Contrast and definition is good, the colors are a bit murky, but exploitation fans should be very pleased. Aside from he inherent softness and grain of low budget production and some age wear, the transfer looks great. So, it is entertaining enough sure, but not near the level of the such gritty, manly, funky flicks as Violent Napoli, Italian Connection, The Cynic the Rat and The Fist or Day of the Cobra. Fabio Testi does fine here, but since he's stuck with Fulci behind the camera, his character isn't as cool or hard-bitten as he could be in another directors hands.Ĭontraband delivers in the sleaziness and fun exploitation the Italian crime genre is known for but isn't filled with much character or energy. While still cast as stereotypes, actors like Tomas Milan, Maurizio Merli, and Fernando Di Leo got to chew a lot of scenery in their action roles. Part of the fun of an Italian crime film was the hard boiled characters. The problem with Fulci was that he hinged his films on this, set them up based on sequences, and the story and characters were secondary, often making them dullards. In a horror context this could make his films oddly dreamy, paced like a sleepwalker but sparked by shock scenes. His films almost always had this snail pacing that was interrupted by scenes of viscera and general creative bloodshed. The finale is all out shot in the gut carnage, but even Fulci cannot seem to ratchet things up a notch here and has an anticlimactic confrontation between the Luca and the man who has caused all of his woes.įulci was a man of contrasts. Brains are blown out in Pekinpah ish slow motion, a woman's face is burned, people are shot in the head and the throat, Luca twists a knife into a mobster and demands info, turning the knife with every unanswered question.
But Fulci's main trademark of brutality and gore is present and it fits quite nicely into a vendetta fueled mafia movie. The film moves much slower than the typical action packed efforts of Enzo G Castellari or Umberto Lenzi. Well, unfortunately his pacing is still there. I'd never seen it and always had my suspicions if the sluggish Fulci could pull off a good crime film. French Connection, Dirty Harry and Serpico spawned movies like High Crime, Citizen Rebels, The Hit Squad, and Cop in Blue Jeans and subsequently The Godfather helped spawn the likes of Mr Scarface, The Family and Contraband.Ĭontraband is a fair enough Italian crime film. The Mafia film was sort of a sub genre of the Italian exploitation crime film. Despite being known for his somber gore efforts like City of the Living Dead, Four of the Apocalypse and Don't Torture a Duckling, the 80's saw Fulci delving into the popular genre films of the time, like the equisitely awful and incomprehensible fun sword and sorcery film Conquest, the post apocalyptic action of The New Gladiators, and the mafia/crime of Contraband.
The cops are everywhere, bosses are being executed, his wife leaves him, and the brutal trail Luca follows eventually leads to a new player on the drug scene and a traitor within the Naples mafioso ranks.Ĭontraband (1980, aka Luca the Smuggler, The Smuggler, The Naples Connections) was directed by Italian horror maestro Luci Fulci. None of the mob bosses take responsibility for the hit, which sends Luca out on his own to get revenge. Soon, Luca finds his life and his family in danger when Mickey is killed. But, there is a new mafia boss on the scene and Mickey fears he is trying to take over their action and may have ratted them out to the cops, losing them a fortune from a failed exchange the police intercepted. Luca D'Angelo (Fabio Testi- Revolver, What Have They Done to Solange?, Garden of the Fitzi Contis) and his brother Mickey run a nice little booze and cigarette smuggling ring in Naples.
0 kommentar(er)
