#Contraband 1980 full#

If Fulci couldn’t make the best poliziotteschi flick, he could certainly make the goriest. A man who gets the back of his head blown off during a busy race meeting, a backstabbing villain who gets his throat blown apart, and sundry gore drenched exit wounds. These include a particularly grisly blow torch to the face scene which Fulci’s camera predictably glorifies with a fetishistic attention to detail. The film itself is actually a fairly routine and mundane affair briefly punctuated by Fulci’s trademark scenes of absurdly excessive violence. Fortunately this was redressed with the release of Contraband in an uncut form on DVD by American distributor Blue Underground in 2004. Zombi 2 was the most successful film in Fulci’s long and illustrious career, but the film that followed it sank without a trace into a murky distribution limbo. Its position has not been helped by substandard and patchwork distribution.

Either way the result of this is that Contraband has steadily built itself a reputation as a cult curiosity in Fulci’s filmography. One can only assume that either the cycle didn’t interest Fulci from a written point of view, or that no suitable project came to his attention. With Fulci’s incredibly competent approach to a myriad of genres it seems almost inconceivable now that he didn’t direct a crime picture at the height of the genre’s popularity in 1970’s Italy. The films status as a departure for Fulci is indicated by the fact that it was made in between Zombi 2 (1979) and City of the Living Dead (1980), and at a time when the poliziotteschi cycle itself was on the decline. Burroughs in the Dreamachine (2014) from Cult Epics + FLickeR (2008) made by the NFB.Contraband was Italian writer/director Lucio Fulci’s only entry into the bitter and cynical terrain of the poliziotteschi. The blog’s augmented with a plethora of sexy camera and lens stills + two making-of featurettes, but coming next at are reviews of documentaries on a trippy device known as a dream machine: William S. I’m finishing up on another blog at Big Head Amusements on the filming / editing of Marilla Wex’s Lost and Found, videotaped with a vintage 1986 ENG tube camera at the 2014 Toronto Fringe Festival. soundtrack LP which I bought a decade ago during an extended phase of LP binge buying. I’ll pair the podcast with a review of the original U.S. Minogue, who discusses his entry into film scoring with Roar! (1981), the ‘ferocious comedy’ that cost $17 million and 11 years to make. 8 at The Opera House, where Goblin performed in 2013), so where you hear ‘rumours of a date in the intro,’ just replace with ‘He’s coming!!!’ As some have pondered in recent Facebook posts, hopefully the concert will include the orchestra as well.Īs I state at the end of the podcast, coming next is a lengthy interview with composer Terence P. The podcast was edited a few days before Frizzi announced a Toronto date for Frizzi 2 Fulci ( Thursday Oct.

#Contraband 1980 full#

podcast – available on iTunes, Libsyn, and YouTube – features the full interview which was the basis for a shorter profile in Rue Morgue magazine, and Frizzi’s hugely gregarious personality which undoubtedly tickled audiences who attended his prior 20 concerts.

(I still have to track down those CDs, but expect eventual reviews.) I’ve added a review of Blue Underground’s DVD which features the uncut Italian edit with all the face burning, cranial trauma, and other meanness that’s more intense than a standard gangster drama.

Beautiful painted Italian poster with a clean, balanced layout.Īlso touched upon is the restoration of Contraband (1980), which makes its soundtrack album debut via Beat Records, the venerable Italian label who also released a 2-CD set of Frizzi’s 2013 Union Chapel concert.