![]() ![]() The film features an unflinching close-up Bunsen Burner torture scene, stabbings, a truly nasty rape and bullets riddling throats, heads, stomachs and pretty much every conceivable part of the human body. The performances are standard of Italian exploitation too (although the English dub on offer alongside the original Italian audio is superior to most), but that’s not really what you come to a Fulci film for, is it? We’re here for the rough stuff, and boy does Lucio deliver on that front. And, to be fair, Contraband, despite being a lot more cogently plotted than Fulci’s more famous horror work, is hardly a masterpiece of story-telling. ![]() But then you’ve probably already guessed that. Well, yes, it’s the latter, let’s face it. Can Luca fight the rival gangsters, whilst avoiding the police hot on their tails, and can he protect his long-suffering wife and young son whilst he does it? Or will the whole thing end up as a grim bloodbath with no-one’s innocence left intact? Unfortunately it turns out that Scherino had nothing to do with it, and there may be new bosses in town. At Mickey’s funeral, symbolically carried out in the Naples harbour, Luca vows revenge for his brother, and goes after Scherino, a mob boss he suspects of ordering the hit. On their way back from the stables they encounter a police roadblock which turns out to be fake, and the ‘cops’ open fire, killing Mickey. ![]() The same night, someone sets fire to Mickey’s stables, killing his prize racehorse. Suspecting an informant, Luca and his brother Mickey take their concerns to their Mafia-connected boss. The plot starts in the harbour of Naples, where smuggler Luca (Fabio Testi, a mainstay of the Italian crime flick) evades a police raid by blowing up a boat and faking his own death. Thankfully those indefatigable miscreants at Shameless have now issued this on DVD in a totally uncut print, so fans of the Maestro’s horror hits can appraise it for themselves. ![]() Contraband, on the surface a straightforward Mafia revenge flick, contains more of the brutal red stuff than most of today’s horror upstarts could dream of splashing across the screen. Even when working outside the horror genre, however, Fulci knew what made his films successful – buckets of gore. Even after the worldwide success of Zombie Flesh Eaters in 1979, Fulci made the occasional foray outside of the genre which made his name – notably the post apocalyptic sci-fi The New Gladiators (1983 – ripped off by Stephen King for The Running Man) and Conquest (also 1983), an attempt to jump on the Conan The Barbarian bandwagon. In fact, Fulci worked in a variety of genres from the 1950s onwards, from spy films to comedies, before eventually entering the horror/giallo field with One On Top Of The Other (1969) and A Lizard In Woman’s Skin (1971). Mario Bava made westerns, sci-fi and peplums (historical muscle man films) even after astounding the world with his official debut Black Sunday, and Lucio Fulci was no different, as Contraband proves. Dario Argento, arguably the most dedicated of the horror directors, also made westerns early in his career. The masters of the classic Italian horror film were never confined to just one genre. ![]()
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