The Wait Is Finally Over: Massacre At Central High!

Wow, I never thought this day would come.  Subversive Cinema announced a special edition DVD of Renee Daalder's notorious Massacre At Central High well over a decade ago.  It never materialized, and eventually the rights wound up with Dark Sky.  Fans got excited, waited and well, nothing came of that either.  Then in 2013, Cult Epics announced special edition blu-rays of two Daalder films: Hysteria and, yes, Massacre At Central High.  Well, Hysteria happened, but for mysterious reasons, Massacre's release was cancelled.  Finally, in the summer of 2015, when Synapse announced it, I said to myself that I'd believe it when I saw it.  Now, Synapse has a history of taking their time with titles, but it's been over five years.  It was really looking as if Massacre was some kind of cursed film... until, lo and behold, it's actually here!

But before everyone gets too excited, I should warn anyone considering blind-buying this that Massacre At Central High is not for everyone.  Anyone expecting a traditional high school-based slasher film along the lines of Prom Night or Graduation Day better be ready for Animal Farm in a high school instead.  Except, of course, it's a completely bonkers, wonderfully 70s Animal Farm with outrageous kills that wound up providing the structural skeleton of Heathers years later.  Massacre isn't scary, but it is inventive and funny, even if it's hard to gauge just how intentional all of the laughs it inspires are.  What is clearly intentional is the ambition: from the major stunts and set pieces to the allegorical storyline that's cramming in as many ideas as it possibly can into their distributors' mandated premise.  It's an art film masquerading as an exploitation film that also fulfills its every exploitative promise and then some.  But it's all so untethered from realism, shamelessly dated (we're talkin' bell-bottoms, hippies and a student lounge that looks like my grandmother's old living room) and unbothered with tone that conventional audiences will be repelled like opposed magnets.  But ever since I saw a print of it at an Exhumed Show in 2003, I was in love.

Now, I've detailed the crazy history of this film finally getting the special edition it's always deserved.  But that's not to say it's never been on DVD at all before.  There's actually been a plethora of fullscreen, barebones gray market discs in just about every region around the world.  Unfortunately, I sold my first edition off long before I started this site, but I still have the 2004 German DVD from X-Rated I replaced it with.  It's as barebones and fullscreen as the rest of them, but at least it wasn't interlaced with macro-blocky night skies, so it was a step up.  They pretty much all shared the same master, but I'd read at the time that the limited edition (666 copies) X-Rated DVD made the best use of it out of any disc around the world.  And you can see below how that looks.  But now, of course, it's been completely trampled by Synapse's progress, as they've just released the world's first HD edition in a DVD/ BD combo pack, limited edition (4000 copies) steelbook.  And it's a whole new experience.

1) 2004 X-Rated DVD; 2) 2020 Synapse DVD; 3) 2020 Synapse BD.

The one thing you can say for the DVD: it's open matte.  Synapse does reveal a little bit along the sides, but it's mostly about correctly framing the film by matting it down.  As you can see, the DVD is boxy with a lot of dead vertical space; the blu is smartly composed.  Maybe not perfectly composed, though.  The DVD is clearly wrong at 1.31:1, but Synapse's 1.78:1 should probably be a little wider, too.  Their booklet explains this, stating that the masters were given to them by Daadler himself, who'd supervised the transfer "of the 35mm element used" himself, and that "the delivered files were composed in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and Synapse Films had no access to the original, uncorrected/ unrestored full-aperture film scan."

So this may not be the ultimately perfect 4k restoration of our ideal dreams, but it sure is a beauty far beyond anything we've ever been able to see before.  The DVD has all sorts of issues like edge enhancement, too much contrast and film damage dancing in and out of nearly every frame.  Synapse of course corrects all of that, but even if you don't allow for previous editions' faults, this is a gorgeous transfer with very natural colors and authentic grain.  In fact, the production notes explain the years long wait for this edition with the extensive restoration they did to Daalder's imperfect scan in a massive effort akin to their celebrated work on Tenebrae.  And the screenshots posted above speak clearly to the success of their endeavor.

Apparently a lot of restoration work went into the audio as well, and the new DTS-HD 2.0 presentation of the original mono sounds cleaner and less compressed than X-Rated's track.  Synapse also includes all new, optional English subtitles, which none of the old DVDs ever had.  One small thing X-Rated has going for it, though, is an alternate German dub, if you're at all interested in that.

And that's about the only thing it's got, because like all the other DVDs, it certainly doesn't have any worthwhile extras.  All we get are trailers for an admittedly whopping 46 films in X-Rated's catalog... not including Massacre itself.  Synapse actually has the trailer, and a TV & radio spot.  But it also finally delivers on the long-promised special edition.  First of all, there's an excellent, 43-minute documentary by Red Shirt Pictures that interviews almost all of the main cast members as well as the first AD and DP.  It's full of fun anecdotes about the filming, and yes, they discuss the infamous Sexy Jeans version.  Then there's a series of audio interviews that play as an audio commentary with stars Andrew Stevens, Robert Carradine, Derrel Maury and Rex Steven Sikes.  We're warned up front that the first two don't remember much about Massacre (though they seemed to in the doc), so they talk more about their careers in general.  But we still get some interesting stories and unique tidbits about Massacre that didn't make the doc.  The only short-coming is that they don't have a lot of insight into the ideas behind the film itself and can mostly just reflect on their fond memories during the shoot.

For the headier stuff, we only have two things to rely on.  First is an audio interview with Daaler himself.  This plays as a second audio commentary, but only runs for the first twenty-five minutes.  He definitely solves a few mysteries fans will have wondered about, but the interview spends as much time asking him about his other film work and history as Massacre itself.  But since Daaler has passed, this is all we get, and it's a lot better than nothing.  The other insightful thing we have to work with is the booklet with liner notes by famous Fangorian Michael Gingold, who gets into this film's recognition from several important critics and even quotes the screenwriter of Heathers on his influence.  Besides all that, this release includes a stills gallery and comes in an impressive looking steelbook and slipcover.

Oh yeah, this release also includes Synapse's latest catalog, which still promises The Kindred and an all new 4k restoration of The Deadly Spawn as "coming soon."  If they match the level of quality they've reached with their last couple of releases, that'll be amazing.

Kooky Cozzi Paganini Horror! ...Now In HD!

If you like your stylish Italian horror flicks cheap, silly and weird, then you should already have this movie!  But if you haven't been collecting horror DVDs over a decade ago, you probably missed out on Luigi Cozzi's Paganini Horror. But unless you're hung up on your movies being, you know, good by some kind of objective or reasonable standard like a normal person, in which case you'll probably absolutely hate this movie. But assuming you're not one of those people, then I'm here to tell ya, this German import's worth tracking down.

Update 1/10/17 - 10/29/19:  Better yet, just buy the blu-ray!  Because Paganini Horror's been restored in HD for a new special edition from 88 and Severin Films.

If you're not familiar with this one, the plot is real simple. A guy buys a long lost score by the famous composer Niccolo Paganini from Donald Pleasance, who's also the devil or something along those lines. He gives it to his girlfriend, an aspiring rock star, to turn into a modern pop song with her band.  Their manager, Daria Nicolodi, who also might be evil, wants them to shoot their music video in an old mansion that's stuck in a time loop, where some little girl once killed her mother just like Paganini killed his bride and used her intestines to string his violin as part of his pact with the devil.  Plus, Paganini will be summoned in the flesh when the band plays his song, or maybe he's just a masked slasher, but either way his victims come back as ghosts and hmm, okay.  Maybe the plot's not so simple, or even quite comprehensible if you really stop to think about it.  But why would you do that?

It's a fun, attractive and charmingly daft little horror movie about a famous violinist come back from the dead to chase young people around a colorful music video set.  It's attractively shot, Paganini has a violin with a knife that shoots out of it, there are a couple gnarly kills, everybody's running around in silly costumes, the music is upbeat and catchy - including a couple, full blown pop rock performances - and they've got some great location photography.  On the other hand, the whole production is clearly low budget, and set pieces often look very cheap and the impressive casting of Pleasance is wasted with some bland third party dubbing (on the Italian and English audio tracks) and not terribly interesting dialogue... I mean, come on, he's the devil!  Plus, the story really is a mess.  It's co-written by three people, including Nicolodi, which should put this on par with Suspiria, right?  Yeah, no.

So, the cult German label put this out twice on DVD in the early 2000s; all the cool sites like Xploited and Diabolik used to have this in spades.  But now its long OOP.  The first version was a 2-disc set, with the uncut widescreen version and a slightly trimmed 4:3 Italian television cut.  The second disc with the TV cut doesn't have English language options, though, and there are many differences between the two versions except some blood has been trimmed and the picture's open matte.  So I just got the single disc edition, which is completely English friendly, and also happens to be a fully loaded special edition.  It's pretty awesome, except for one little thing: it's woefully non-anamorphic.

But that's not an issue anymore!  Paganini Horror has been restored in 2k from the original negative for blu-rays in both the UK (88 Films) and the US (Severin).  I went with the Severin for a reason I'll get into below, but as you'd expect, they both trample the non-anamorphic concerns with full 1080p HD transfers.

2003 X-Rated DVD top; 2019 Severin BD bottom.

The DVD's non-anamorphic, but at least it's not interlaced, taken from film elements (occasional flecks and dust pop up; but for the most part it's pretty clean) and in the director's presumably preferred 1.66:1 aspect ratio.  But yeah, it looks awfully compressed and low on detail in that tiny window.  The non-anamorphic presentation is a real bummer, because this is a film that relies a lot on its look. And now that we see the film in HD, well, it still looks a little on the grungy side.  I'd put that down more to a reflection of the film itself than its home video representation, except grain does appear pretty pixelated and artificial, so I'm not so sure.  It's unquestionably an improvement over the DVD, don't get me wrong; but I wonder if some Italian company's been sitting on this scan for a long time.  I suppose we're facing "how much money can we be expected to spend on a low-key Cozzi oddity?  We're lucky to get this in HD at all" deal, which is admittedly understandable.  Swinging the pendulum back to the positive side, Severin retains the 1.66:1 ratio with some pillar-boxing, but in comparison to the DVD, we see that they've unveiled more information along all four sides, which is good because the DVD always did feel a little tight.

And audio-wise, X-Rated provide the English, Italian and German mono 2.0 tracks, which is great because you get to hear the alternate voices.  But unfortunately, the only subtitles on-hand were in German, so us English speakers had to stick to the English track unless you're multilingual.  So score some more points for Severin, who include both the English and Italian (they did ditch the German dub), now in DTS-HD with optional English subtitles.  In fact, they include two subtitle options: the proper subtitles (faithful translation of the original Italian) and dubtitles (transcription of the English dub).  Researching it online, 88 also seems to have both audio tracks (in LPCM) with just the one subtitle track.

And did I mention packed special editions? Yes!  X-Rated starts out with a very informative audio commentary by director Luigi Cozzi.  He also provides an hour-long on-camera interview.  Plus, there's a brief clip of him speaking at a film festival.  So you really get his full story across all of that.  There's also a short video clip of him recording the commentary, for a little peek behind the curtain.  But then you have probably the most important extras of all: the deleted scenes.  Some of the deleted scenes aren't much, but others are really out there, because contrary to his producers, Cozzi wanted this to be a sci-fi film; so some of these scenes are pretty freakin' weird and out of left field.  They're not translated, but I'd say 90% percent of what's on sale here is visual spectacle, and the puzzling aspect of them being untranslated adds to the fun almost as much as it detracts.  This release also comes in a very cool looking "hardbox," which is essentially an oversized clamshell case, like those classic horror VHS boxes from the 80s.

Oh, and by the way, if you did get that 2-disc version, the only additional extras you'd receive are a couple trailers and a small photo gallery.  All the extras of substance are on the single-disc version.

2003 X-Rated DVD top; 2019 Severin BD bottom.

And now we get to why I opted for the Severin edition: the two blus have differing special features, and only Severin included those wild deleted scenes and alternate ending.  What's that?  Oh, why yes, that is an hour glass floating through outer space like some crazy Dr. Who acid flashback.  Somehow that fit into Cozzi's original vision about the devil and a house haunted by a famous violinist.  Yeah, so one little disappointment is that I was hoping Severin would drum up subtitles for these, but oh well.  These still look like they're ripped from a VHS tape, but the image is a little clearer than X-Rated, which was interlaced.

Severin also has the trailer, which was only on the 2-disc DVD set, and it's in HD here.  But they lost of the DVD's other extras, so die-hard fans may still want to track the X-Rated DVD down.  But only die-hard fans, because Severin has conducted their own 30+ minute interview with Cozzi, which really does a more than acceptable job presenting his insight and memories of the film that the DVD extras did.  Both releases also got an on-camera interview with Pietro Genuardi who played Mark, the music video director in the film.  Too bad neither party seems to have reached out to Maria Cristina Mastrangeli, who's been gracious enough to drop by in the comments here, but oh well.  Anyway, both Severin and 88 Films share the interviews, which were done by Freak-O-Rama - who I can't help but notice are starting to become one of the top guys in I-horror interviewing - and the trailer.  Where they diff is that 88 has an audio commentary by Troy Howarth, while Severin has those deleted scenes.  Also, if you bought their limited editions, 88 comes with a slip cover and booklet Eugenio Ercolani, while Severin's comes with a soundtrack CD.

I originally concluded this post by saying that, "Paganini Horror seems like an ideal candidate for a label like 88 Films," and hey, look what happened!  This is another one in what's becoming a regular pattern of 88 releasing it in the UK and Severin in the US.  Again, the deleted scenes were the deciding factor for me between the two, but the good news is that you can't go wrong either way, and casual buyers may want to just opt for whichever version doesn't require them to pay for overseas shipping.  It's great to see this film back in print so hopefully it can find its audience again.