Contraband

The Cult of Fulci most often focuses on the director’s horror output, which peaked in the early ‘80s with titles like Zombie and City of the Living Dead.  But wedged in between those two titles was his sole entry in the poliiziotteschi genre, Contraband (1980), a scattershot crime movie that delivers the same amount of gore in a different cinematic package.

Luca (played by all-purpose Italian hunk Fabio Testi) is a reticent smuggler torn between loyalty to his brother, Enrico, and his wife and young child.  But when Enrico is assassinated, Luca risks everything to get revenge, going head-to-head against a ruthless drug dealer who plans to take over the entire Naples smuggling operation.  Once the power struggle attracts the attention of the “old guard”, the city is soon littered with corpses who each meet their end in gruesome detail.

 

Although it eschews the supernatural for a Godfather / French Connection approach, Fulci’s film fits perfectly in his golden age oeuvre, full of exploding chests, slow-motion disembowelments and a particularly nasty Bunsen burner face melt.  The post-disco score by Fabio Frizzi repeats a funky earworm as Testi shoots his way up the criminal ladder.  Fulci, who gets a fun cameo this time around, handles the action well, but seems bored by the urban trappings of the genre.  Contraband looks far less cinematic than the films that would follow, saddled with an almost episodic television look - which makes sense as Fulci has just come off working on a TV miniseries.  Still, it’s something of an essential title for fans of a director who never fails to give them their money’s worth.

 

Cauldron Films new Blu-ray comes from a restored 4K scan of the original negative, but also bears a warning not to expect too much.  Although once thought unsalvageable, the film is only ever going to look so good in hi-def (which might explain why Blue Underground never upgraded their original DVD release).  The disclaimer mentions negative damage, but it’s a pleasing experience throughout, free from any debris or distracting jump cuts.  What you get is a grainy, rather drab viewing experience that never quite “pops” the way some of Fulci films do.  But, quite honestly, that’s the poliiziotteschi look anyway…so who’s complaining.  

 

If you wind up hanging onto the old DVD, you’ll miss the special features which include new interviews with Ivana Monti, Saverio Marconi, Sergio Salvati and Giorgio Mariuzzo.  The archival interviews are still there too, along with a new commentary from Bruce Holecheck, Troy Howarth and Nathanial Thompson which does a great job of explaining this “outlier” in Fulci’s catalog.

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