Contraband (1980)

Made between "Zombie" and "The Gates of Hell", this 1980 venture into crime/mafia flicks shows Lucio Fulci willing to delve into other genres with some rather unspectacular, though by no means "un-splattery" results. Prior to his "hot period" of horror films in the early eighties, Fulci had always dabbled in whatever was fashionable (i.e. profitable) at the time, be it comedies, westerns, children stories, etc. By 1983, with Fulci apparently done churning out one zombie infested bonanza after another, he also tried his hand at the sword n' sorcery genre with "Conquest", a weird, funked out take on "Conan the Barbarian" featuring the usual incoherent storyline peppered with layers of gonzo gore scenes. In my rambling way, I guess I'm trying to say that if there was money to be made in a certain style of film then Lucio was there. Now, that's not taking away any of the guy's artistic merit, of which I believe he does posses, and I realize the guy's gotta eat like the rest of us, right? I'm not faulting him here with "Contraband" or any other carbon copy type of film for thinking, "hey, the "Godfather" was big, let's do that." or "Conan was a hit, let's do that one". Before I get into this review, let me just say that while Fulci's non-horror films all have their merits, the guy's always going to be remembered amongst the horror/trash community for his films featuring rotted, fucked up zombies chowing down on the human populace at large, end of story.

"Contraband" tells the story of various Italian mafia families whose territory has come under attack by a French drug lord. The kicker here is that the Italians only smuggle in cigarettes, disavowing to ever bring hard drugs into their country and basically coming off as "good guys", even if what they do does involve murder, etc. Enter Luca, a fairly standup guy for a big time mobster and the film's "hero" of sorts, though he does seem to get his ass kicked every ten minutes or so by some type of mob hoodlum. Clint Eastwood this guy ain't. Luca witnesses the various members of his mob brethren being killed off by the evil Frenchie, including his own brother being gunned down and eventually his wife and son kidnapped. It all leads up to a big ol' showdown (sort of) between the old school "honorable" mob v.s. the new blood "evil" mob.

One of the main beefs with Fulci deals with the man's inability to rarely ever follow a logical storyline. Nothing could be more evident here with "Contraband" when, honestly, I never knew just what the hell was happening. Characters pop in and out so frequently you're constantly confused as to who is "good" and who is "bad". To make matters worse, the dubbing is utterly horrible, no doubt making bad dialogue even worse in the translation, and doing nothing more than to confuse the viewer as to what the hell is happening in terms of story. The acting seems to be okay in of itself, but it's ruined by the horrible dub job. Typically bad dubbing is something I've grown used to, but here it just seem to grate on me. The various action/fight sequences are shot so dead-panned they are never interesting, and shows that Fulci had best stick to the gore set piece and leave the action stuff to action film directors. While the film stumbles in most aspects, in terms of ultra-violence, Fulci delivers with some of his most outrageous and disturbing sequences of violence he's ever filmed, and that, my friends, is saying a lot. It takes awhile to get rolling, but when it does, man o' man. There's a legendary and oft censored sequence of a woman's face burned of by blowtorch that's very hard to watch, chests, brains, and throats are blown out by gunshot in very graphic detail, all mixed amongst a very rough rape scene that's very hard to watch. There are also the various amounts of nudity and just plain weird sleaze (a mobster gets off watching his gay buddy being molested by a nude woman) that you won't find in a nary a domestic film anywhere, trust me. But still, while the gore is abundant and plentiful, it's still not going to trick the viewer that anything else notable is taking place.

My final thoughts on "Contraband" would be that if you are a fan of Euro styled mob flicks, or are an out and out Fulci fanatic, then I'd say give it a watch. Mainstream viewers will no doubt have a tough time here with the majority either being bored to sleep or turned off by the explicit violence. Be sure to track down the Blue Underground DVD to see everything UNCUT, these guys have done a helluva job with every title they have worked on, so kudos to them on another fine job.