Contraband

Lucio Fulci's harshest film outside horror. Luca, played by Fabio Testi, and his brother Michele run cigarettes into Naples by speedboat. When a load is lost they end up caught between two smuggling bosses, and the French gangster called the Marseillais, played by Marcel Bozzuffi, wants Luca to move from cigarettes to drugs. Luca refuses, and his family becomes the target. The film's reputation rests on its violence. Fulci shortens nothing: people mown down in the street, arterial spray, torture, and in one sequence a woman's face burned with a Bunsen burner. It is a choice that pushes past the limits of the poliziotteschi and the reason the film circulated in cut versions for years. The production is part of the story too. The budget ran out in the second week of shooting and the film was financed by actual smugglers in Naples, who also intervened in its plot and its title. Who it is for: viewers curious about Italian crime cinema and Fulci's cruelty. Who it is not for: anyone with no tolerance for graphic violence, of which this film recognises no limit.