming. It is really awesome, and
Speaker 3: Lavinia she's all on board. She's like, yes, we're going
Speaker 3: to hire Mark Singer, the King of Horror. We're going
Speaker 3: to shoot it in a lonely house, the kind that
Speaker 3: scares you just to look at it. And then Kate
Speaker 3: actually has a house in mind. She says, we're going
Speaker 3: to use the Kasady Soul where musicians and composers lived
Speaker 3: centuries ago. Lavinia says, perfect, I know the girl who
Speaker 3: bought it, so okay, well that's good coincidence, so Lavinia explains,
Speaker 3: She says, that's it, my friends, the house of Kate's
Speaker 3: video clip, the house of Paganini and ghosts.
Speaker 2: All right, So, I mean I'd really admire the plotting
Speaker 2: at this point because we have okay, we have a
Speaker 2: mysterious figure, we have probably cursed or haunted scroll of
Speaker 2: music that was composed for witches and no one knows about.
Speaker 2: And then we're going to shoot a music video of
Speaker 2: that music at a haunted house. What could go wrong?
Speaker 2: It seems like we're going to We have a great
Speaker 2: setup here for all sorts of angles. No new additional
Speaker 2: information needs to be introduced into the plot.
Speaker 3: So we cut to the mansion where the rest of
Speaker 3: the movie takes place, and we see somebody dressed up
Speaker 3: like the little Girl's doll from the prologue. So this
Speaker 3: gold corpse mask, golden violin, black cape and hat wandering
Speaker 3: around the old villa. This leads into a double fake
Speaker 3: out scene. I would say that at first it seems
Speaker 3: like it's a murder scene, and then maybe you think, wait,
Speaker 3: is this a dream scene? And then it goes out.
Speaker 2: Too long and you're like, I guess this is really happening.
Speaker 2: We're not in the stream at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it's real. And then it turns out, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's a movie set scene. So it's like when you
Speaker 3: are It's like in Mortal Kombat when you see Johnny
Speaker 3: Cage fighting some guys and then somebody else cut and
Speaker 3: we pull back and we see that. Yeah, so Kate.
Speaker 3: The way it goes is Kate wakes up and I
Speaker 3: guess this is the white wedding dress. She wakes up
Speaker 3: in this creepy house full of candles. She wanders around
Speaker 3: until she finds a piece of paper where Paganini has
Speaker 3: signed over his soul to the devil. She reads it,
Speaker 3: then she is stabbed to death with a knife by
Speaker 3: the guy with the violin. But then we call cut
Speaker 3: and we are just shooting the video clip. And I
Speaker 3: really do like the set design here, because they're in
Speaker 3: a room with this giant X made out of candles
Speaker 3: on the floor. I think it's cool setup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I could imagine this being maybe not a
Speaker 2: thriller level music video, but certainly on par with some
Speaker 2: of my favorite reap your videos from the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so we cut away and we see the
Speaker 3: crew and the director. Remember the King of Horror, Mark Singer.
Speaker 3: He is just jumping all over the place with a
Speaker 3: movie camera handheld on his shoulders. I'm sure the footage
Speaker 3: he's getting is great. It's going to be very in focus.
Speaker 3: And in this scene, Sylvia explains Sylvia, she remembers, this
Speaker 3: is Daria Nickelode. This is her house. She says that
Speaker 3: this is the house where Paganini sold his soul to
Speaker 3: the devil, killed his wife, and then made violin strings
Speaker 3: out of her intestines. Quote. Paganini's violin had a very
Speaker 3: unique sound. Maybe it's because the strings played forever the
Speaker 3: screams of his poor bride. And then Lavinia is like, eh,
Speaker 3: that's gross, and Daria Nickelode's like, well, it's only it's
Speaker 3: only fairy tales. And then Lavinia says, I don't believe
Speaker 3: it either. So oh, after this, we get that great
Speaker 3: scene where Donnald pleasance where the devil throws money off
Speaker 3: of the bell tower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that big satchel full of money that he got
Speaker 2: from the drummer. Yeah, he's taking it up to the
Speaker 2: top of the tower. And at first I didn't know
Speaker 2: where this was going to go. I thought, okay, this
Speaker 2: is maybe. I thought he was still immortal at this point,
Speaker 2: amortal not immortal. I thought he was a mortal character.
Speaker 2: And I was like, is he going to throw himself
Speaker 2: off this tower with the money? Is it just one
Speaker 2: of these like I'm just so glad I'm free of
Speaker 2: the cursed item. But no, something else is going on,
Speaker 2: and he's gleefully throwing the money out, like is if
Speaker 2: you know, really kind of a commentary. It's like money
Speaker 2: only causes, you know, misery for human beings. So I
Speaker 2: have this big satchel of it. I'm just gonna give
Speaker 2: it out wherever this lands. It's gonna sew you know, unease,
Speaker 2: it's going to sow jealousy, and it's going to cause misery.
Speaker 2: So I'm just gonna gonna sprinkle it everywhere.
Speaker 3: This isn't a place called the Company. Lay is like
Speaker 3: a bell tower of Saint Mark's Basilica in Venice. So yeah,
Speaker 3: Donald pleasants. He goes inside, he goes up the stairs,
Speaker 3: goes on the spiral staircase, goes all all the way
Speaker 3: to the top of the bell tower, and then he
Speaker 3: goes out to this viewing area with the Duffel bag
Speaker 3: and he he's throwing the wad of cash out and
Speaker 3: he's saying, go go all you little demons. Oh no way,
Speaker 3: I'm actually sounding too much like Donald pleasants, go you
Speaker 3: little de Yeah, there you go, you little fly away,
Speaker 3: little demons, little demons, Yes, fly away. And then finally
Speaker 3: he says, let the price for fame be extracted by
Speaker 3: the one to whom it belongs, His Majesty, Satan. So
Speaker 3: I didn't pick up on that the first time I
Speaker 3: watched the movie, but the second time I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: that explains more about the ending. So why is Satan mad?
Speaker 3: Why is he punishing these people who wanted wealth and
Speaker 3: fame because only Satan should have wealth and fame.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean the least they could have done is like
Speaker 2: sing about Satan, like like yeah, fit him in the lyrics.
Speaker 2: I think that buys you a little time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. So we've already talked through the road contours
Speaker 3: of the rest of the plot. Is there anything else
Speaker 3: you'd like to zoom in and focus on? I mean,
Speaker 3: I sort of we've talked about the main bits, but
Speaker 3: there there is a lot of bizarre texture throughout there.
Speaker 3: The scene where they go into the room with the
Speaker 3: pit in the floor and there are just like there's
Speaker 3: MC squared scribbled on the yeah or equals MC squared,
Speaker 3: And I was like, what is going on there when
Speaker 3: I saw it, But then that made more sense when
Speaker 3: I watched the interview with Katzy and he's like, it's
Speaker 3: science fiction. It's about Einstein and time loose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it's about. We do come back to
Speaker 2: that at the end. I love how this is. I'm
Speaker 2: not knocking this because this is a stylistic choice and
Speaker 2: it totally works for this sort of film, But I
Speaker 2: love how everyone is dressed up for the music video
Speaker 2: and they basically remain in those costumes even when things
Speaker 2: get horrific and challenging. I think the most they do
Speaker 2: is they maybe throw a jacket on over it, but
Speaker 2: like Kate's still running around and like these crazy like
Speaker 2: leggings like straps on her legs and all so.
Speaker 3: Ten for that, I feel like the band members are
Speaker 3: dressed up in there. They all look like they're dressed
Speaker 3: up for a music video, but for different music videos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know, it's you know, sometimes they each
Speaker 2: have their own identity their own visual identity in this band,
Speaker 2: this band that has no name.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe that's an allusion to the man who has
Speaker 3: no name, and that man that man is Satan, of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they should have it should have been like
Speaker 2: Kate in the Satanic Trio or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Then maybe Satan would have been okay with it, but
Speaker 2: again they're not given him any credit.
Speaker 3: I did like a lot of the invisible wall effects
Speaker 3: in the movie. In the interview with Pietro Genuardi, he
Speaker 3: talks about how in the scene where the car smashes
Speaker 3: into the invisible wall, he says they did that by
Speaker 3: attaching a cable to the car and then tying the
Speaker 3: cable around a tree so they could have the car
Speaker 3: stop short at full speed for the invisible wall effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, glad nobody died during that. Good, good, good.
Speaker 3: I mean I would hope they did that without somebody
Speaker 3: in the car. But yeah, then also they got the
Speaker 3: the the invisible wall head explosion I thought was really good.
Speaker 3: Let's see any comments on sort of the conclusion. I
Speaker 3: guess one thing we didn't even really get into or
Speaker 3: the the further discovery of the mechanics about how they're
Speaker 3: going to defeat Paganini's ghost. Do they get the idea
Speaker 3: that you have to play the Paganini song to defeat him,
Speaker 3: And then they get the idea that no, no, no, what
Speaker 3: you have to do is play the Paganini song backwards
Speaker 3: to defeat him, and somehow they never managed to do
Speaker 3: it right. So in the end, of course, all of
Speaker 3: the characters are are damned.
Speaker 2: But it seems like we're going to defeat him at
Speaker 2: one point because there's a scene where the sun comes
Speaker 2: up and like the Paganini lych character is turned to
Speaker 2: dut to dust to ashes which the ashes are shaped
Speaker 2: like a musical note on the floor.
Speaker 3: Is it a musical note? I thought it was like
Speaker 3: a trouble.
Speaker 2: Or maybe the trouble cliff. Yeah. Yeah, something improbable occurs
Speaker 2: like why would it do that? I don't know. Very
Speaker 2: stylish though, still points for style. But yeah, it seems like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we're going with the standard. You know, don defeats
Speaker 2: the Legions of Hell and everything is restored. But no,
Speaker 2: then out comes the devil. Here's mister Pickett aka Satan,
Speaker 2: and he explains like actually, yes, you're being punished now
Speaker 2: and you're in a time bubble, Like they're watching new
Speaker 2: people arrive at the mansion and.
Speaker 3: He's there's this whole gonna get them too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's gonna get them too. And it's like you're
Speaker 2: actually not in their time anymore. You're in a different time.
Speaker 2: We're in a bubble or something, and this is where
Speaker 2: we're getting, I guess, into the sci fi aspects of
Speaker 2: the picture.
Speaker 3: M Okay, well, I think maybe that's all I've got
Speaker 3: to say for now on Paganini Horror. But yeah, this
Speaker 3: one was quite pleasantly surprising to me. If you're in
Speaker 3: the mood for something wild, wacky, all all mixed up,
Speaker 3: this is this is a good choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, Yeah, this one was a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: certainly if you're in the mood for something with again
Speaker 2: just tremendously absurd dialogue and then also just so many
Speaker 2: wild plot elements. Again it almost has it almost has
Speaker 2: first movie energy, you know, where it's like a filmmaker
Speaker 2: has so many ideas and they realized they might only
Speaker 2: get this one chance to pull it off, so they're
Speaker 2: like way too many ideas incorporated into the thing. We
Speaker 2: kind of get that here, but for different reasons. As
Speaker 2: we explained, yeah, all right, we're gonna go and close
Speaker 2: it out, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 2: Were you familiar with Paganini horror? Do you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on any of the other Paganini films that we mentioned
Speaker 2: in any of the pictures or the players that came
Speaker 2: up here right in? We would love to hear from you. Indeed,
Speaker 2: you have you have recommendations for other sort of banned
Speaker 2: themed horror films we have I think we haven't really
Speaker 2: looked at any of the key metal exploitation films out there,
Speaker 2: but there are some great ones to choose from. There
Speaker 2: are also some other good all female rocker horror in
Speaker 2: sci fi films. I could easily see this coming back
Speaker 2: and doing some more of those. So if you have
Speaker 2: favorites right in Howard the Duck, Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: forgot about that.
Speaker 3: It's got the main the main human and it is
Speaker 3: Leah Thompson as a rock and.
Speaker 2: Roll Oh there you go. Yeah, Howard the Duck is
Speaker 2: just certainly on the list. All right. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes
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Speaker 2: But you'll also find a list that includes all of
Speaker 2: the films we've covered on Weird House thus far, and
Speaker 2: sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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