Daria Nicolodi

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2021) I can be lenient on bad movies that show some promise, and Paganini Horror almost gets there. I was momentarily charmed, at some point, by the horror film’s emphasis on an all-female rock band and, more generally, weaving a strong musical theme in what remains a low-budget horror film. Daria Nicolodi is not uninteresting as the protagonist, a rock-goddess lead singer who gets to tangle with the demonic presence left by the evil composer Paganini. But the film steadily degenerates throughout its running time, becoming nothing more than a series of weird stuff piled one upon the other, with very little coherence and even worse plotting. By the last act, it’s one horror cliché after another, and whatever promise the early section of the film may have shown has completely disappeared. This is where some background information may help in understanding what happened: In a few words, Paganini Horror was made quickly and cheaply to capitalize on the anticipated success of Klaus Kinski’s Paganini, with writer-director Luigi Cozzi dumped in the project at the last minute and told to do well with a slashed budget requiring an eleventh-hour rewrite. No wonder the result is so poor — in fact, we’re almost tempted to applaud Cozzi for managing to complete the project under such circumstances. Still, that doesn’t do much for us viewers right now — so it’s probably best to avoid Paganini Horror entirely.