Unlike Lenzi and Castellari, dear Lucio did not ride the Eurocrime wave. His entry to the genre came at the tail end of the Eurocrime filone. This is a pity because Lucio Fulci would / could have made a great contribution to the genre. His sole Eurocrime effort Contraband is a great genre entry and is exceptionally violent. It is a crime film with Fulci trademark gore added.
The film is interesting for a number of reasons. The casting of a number of familiar character actors of Eurocrime for example names such as Nello Pazzafini and Romano Puppo. Luciano Rossi is in this too, playing a chemist in a role similar to the one he played in The Sicilian Connection.
The film has a number of similarities with Alfonso Brescia’s The New Godfathers. Both movies are set in Naples and are about smuggling.
In Contraband Lucio Fulci makes a distinction between good criminals and bad criminals. The bad gangsters smuggle drugs which could be getting children hooked while the good gangsters smuggle cigarettes and contribute to an economy upon which 200,000 jobs depend. This good criminals theme goes, for Fulci, all the way back to the beginning with his directorial debut I ladri.
