Of course if you’re a Fulci fanatic you’ll be well versed in Lucio’s gore filled approach, but what struck me with Contraband is that even 34 years later just how raw some of the brutality is. From a woman’s face being slowly burned off with a lighter as the camera fixes upon her, to double-barrelled shotgun blowing stomachs to smithereens – it really descends into carnage of the bloodiest order. As Contraband whips along we’re treated to levels of violence and gore that you may well find shocking and lurid. The first third of Fulci’s movie may well lull you into a false sense of security that this is just a pedestrian crime movie – it really isn’t. However, during one delivery the police intercept the drop off which leads Luca and Mickey to suspect that one of the rival families may have given the police a tip off and Mafioso orientated carnage ensues. Luca (Testi) has recently moved to Naples with his wife (Monti) and his son to help his brother Mickey (Farnese) in his Mafia orientated work smuggling cigarettes into the port.
With a documentary on the way entitled Eurocrime!: The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the 70s, then hopefully that will soon be rectified.Ĭontraband follows the well-worn template of many of the Poliziotteschi movies. It’s a superb genre, and one which demands more attention from cult film lovers. The feted directors of the genre were undoubtedly Fernando Di Leo who made my favourite Poliziotteschi film – Milano Calibro 9 (1972) which is soon to take its first bow in the UK thanks to Arrow Video, and also people like Damiano Damiani and the great Umberto Lenzi. The Poliziotteschi genre (crime-thriller) ran almost concurrently with the Giallo genre, emerging in the late 60s and eventually fizzling out during the early 80s with Contraband being one of the last.
The more Fulci I got though, the more I delved into his career and discovered that he had the ability to cross genres, for example the excellent Spaghetti Western – Four of the Apocalypse (1975), and Contraband which fell under the Poliziotteschi banner. As far as I was concerned though he easily matched Argento and I was soon sinking my teeth into classics such as The Beyond (1981), The House by the Cemetery (1981) and The New York Ripper (1981). He himself felt his work was always in the shadow of someone like Dario Argento, a man who Fulci occasionally aimed the odd side-swipe at. Fulci was an Italian master who never really quite received the acclaim that here deserved during his life.
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