Posts Tagged ‘Luigi Cozzi’


Paganini Horror

April 28th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1989    Runtime: 80′   Director: Luigi Cozzi
Writers: Luigi Cozzi, Daria Nicolodi, Raimondo Del Balzo  Cinematography: Franco Lecca
Music: Vince Tempera   Cast: Jasmine Maimone, Maria Cristina Mastrangeli, Daria Nicolodi,
Donald Pleasence, Pascal Persiano, Pietro Genuardi

The career of 80s synth rock monstrosity/siren Kate (Jasmine Maimone) seems to come to its natural end. At least if you ask her producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli), who has turned into quite a bitch from suffering through hours and hours of Kate’s “music” during the years, and so really doesn’t mind telling her charge how much she sucks. To make a long story short – Kate really needs a hit, and she needs it soon. Fortunately, her drummer Daniel (Pascal Persiano) knows a simple solution to his friend’s complicated problem, and buys a lost, never published and never publically performed song of possible devil dealer Paganini from a certain Mister Pickett (Donald Pleasance). The song, obviously being called “Paganini Horror”, just happens to be a really crappy 80s synth rock of the sort Lavinia deems a surefire hit.

Now Kate and her partners in crime just need to make a video (“just like Michael Jackson’s fantastic Thriller“). For that, they hire famous horror director Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi), who works alone, just like Wolverine. But where to shoot? Oh, right, in a derelict house in Venice that once belonged to Paganini where he supposedly made his pact with the devil and made violin strings from his girlfriend’s guts. It’s going to be quite a cost-efficient shoot – apart from Singer, Kate and her three co-musicians and Lavinia, there’s only the house’s owner, Sylvia Hackett (Daria Nicolodi), on set. Soon enough, the mandatory horrible things (and I don’t just mean Kate’s music) start happening.

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The Black Cat

March 31st, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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a.k.a.: il gatto nero / Demons 6: de Profundis / Demons 6: Armageddon / Dead Eyes
Year:
1989    Runtime: 89′   Director: Luigi Cozzi
Writer: Luigi Cozzi  Cinematography: Pasquale Rachini  Music: Vince Tempera
Cast: Florence Guerin, Urbano Barberini, Caroline Munro, Brett Halsey, Luisa Maneri

Not to be confused with all those other films about black cats, which comes especially easy in this case, because the black cat isn’t important here at all.

Plot? Oh right, there was something kinda-sorta plot-like hidden away in here somewhere. Ah, there it is: Director Marc Ravenna (Urbano Barberini) is trying to re-ignite his faltering career by making a semi-sequel to Argento’s Suspiria (wouldn’t that actually be a semi-sequel toInferno at this point in time?), based on a witch named Levana from an essay in De Quincey’s Suspiria De Profundis. If you just ignore that Levana isn’t actually a witch but a goddess and wasn’t invented by De Quincey, you’ll be as surprised as I was by the realization that someone working on the script for this one might have read the book the film’s talking about (and, going by the inclusion of an actual quote from Poe, even more than just a single book; Italy sure ain’t Hollywood). You can also be sure someone had seen Suspiria, what with parts of that movie’s theme playing on the soundtrack whenever someone mentions it or De Quincey’s book.

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Starcrash

August 15th, 2010 | article by | 3 Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: New World Pictures
year: 1979
runtime: 92′
director: Luigi Cozzi
cast: Caroline Munro, Marjoe Gortner,
Judd Hamilton, Joe Spinell,
David Hasselhoff, Christopher Plummer,
Nadia Cassini, Robert Tessier
writer: Luigi Cozzi
and Nat Wachsberger
cinematography: Paul Beeson
and Roberto D’Ettorre Piazzoli
music: John Barry
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com:
DVD | Blu-ray

Starcrash is due out on 2-disc special edition DVD and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory on September 14th. Both releases are currently available for pre-order through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Plot: The best spaceship pilot in the galaxy, sultry Stella Star (Caroline Munro), blasts into the haunted stars with faithful companions Akton (Marjoe Gortner) and robot Elle (Judd Hamilton) to find the lost son of the kindly Galactic Emperor (Christopher Plummer) and put an end to the scheming of evil Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell).

Absurd, incongruous and hilarious in more or less equal measure, Luigi Cozzi’s Starcrash is a monumental exercise in high camp produced with infectious enthusiasm and possessed of an unflinching adoration for old-school genre sensibilities. Though pushed into production by the success of the box office juggernaut Star Wars (the title, credited to producer Nat Wachsberger, is one of its more obvious allusions to the Lucas film), Star Crash owes itself to a far older science fiction and fantasy tradition – something writer and director Cozzi makes absolutely no bones about.

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Luigi Cozzi hits high definition hard – “Starcrash” Blu-ray due out this September from Shout! Factory

January 26th, 2010 | article by | 3 Comments »
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Details (as they currently stand) are available at Blu-ray.com

At least the bad news of the day (that the upcoming Blu-ray of Joe Dante’s Piranha is delayed until August 3rd) is tempered with great news, that Luigi Cozzi’s ridiculous spaghetti sci-fi epic Starcrash will be making its hi-definition debut just a month later, on September 7th.  Also newly announced for Blu-ray release is Death Race 2000 (street date June 22nd), recently remade by Paul W.S. Anderson as Death Race.  With Shout! Factory given access to the extensive New World library, we can expect more good things in the future.

Starcrash stars Caroline Munroe (At the Earth’s Core), Marjoe Gortner (Earthquake, Food of the Gods), David Hasselhoff (tv’s Knight Rider), and Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music).  Special visual effects by Germano Natali (Monster Shark) and Armando Valcauda (Hercules).  Screenplay by Luigi Cozzi and Nat Wachsberger (The Mafia Wants Blood).  Original score by John Barry (King Kong, The Black Hole).  Directed by Luigi Cozzi.



Cozzilla

September 14th, 2008 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Godzilla / Godzilla il re dei mostri
company: Cozzilla S.R.L.
year: 1977
runtime: 88′ / 106′
country: Italy
director: Luigi Cozzi
cast: Raymond Burr, Takeshi Shimura,
Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi,
Akira Takarada, Akihiko Hirata
special effects: Armando Valcauda
Not on home video

The year nineteen seventy seven is all but immortal in the eyes of this site’s curator – it will be forever remembered as the year when dinosaurs rose to attack vacationers around Mt. Fuji, school girls were devoured by home accents, and the world was introduced for the first (though, sadly, not the last) time to the bloated mythology of STAR WARS. Indeed, in this viewers mind, there is no year more important to the history of bizarre film than those absurdly bountiful 365 days.

But when shuffling through 1977′s mountainous shrine of the strange, one title alone rises above the rest as a near-forgotten testament to just how weird the film world can get. I speak not of the ridiculous LEGEND OF THE DINOSAURS AND MONSTER BIRDS, the surreal HOUSE, or the derivatively entertaining STAR WARS, but of the Japanese cum American cum Italian (twice!) epic best known as COZZILLA.

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