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.

Michael_Elliott Contraband (1980) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Luca DiAngelo (Fabio Testi) is a loving husband who also just happens to be a cigarette smuggler. After his brother is assassinated he sets out for revenge and learns of a new family pushing cocaine and trying to take over the streets.Lucio Fulci was coming off his success of ZOMBIE when his career got a jump start, which led to a number of graphic horror movies. The director was also able to return to the EuroCrime genre with this film, which obviously isn't in the same league as THE GODFATHER but there's no question that if you like non-stop violence and gore then there's plenty of that here.Fulci would become known as "The Godfather of Gore" and this film here delivers exactly that. In fact, the gore is so over-the-top and shocking that I think it takes away from what little story is actually in. Some of the gore is so over-the-top that you can't help but laugh as if you were watching some nutty action picture. There's one woman who gets her face melted with a blow torch. There's another sequence where about a quart of blood and massive guts come flying from a shotgun blast to the stomach. There's one sequence where nothing happens but one death scene after another.The violence and gore is certainly what separates this from other films of this genre. The story itself is rather blame as you've basically got another mix between THE GODFATHER and DEATH WISH but Testi is always worth watching and he offers up a fine performance here. CONTRABAND certainly isn't a masterpiece but it's slightly entertaining as long as you don't mind sleaze and violence.

flamingyouth76 WARNING: SPOILERS THROUGHOUT ...but who cares because this is a complete stinker...First off, I am a proud owner of most of Fulci's flicks, so I am not anti-Fulci. I also love watching bad movies, so I'm not some artsy-fartsy type who bashes films a great deal, so rating a film this low is something special for me.This is a blatant rip-off of the Godfather series. Entire scenes are plagiarized, even if the lines are altered. Scenes like all the "godfathers" having a meeting to decide how to deal with a particular situation and the main character splitting with his wife are basically Godfather rip-offs. But this film is so bad that in the "godfather meeting" scene, they democratically take a vote by a raising of hands. Wait a minute...isn't the head of the family supposed to sit in silence and then TELL everyone what to do? What's with this "all in favor for choice one raise your hands" BS?! And the scene where the husband and wife split up is pathetic because in the next scene, she mysteriously shows up to take care of him and all is well! The plot is thread-bare and the dialogue is worse than a porn flick. Speaking of porn, what's up with the soundtrack? I think that very soundtrack was used in every porn flick from 1975-1985...you know, the one where you have a heavy, pulsing bass track with a screeching lead riff in the background. And when the porn track switches off, again with the plagiarizing...I'm sure the track is just a slightly altered version of the Godfather soundtrack.Yes, this is a gory film. But it dragged so much in-between the violent scenes, I found myself fast-forwarding. The gore ranges from great bloody squibs to totally fake effects like the candle-in-the-face scene. But there are some spectacularly gory sequences that work, and the rape, while never actually shown, will make you squirm just because of the screams of the actress. I must say, she really went for it.Overall, not really worth the effort. If you can get a 2 or 3 minute montage of the gore, that's what I'd go for.

Coventry The legendary and beloved (to some) Italian demigod Lucio Fulci usually was one of the first directors to quickly cash in on temporarily popular trends in cinema but, for some reason, it took him until the early 80's to participate in the giant success of explicitly violent and relentless crime-thrillers. Fellow director-friends like Umberto Lenzi ("Almost Human"), Ruggero Deodato ("Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man"), Sergio Martino ("Violent Professionals") and Enzo Castellari ("Street Law") had been making loads of money with their outrageous cop-thrillers since the early 70's already, but Fulci didn't benefice from the profitable sub genre until the release of "Contraband". Arguably the best years of the trend were already over when Fulci came along or maybe the script just isn't strong enough, but "Contraband" is one of the director's most uneven accomplishments; do I even daresay a minor disappointment. Luca Di Angelo has a loving wife and son, and along with his brother Mickey he's the most successful cigarette-smuggler in the whole of Naples. The two brothers live in perfect harmony and understanding with the other eminent mafia clans in town and not even the police bothers them too much. When first his brother Mickey, and subsequently all the other befriended mafia leaders are barbarically slaughtered, Luca swears to avenge them. He quickly discovers the French immigrant smuggler "Il Marsigliesi" is responsible for the murders, as he intends to forcefully take over the entire smuggling business in Naples. The story can be summarized really quickly, and yet usually the story lines of these euro-crime films are extremely convoluted and full of far-fetched twists. Fulci's script is rather rudimentary, with either no red herring or very predictable ones and no sudden surprises or genuine shock-revelations. But there's some good news as well! Whatever "Contraband" lacks in originality, Fulci compensates in excessive amounts of outrageous violence and totally gratuitous gore! These criminals don't just shoot each other with one bullet, no, they keep firing until either the intestines fall out, or the faces are transformed into nasty piles of rotten meat-leftovers. The methods of torturing used by the malevolent French gangsters include horrible face-burnings and sadistic anal rapes. It actually looks like Lucio was once again more interested in making another gross horror movie, and who the hell are we to complain about that? The acting performances are all below average, even crime/giallo regular Fabio Testi is out of shape, and even the use of music and photography aren't at all spectacular. Recommended to trained fans of Italian crime thrillers and Lucio Fulci, newcomers to either of them are advised to postpone their viewing of "Contraband" until you've seen some of the aforementioned titles.