At least that what I think he says. Contraband is Lucio Fulci trying his hand at the Italian Crime genre, adding his very own touch to the proceedings, and producing what results in a very gory thriller with all his eccentricities intact. Set in Naples, it involves small time crooks Luca and his brother Mickey, who are heavily involved in the smuggling of cigarettes. After a raid on their operations, they both seek to find the grass who's been trying to mess things up for them. But who is it? After much accusation and conspiring, it turns out there's a new boss on the street, wanting to flood Naples with drugs and willing to wipe out the competition at any cost. Contraband is a very slow moving film at first, but in a good way. Luca doesn't even start getting payback until the half hour mark, and there's a definite lack of car chases and gun battles that we've enjoyed before in films like The Big Racket and Violent Professionals. Fulci approaches the story from a different angle, showing us the various levels of the criminal hierarchy in Naples, introducing us to a myriad of characters, and then, basically, killing them all off in a very gory fashion. It's not action packed, but when the violence happens on screen it's extremely gory. This film ain't for the kids!There's gore here to rival The Beyond and Zombie Flesh Eaters. Throats and stomachs are blown out, someone has their face burned off, and a man is very graphically shown having the back of his head blown off. Add to that the very cool scene in the disco (You can see it on YouTube), Fabio Testi's presence, and the overall laid back atmosphere, and you've got a great film right here.There's a good few cameos from Italian Movie land - Romano Puppo, Venantini Venantino and Fulci himself. The Region 0 Blue Underground version is the one to have.

Here's another one outside the horror genre for director Lucio Fulci. He crafts a brutally biting, if disjointed Italian crime melodrama that serves to make you squirm in it gratuitous acts of extremely depraved violence and sleaziness. Fulci definitely left his calling card on this one, with many unforgettably unflinching nasty moments (like an uncomfortable face-melting scene). The superfluous gore and mean-spirited nature is great, but a lack of any real tension-building does hurt it. The twisty story is frank and unspectacular even with its shifty chain of bleak events and the script is weakly penned (the unsuitable humour when included falling flat), but being broken up by its impulsively vivid action stunts (nice use of slow-motion too) and gorgeous Naples' backdrop, leaves quite a hypnotic imprint. Sergio Salvati's brashly sharp and tight camera-work, interlocks with Fulci's kinetic visual bursts and rounding it off nicely is composer Fabio Frizzi's ever-changing, saucy music score that doesn't lye down. Performances are workably tailored. There's a humanely chiselled and honest performance by Fabio Testi. Marcel Bozuffi makes for a great smarmy, calculating French Mafia Don trying to take over Testi's character's turf. Ivana Monti, Ferdinand Murolo, Saverio Marconi and Guido Alberti provide able support. Quite an edgy, blunt and vicious crime joint that basically gets it kicks off its effectively rousing, if scandalous violence than anything more.

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.

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.