Ameriatch
One of the best films i have seen
Cleveronix
A different way of telling a story
Helloturia
I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.
Sam Panico
Imagine Fulci making a cop movie. Imagine that the budget ran out two weeks in. Imagine that real mobsters paid for the film, asking for a title change and for more violence (like Fulci was going to say no). Don't imagine. All of these things are wonderfully true and make Contraband such a weird addition to your Fulci collection.Luca Di Angelo smuggles near Naples with his brother Mickey. They have a close call with the police and suspect a rival gangster, Scherino, of turning them in. After sharing their concerns with their boss Perlante, oen of Mickey's prize horses is killed and a fake police roadblock leads to Fulci paying homage (or straight up ripping off, depending on your perspective) to the scene where Sonny dies in The Godfather. Luca escapes death while his brother is not so lucky. Despite warnings that he should leave town, he has a speedboat funeral for his brother and vows revenge. Breaking into Scherino's house, he almost kills the man before running into his henchmen. He gets his ass kicked, but his life is spared after the boss tells him he had no part in the death of his brother.Adele, Luca's wife, wants him to forget this life. But he's in deep after discovering that a vicious French criminal named The Marsigliese is responsible. We meet this criminal during a drug deal, where he responds to a bad batch of heroin by burning a woman's face with a blowtorch. If you haven't realized that you are watching a Lucio Fulci movie, this would be the point in the film where you realize that fact.The Marsigliese starts killing all of the Mafia leaders so that he can become the sole boss of Naples. Even Perlante is nearly killed, only being saved by the fact that his chief capo was having sex with his mistress and triggered a bomb under the bed. After a meeting between Luca, Perlante and The Marsigliese, where they discuss working together, Luca warns his fellow smugglers that if the French boss has his way, there will be more drugs, more overdoses and more problems - with less money for all of them.The police are using all of the intercine battling to round up smugglers, but Scherino saves Luca and suggests they work together. They meet at Perlante's house, but Luca smells The Marsigliese's cologne. That's when gunmen bust in and shoot everyone but Luca, who escapes by crashing through a window. Scherino is mortally wounded, but not before shooting Perlante in the neck, killing him.Again, in case you wonder who directed this film, The Marsigliese kidnaps Adele and demands Luca turn over his smuggling operation over the phone...and then plays him the sounds of our hero's wife being beaten and gang-raped. Luca unites all of the retired mob bosses and old guard bosses, who are sick of hearing about the Frenchman taking over. They take out most of his men and Luca guns him down in a garbage-strewn alley in a scene packed with blood spraying everywhere.Adele and rescued and Morrone, the leader of the old school mob guys, tells the police that he has no idea who Luca is.Contraband was made as Fulci was starting to claim his gore crown. It's his only crime movie, but it's not a bad effort. And if you're looking for his trademark tics, as you've read above, this film is full of them. It has way more blood and guts than any film of this type and subverts the genre it should be in, so it's quite similar to how Fulci treated sword and sorcery with Conquest. This may not be one of his best-known films, but it's worth checking out.
Comeuppance Reviews
Luca Di Angelo (Testi) is a Naples-based cigarette smuggler. He and his smuggling buddies ride their speedboats up and down the Italian waterways to deliver the goods, but it's never anything really harmful like drugs. Luca has a wife and young son, and doesn't want to jeopardize their lives. Things turn deadly serious when a French drug kingpin, known as The Marsigliese (Bozzuffi) decides he wants to move into the Italian territory, with hard drugs and all. Being a sadistic torturer, he murders, tortures, disfigures or mutilates anyone who gets in his way. When his wife Adele (Monti) is kidnapped, the normally mild-mannered Luca goes on a rampage of revenge the likes of which Naples has never seen. Will Luca get out alive? While not, strictly speaking, a Poliziotteschi (because the role of the police is pretty limited and it's not a procedural), director Fulci has crafted some kind of cross between the crime films prevalent at the time, and the gore films he is most known for these days. It's all beautifully shot by cinematographer/master Sergio Salvati, and the make-up effects brilliantly done by artist/master Franco Di Girolamo and his team, and the music is stellar as well, done by the great Fabio Frizzi. These men and others help make Contraband a very well-made and entertaining movie. But it's not for everyone. Anyone who reads this site will surely love it, but the level of violence is definitely over the top - in an awesome way, of course.You have to transport yourself back to 1980 - while characters are playing Pong and going to the discotheque (while wearing some amazing clothing), they also are being subjected to what had to have been new heights (or depths, depending on your outlook) of blood, guts, and gore. Even today with our jaded and experienced eyes, it's powerful - imagine what they thought back then? There's other things that presage the oncoming 80's as well, such as the sax on the soundtrack, a couple of blow-ups and fights, and a kid with the time-honored bowl haircut.Fabio Testi is charismatic and likable, and he has a truly amazing fur coat at one point. Thankfully, Contraband was made long before political correctness. But besides all that, it's just a good, solid movie, well-made on all fronts. Fulci was truly a maestro and this is one of the feathers in his cap. He was undoubtedly a man ahead of his time, yet firmly rooted in the traditions of the past. The way he marries the two is an example of his no-rules genius. Look for him in a tiny cameo at the very end of the movie as one of the shooters. The Blue Underground DVD is excellent, although it would have been nice to have an Italian track with subtitles, instead of a no-options dubbed version. But that's a minor quibble, as this fine film is well worth owning.Contraband is just great. If you haven't already, we definitely recommend purchasing the DVD.
Witchfinder General 666
Although no highlight of the Italian Crime genre, Lucio Fulci's "Luca Il Contrabbandiere" aka "Contraband" is a rough, tough-minded and ultra-violent Gangster flick that certainly delivers, especially for a Fulci fan. Lucio Fulci is widely renowned as the 'Godfather Of Gore', and "Contraband" is a movie that is certainly not going to deprive him of this well-deserved reputation. Although the plot may not be as original as it was the case with many other of the (generally violent) Italian Crime Thrillers of the 70s and early 80s, "Contraband" scores in means of roughness, intransigence and gruesome, gory violence.Luca Di Angelo (Fabio Testi) and many of his friends make a living as cigarette smugglers in Naples. After their refusal to deal with drugs instead of cigarettes, ruthless drug dealers, amongst them a sadistic gangster from Marseille start to target the cigarette smugglers' families. Luca, however, is not the kind of man who gives in to threats...Fabio Testi, who had already worked with Lucio Fulci in "Four Of The Apocalypse" in 1975 (aside Tomas Milian and Lynne Frederick), delivers a good leading performance as Luca, and Marcel Bozzuffi is wonderfully evil in his role of the villain. I also found several of the supporting actors, such as Guido Alberti (who only has a very small role) very good. Some other supporting cast members deliver rather bad performances. The violence is pretty brutal and includes several very nasty scenes of torture and sexual violence. There are some scenes that don't really fit in, such as some cheesy looking and kitschy slow-mo sequences of horses at a racecourse, and the music is sometimes out of place, but all in all, the movie's qualities come up for its flaws. "Contraband" is certainly no highlight of Italian crime cinema, but a brutal and uncompromising flick that highly entertains. Fans of Lucio Fulci and Crime thrillers of the rough kind should be pleased.
Camera Obscura
CONTRABAND (Lucio Fulci - Italy 1980).It's great to see all the familiar faces from the heydays of European bad cinema together again. Bad film-making without the slightest wit or irony. Those were the days... They all lined up for this very sleazy and sadistic "Poliziottesco" by Lucio Fulci, his only foray into the crime genre, and I'm glad it was the only one he made. Fabio Testi is the focal point as Luca Di Angelo, an idealistic family man and cigarette smuggler in this tale of mob warfare in economically depressed Naples. When a rival gang massacres his brother and abducts his wife, Luca goes berserk and triggers an all-out mob war, with virtually every Don in town getting involved.Testi is OK in the lead and Marcel Bozzufi (THE FRENCH CONNECTION) makes quite an impact as "The Margliese", a Frenchman who tries to muscle his way into the Neapolitan crime world. He really is the most sadistic and ruthless crime figure you'll ever see. I figure this film would satisfy most Fulci fans. Torture, rape, bare flesh, endless shoot-outs and plenty of sleaze and violence make this slightly entertaining. I could sit through this because there's quite a lot of action and it's never really dull, but otherwise beware. This film has some of the most atrocious English dubbing I know , real bad, only made worse by the already howlingly awful dialog and some wooden acting. What about that club scene? I think they took some dialog from a totally different movie there (Blue Underground's release didn't include an Italian audiotrack), it didn't make sense whatsoever. Even by grade-Z poliziotteschi standards, this was pretty mystifying.The film also features a soundtrack with some Italian pseudo-rock 1980 style. I can't really describe it, but it was annoying and totally inappropriate for the scenes. Fulci does show some of his earlier cinematic flair in some (especially interior) scenes, but then ruins it all in the next with bad lighting and bad editing, like showing somebody's head blown off, before the actual shot is being fired. In an earlier comment someone remarked the gore was very realistic. Well, what can I say? If you think blood looks like strawberry juice, I guess it does.Camera Obscura --- 4/10
