One question that should be asked is - Why are there hardly any mafia films based in Italy? Sure we have the Godfather series with its flashbacks of Sicily, but what about Italy? There are not many and certainly even the best of movie lovers will have trouble trying to list one or two if any at all! So here you have one... and its good!... in its own very odd strange way.

Contraband is a lost classic that has now been restored here on this DVD. What happens when the world's foremost gore director decides to make a crime caper? Answer - more blood than Al Pacino can shoot up in all his gangster flicks put together. Although the plot is mostly non-existent and certainly there is little here in terms of brains, there is plenty of action and horror to boot.

Basically the plot revolves around several smuggler gang families from Naples all snubbing each other out in the worst possible way imaginable... and that is all there is it to it really.

Everything on display here is pretty pointless but it is not done badly at all and the acting is a little better than what you would expect. There are several gore scenes that stand out - a woman getting her face torched to full melt, a gangster having his head machine gunned to pieces, a mob leader having his throat blown off, plenty backs of the heads flying across the room, cops arresting nuns, horses burning up, mobsters getting boiled alive, gangster shot up in church, a vicious rape sequence, intestines being shot out and lots of screaming - all done to the tune of a funky eighties disco beat that is more apt for a ...movie. No Sir, you will not find this one playing on television any time soon.

If gangsters, guns and gore is your thing then you'll love it, but don't get this expecting the cinematic flair of what Hollywood has done with this genre.