80's Italian Horror Part Twelve - (Luigi Cozzi Edition)

CONTAMINATION

(1980)

Dir - Luigi Cozzi

Overall: MEH

 

For his immediate follow-up to the space opera Starcrash, writer/director Luigi Cozzi stuck with the science fiction angle on a meager budget with Contamination, (Alien Contamination, Toxic Spawn, Larvae).  Ridley Scott's Alien clearly inspired the basic concept of extraterrestrial spores that hatch from a mother baddie, but the story is set on earth to save on finances and is a wretchedly boring affair.  At the producer's insistence, barely noticeable James Bond elements were added to the script and this along with an already forgettable plot and equally dull characters further minimizes the already insufficient amount of money-shot set pieces.  The gore was substantial enough to make this a video nasty and it is a hoot when unsuspecting saps get too close to the musical monster eggs that spew green acid and make people explode.  Cozzi initially wanted to use stop-motion for the cycloptic alien in the finale, but a practical effects puppet was instead brought in; something that was probably for the best as the director's quick editing of it makes it look about as good as can be expected.

 

PAGANINI HORROR
(1989)
Dir - Luigi Cozzi
Overall: MEH

The infamous Paganini Horror is indeed one of the more hare-brained Italian horror films of the 1980s, yet because of this, it has an unintended, ridiculous charm that many other strictly humdrum affairs lack.  The title and wicked awesome poster by Enzo Sciotti came before one word of a story was ever jotted down and an entirely different version of it involving a surreal haunted house that reversed time was rejected before the final script was finished.  Producers ultimately vetoed a number of gore sequences and rushed the filming along on the cheap, resulting in a mess of a movie that meanders as much as it indulges in pure, Euro-horror silliness.  The premise of a terrible female rock band shooting a video in a villa after lifting cursed music from Paganini lends itself to people getting electrocuted by cartoon lighting, screaming "bastard" a lot, getting terrorized by a guy in a mask and a violin that has a blade protruding from it, and several prime opportunities for characters to be overly dramatic while yelling some more.  Several of these moments are positively wacky, but they are also few and far between, with the only constant being how stupid it all is.  Donald Pleasence shows up for three scenes at least though he could not be bothered to provide his own English dub, plus Daria Nicolodi, (who collaborated on the finished screenplay), is always a treat.

 

THE BLACK CAT

(1989)

Dir - Luigi Cozzi

Overall: MEH

From a production standpoint, The Black Cat, (Il gatto nero, Demons 6: De Profundis), was doomed to turn out like it did; meaning a hilariously incoherent mess of ideas that seem as if they were assembled by blindly throwing a dart at a wall.  One of about seven-hundred and ninety movies to be named off of the Edgar Allan Poe story, this one has the most nothing to do with it out of any of them and only features a few quick shots of felines that were allegedly added in post once the title was set.  Originally, this was to be the third in Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy, but once Daria Nicolodi turned in her script to potential producer Dino De Laurentiis, he passed on it, Argento moved on to other projects, and he and Nicolodi broke-up.  Director Luigi Cozzi then got involved and tried his best to separate it from Argento's series before new producer Menahem Golan of Cannon fame tweaked the project even more, thus rendering it a bonkers mess.  It has a meta angle concerning a script whose titular witch comes to life in Florence Guérin's dreams or something, the characters even sit around discussing Suspiria and the same collection of essays by Thomas De Quincey that inspired Argento's work, plus the famous Goblin theme from said movie shows up just to slam the point home.  From there, it all goes off the rails with nonsense about aliens, resurrection, hallucinations, Caroline Munroe almost getting naked, and Brett Halsey being an intense producer in a wheelchair.