La Guerre des gangs

On a blood and guts level, Fucli's "Contraband" fires up. The squib hits are extreme, giant chunks of flesh are shot out of necks, bad guys die in glorious slomo, and one woman has has face melted for attempting to sell a drug dealer cut coke.

On another level, the film is ponderous, the plot is predictable, and the performances are anemic. Fabio Testi, who was solid in "Revolver", plays a very weak character here and I didn't buy his campaign to wage revenge one little bit.

The action has a muscular quality to it and Fulci makes the most of his access to half a dozen boats. A funeral on the boats is a poetic touch, too. The film is not a bad one, but it misses being great because the script is feeble. You can spot the bad guy a mile off and the dubbing, as usual, is terrible.

The Fabio Frizzi score is memorable but used inappropriately and too often.

One of the best stunt sequences involves an assassinated man rolling down an embankment. There is a worthwhile killing at a racetrack involving a gun shoved a throat.

"Contraband" is a fast-forward job for viewers, and on that level, it offers some satisfaction.

Fulci's movies tend to be a mixed: they're either terribly good or terribly bad. This one is terribly good. The plot is simple: Testi plays Luca, a cigarette smuggler who is reluctant to go into business with a powerful gangster. When Luca refuses, the gangster gets mad, and makes Luca's life a Hell, namely by killing his friends and abducting his wife.

Like all Fulci movies, this one is pretty slow going some of the time, but wait til the gang war gets started!!! We got heads blowing off, faces burned off, throats and stomachs blown out, and all the nudity you could ever ask for. Even has a happy ending (or what passes for a happy ending in these films). Fans of the crime genre will not be disappointed.

Lucio Fulci's ultraviolent crime film is an enjoyable and unintentionally hilarious action flick with the requisite amount of gore one expects from a Fulci film. Fabio Testi (tee-hee!) plays a cigarette smuggler who gets entangled in a bunch of gang-land shootings. Melting corpses, burning skin, shot-open necks, repeatedly shot paper mache heads, shotgun blasted intestines (that seem to be made out of foam) ensue. In addition to that, there's a decent shootout or punch-up here and there. The highlight is some nerdy guy getting massive breasts shoved in his face. Well, at least for me.

Nasty French drug dealer, the Marsigliese (Marcel Bozzuffi), is trying to take control of the crime scene in Naples; unable to convince the Neapolitan 'capo's (Mafia crime bosses) to deal in his narcotics (they prefer to smuggle harmless cigarettes instead), he has them bumped off one by one.

Eventually, only family guy smuggler Luca Di Angelo (Fabio Testi) stands between the Marsigliese and his total domination of the Naples underworld. But Luca's wife is kidnapped by the megalomaniacal mobster, and it looks as though all is lost—until help arrives in the form of several retired Mafia leaders who do not wish to see the Marsigliese succeed.

Taking a break from the horror scene for which he is better known, director Lucio Fulci has a go at a different genre, but still manages to gross out the audience with the high level of violence and gore he delivers. In order to make up for what is a pretty routine tale, he throws in loads of bloody bullet hits, mutilation, a smidgen of rape, and other assorted graphic nastiness. And when he's not trying to turn your stomach with blowtorches to the face, bullets through the throat or shotgun blasts to the abdomen, he chucks in some gratuitous nudity for good measure.

It is this sleaziness that makes Contraband watchable despite its mundane story, and even more enjoyable than quite a few of his horror films. 6.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 7 for IMDb).

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.