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5
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5 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Though
best known for extremely squishy horror films like Zombie
and The Beyond, Italian director
Lucio Fulci actually helmed a variety of diverse projects during
his career, to include spaghetti westerns (Four
Of
The Apocalypse) and giallo
thrillers (Lizard In A Woman's
Skin, Don't Torture A Duckling).
Yet 1980's Contraband (Luca
il Contrabbandiere—"Luca
the Smuggler") marked Fulci's only foray into the crime
drama/action genre. Splatter fans need not fret; the 'No Guts,
No Glory' credo of his horror flicks is applied with full force
to this tale of mob warfare in economically depressed Naples.
It's the goriest, most brutally violent gangster pic I've ever
seen.
Fabio Testi plays Luca Di Angelo,
an 'honorable' criminal who makes his living smuggling consignments
of American cigarettes into Italy. He's the right-hand man of
his brother Mickey, a capo in the Naples underworld,
responsible for a small flotilla of speedboats that bring the
contraband into port. Mickey and Luca maintain cordial relations
with the other waterfront bosses —
none of whom traffic in drugs. (Needless to say Fulci paints
a somewhat unbelievable, romanticized portrait of these speedboat
smugglers. Later in the film, when the crisis calls for a meeting
between the captains, they collectively agree not to ever run
drugs. And rather than his own profits, Luca is more concerned
about the 200,000 lower-class Neapolitans who depend on smuggling
in one way or another for their livelihood. He's a gangster
and a good socialist!) This peaceful coexistence is shattered
when Luca's brother Mickey is shot down by assassins dressed
as policemen. Then, one by one, other top Dons are hit, all
within the same day. (This is the best sequence of the movie,
climaxed by the memorable 'pistol in the mouth' scene at a horse
track.) At
first Luca believes the killings were ordered by Scherino (Ferdinand
Murolo), a tough mob boss disliked by his late brother, but
his suspicions prove wrong. An
outsider is muscling his way into the smuggling racket with
designs on changing everything — a Frenchman known as "The Margliese"
(Marcel Bozzuffi of The French Connection).
This interloper is as ruthless as they come. He'll kill as many
people as it takes to assume control of Naples' speedboat syndicate.
Rather than cigarettes, of course, he wants to run drugs. He's
also a vicious sadist. In the flick's most squirm-inducing scene,
the Margliese calmly burns the face off a pretty female drug
mule he catches 'stepping on' the product. This shocking set
piece is as lovingly filmed by Fulci as any of the more famous
gore moments in his horror flicks.
In the face of the Margliese's
onslaught Luca forms an uneasy alliance with Scherino and another
surviving capo,
the playboy Perlante (Saverio Marconi), youngest of all the
bosses. Luca rallies the support of the speedboat captains to
fight back but a raid by the Treasury Police hauls most of them
to jail. More blood flows as the Frenchman turns up the pressure
on Luca to cave in and run dope into Naples for him. When he
again refuses the proposal, Luca's estranged wife (Ivana Monti)
is kidnapped, brutally raped, and held hostage. He is outgunned
and alone. He can't go to the police because he's... well, a
criminal. But aid from an unexpected quarter arrives
to watch Luca's back. Hey, look! It's Lucio Fulcio with a submachinegun!
(Really!)
Contraband features
some decent action scenes and lacks the lethargic pacing that
marred other Fulci efforts. Testi, a likable, underrated actor,
carries the film well. Still, it's a very uneven affair.
The English dubbing is pretty bad. For what is an essentially
simple, straightforward story the film is populated by a number
of extraneous characters (mostly law enforcement types) who
really have nothing to do with the plot; their claim on available
screen time tends to bog things down. Two-thirds of the way
through Fulci attempts to inject a bit of humor that falls completely
flat. (A man is arrested as he sits on the toilet; another is
nabbed by the cops while eating spaghetti, so he brings the
plate with him as he's hauled away. Ha ha.) The music score
is mostly terrible, sounding exactly like the disco-flavored
soundtrack to a late '70s porno flick. (There's a song heard
in a dance club that's especially painful.) Gore effects are
consistently better here than in the more popular Fulci pics
but one exploding head is pretty laughable. The ending
is awkward. If you're in the mood for a crime film with lots
of slo-mo Peckinpah/Hong Kong "Heroic Bloodshed" type
killings in it, however, Contraband
should fit the bill. This movie's got a mean streak a mile wide.
Aside from the flesh-roasting mentioned above —
very nasty, that — brains, throats
and stomachs are blasted out in slow motion. The rape of Luca's
wife is disturbingly frank. In sum, it's a film with a not particularly
involving storyline set in an admittedly interesting milieux
(Italian speedboat smugglers), spiced up with those old exploitation
reliables: gore and nudity. Fulci's legion of horror fans will
want to check it out.
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| Contraband
arrives on DVD uncut and uncensored courtesy of Blue Underground,
who also released the Fabio Testi crime drama Revolver.
The widescreen (1.85:1 anamorphic) transfer is blemish free save
for a couple of seconds of print damage in one scene. Colors look
muted and the image somewhat soft on occasion but I think the
movie was shot that way. Sound quality, though flat, is acceptable.
(The dubbing job was poor on this film to begin with.) Talent
bios of Fulci and Testi and the theatrical trailer are included
as extras. 3/12/03 |
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