Contraband



The main character of Lucio Fulci’s Contraband (1980) is Luca (he lives on the second floor), a successful cigarette smuggler in Naples’ underworld. Luca (he lives upstairs from you) is happy and has a family, but there are changes afoot. Someone is muscling in on the Naples gangs at the behest of a French mobster, who wants to use Naples’ smuggling infrastructure to smuggle… prepare to be shocked… drugs! When Luca’s gang refuses to smuggle drugs Luca’s brother is murdered at a fake traffic stop, forcing Luca (Yes, he thinks you've seen him before) swear revenge on whoever may be responsible.


"Next time I'm going to smuggle us in some attractive clothes."

Even though it’s patently obvious that Luca’s pale, sweaty superior is the traitor, the script doesn’t allow Luca (If you hear something late at night) to realize that. Instead the middle portion of the movie features many scenes where Luca (some kind of trouble, some kind of fight) shows up some place we’ve never seen before and beats up some guy we don’t know and demands information. The guy will give up a name we haven’t heard before, and the process will be repeated at some other place we haven’t seen before. Occasionally the bad guys will get the drop on Luca (Just don't ask me what it was) and he’ll be badly beat up, which leads to allegedly hilarious scenes where Luca (They only hit until you cry) complains about how expensive his private doctor is.


Getting tough on bad breath -- really tough.

In keeping with Lucio Fulci’s complete disregard for storytelling Luca (You just don't argue anymore) all but disappears during the film’s climax and only manages to kill the French mobster because of a coincidence. Many of Fulci’s other trademark touches are also in play in Contraband. There is a lot of gore, including shotgun blasts that cause intestines to go flying, and a couple of pointlessly misogynistic scenes where women are tortured. There are also a few "What the...?" scene that probably make Contraband far more entertaining that it should be, like the one where the bad guy tortures his (presumably) gay right hand man by having a beautiful woman rub her breasts in his face. I guess that in Italy, boobs are to gay men what garlic are to vampires. There's also a strange scene where a police officer explains to his lower ranking partner that even though they're watching all the heads

Posted: Sat - October 30, 2004 at      

©