#I have always thought the syphilis theory was nonsense

[magratpudifoot]

This is a perfect distillation of why I love this wacky book, and why I have spent the last two decades rambling to everyone who will listen about why every big-budget adaptation misses the point, even the ones I like.

I would like to add my strong recommendation that anyone who wants a similarly sweet but even more bafflingly, inexplicably weird novel should read Lady of the Shroud. I had the joy of listening to an audio recording in a setting where I didn't even know how long it was, so I was thoroughly unprepared for how many plot points there were, much less what any one of them would turn out to be. It is a wild ride, especially if you are trying to work out how Stoker felt about colonialism and feminism.

(HEAVY warning about Islamophobia in Lady of the Shroud--if you think Dracula's tirade about "Turkey-land" was hard to stomach, imagine it more bluntly racist and coming directly from the protagonists as an integral part of the plot. But if you lived through US propaganda in the early 2000s you have almost certainly heard worse.)

by the way on this the first day of dracula season let me just say that if you are wondering whether you, yes you personally, should sign up for dracula daily this year to see what all the fuss is about, the answer is unequivocally Yes, Do It. dracula is one of the weirdest books i have ever read (if you like i was are only familiar with it through cultural osmosis you are in for basically unrelenting surprise when you dive into the actual text), a horror novel about train schedules, an action movie about archival diligence. it’s an extremely victorian novel that i really do think speaks to our time both in spite and because of the extent to which it’s a perfect distillation of what fears and values the british empire was haunted by in the twilight it didn’t yet see coming. it’s funny by accident but also on purpose - like, really, really funny - and scary and gross and horny and strange and romantic by accident and also on purpose and if i had to choose one word to capture its emotional mood i would say sweet. discovering it in the real-time serialized format offered by dracula daily was honestly a highlight of my year and one of the most fun and rewarding reading experiences i’ve ever had, and its mix of silliness and earnestness i really think makes it a weirdly well suited novel for pondering on this particular website. it’s a love story baby just say yes!

[johnnymundano]

Paganini Horror (1989)

Directed by Luigi Cozzi

Screenplay by Luigi Cozzi and Daria Nicolodi

Music by Vince Tempera

Country: Italy

Running time: 82 minutes

CAST

Daria Nicolodi as Sylvia Hackett

Jasmine Maimone as Kate

Pascal Persiano as Daniel

Maria Cristina Mastrangeli as Lavinia

Michel Klippstein as Elena

Pietro Genuardi as Mark Singer

Luana Ravegnini as Rita

Giada Cozzi as Sylvia (child)

Elena Pompei as Sylvia's mother

Donald Pleasence as Mr. Pickett

Paganini Horror is a terrible 1989 Italian horror movie set in a decrepit Venetian villa where a terrible (mostly) girl pop group film a terrible video for a terrible song based on the terrible idea of using cursed music by Paganini. The aural nonsense these tinsel wits conjure summons the cranky spirit of the deceased composer to dispatch them one by one in imaginative, but seriously underfunded ways. And probably to stop them screaming, because, hoo boy, do these ladies scream. If you are a massive fan of women screaming Paganini Horror is the movie for you, my unusual friend. Much of the running time of Paganini Horror involves neither Paganini nor horror but rather women running around what seems like one corridor and three rooms screaming. Occasionally they all meet up and scream at each other in the same room, or that one bloody corridor. I swear at some points they bounce up and down and flap their hands while screaming like overwrought teenagers at a pop concert.

Which is ironic since they are a pop group themselves. They are the kind of fantastically talented (mostly) girl band who do the female cause no favours at all; the kind who play their guitars by keeping their fingers immobile and flat on the strings while provocatively moving their hips about while pulling faces which suggest they are experiencing a sexy form of menstrual cramp. The singer, Kate (Jasmine Maimone), doesn’t have an instrument because she is too busy prancing about, trying to see which she can open wider, her eyes or her mouth. The token bloke, Daniel (Pascal Persiano), is stuck behind the drums because no one wants to see his exposed belly button. I think they sing Bon Jovi’s terrible “You Give Love a Bad Name” but it’s kind of hard to tell. Anyway, they are so bad the movie doesn’t give the band a name (I think; I don’t really care), so we’ll call them The Chilblains. Whatever song The Chilblains are excreting, it isn’t good enough for their producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli) whose ears apparently work,  so Kate and Lavinia shout at each other, and things get so heated that Kate almost pushes a stool over but Lavinia arrests its fall just in time. Rock and roll Babylon! The Chilblains need new material to get them another million seller, and fast!

Daniel, the male drummer, sources some groovy material which will get the band back on track by, apropos of nothing, meeting a twitchy Donald Pleasence in a disused warehouse and purchasing a lost Paganini composition. Apparently, actually writing some decent music fails to occur to Daniel. The girls go wild for the fab synthed up sounds of groovy Paganini, and Lavinia books them into a spooky old house Paganini once passed water in, now owned by Daria Nicolodi’s Sylvia Hackett. The idea is to get top horror director Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi) to make a smashing pop vid and get The Chilblains back shifting millions again. Unfortunately the video is shit. Even more unfortunately the restless spirit of Paganini is so upset by his music being co-opted  by talentless chancers that it starts knocking them off in unintentionally amusing ways. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a woman burned alive in a poorly constructed giant violin case, baby.

Niccolò Paganini (b.1782) was a real person who probably didn’t live to see a woman burned alive in a poorly constructed giant violin case, but he was a legendarily amazeballs Genoan violinist. While Paganini Horror is hardly a fit cinematic tribute, he is a good choice for a spooky killer. Much like Cher, he is purported to have consorted with the devil, selling his soul in return for prodigious talent. Back then, see, there were no video games or movies for unimaginative reactionaries to blame everything on, so in desperation bits of wood that could make sounds such as the violin were considered the “devil’s instrument”, indicative of poor moral character and likely to cause an excess of excitement. And so extravagant was Paganini’s talent that it was thought only a satanic source could explain it. Or, y’know, he was talented and practiced a lot. Your call. Paganini died in 1840, possibly from mercury poisoning from being treated for syphilis. Maybe from tuberculosis. I don’t know, what am I, a historian? Paganini’s spookiness survived after his death to the extent that he wasn’t laid to rest until 1876, when priests finished debating what they should do with him. Priests apparently had a lot of time on their hands back then. None of that matters since all Paganini Horror is bothered about is Paganini was very musical and a little bit eerie.

Unfortunately looking up Niccolò Paganini on The Internet turns out to be a lot more exciting than watching Paganini Horror. Particularly finding out that all his teeth fell out from his syphilis treatment. But if you are inclined towards terrible Italian horror movies Paganini Horror has the odd slender wisp of a delight. There’s the ever twinkly Donald Pleasence, being all sinister and stuff; and you get quite  a bit more of him than I was expecting, which is nice. Unsatisfactory Italian horror movies form a  magical late stage in Pleasence’s career, where he basically rocks up acting in a movie which exists only in his head, and ends up being the most interesting thing in the movie outside of his head. Although genre legend (and co-scripter) Daria Nicolodi is intermittently to be seen acting, mostly she just goes with the whole screaming thing. Michel Klippstein as Elena is the best thing in the movie, but not for her acting. Unfortunately it’s because for the bulk of the movie she wears a nasty green lycra jump suit studded with a nonsensical pattern of holes. It’s kind of fascinating in a wholly abysmal way. Paganini Horror isn’t always terribly interesting so you may often find your mind wandering, wondering just how sweaty Michel Klippstein’s get-up got. I bet they had to burn that outfit once the filming stopped. Ew! In the interests of decorum I shall draw a discreet veil of “mostly adequate” over the other performances.

About on a par with the less than impressive acting is Luigi Cozzi’s relentlessly apathetic direction which exacerbates rather than disguises the clearly near lethal budgetary constraints. But would any more money have helped a horror movie helmed by someone so determined to so cluelessley fart away every death scene? Probably not. Make no mistake, Paganini Horror is not only terrible but, worse, it is often quite boring. This is quite a feat since the killer wears a gold mask and looks like a low budget musketeer prancing about and, as comically awesome as it is regrettably underutilised, there is also a gold violin with a spring loaded blade in the base. It’s like Cozzi has accepted a bet to make everything as tedious as humanly possible. In theory Paganini Horror has some clever ideas and creative slaughter, in practice however it is a drearily slow crawl punctuated by tedious screaming and hilariously cheap-shit SFX shenanigans. The best (i.e. worst) example is “The Invisible Barrier” which elicits some fantastic (i.e. rubbish) mime action as our cast pretend to be pushing against something that isn’t there, it also has a car crash into it but…off-screen! and a character is crushed to death by it, which just means the crew press a sheet of glass onto her face to distort it. Eyerolling never had it so good.

Be warned, sensation seekers of all ages, sure, Paganini Horror all sounds very camp and cheesetastic, but it is neither campy nor cheesy enough. It takes some  weird anti-talent to render dull a movie which has a record producer who can identify a fungus by sight as being one used in the 18th century to give Stradivarius violins their unique sound. (I believe Kanye West has the same ability.) Don’t be fooled if any of that sounds fun; Paganini Horror is fun, but not fun enough by far. This Italian mis-fire is fit only for masochistic die-hards like myself rather than your average horror punter up for a good time. Ultimately then, not so much a case of Paganini Horror, but rather Paganini Torpor.