On the second week of a ten-week shooting schedule, the production exhausted its budget and received funding from real life smugglers in Naples.

Luca Di Angelo (Fabio Testi) is a smuggler, member of an organized team trafficking cigarettes and alcohol, up and down the coast off Naples.

Lucia and Mickey take their accusations to their boss Perlante (Saverio Marconi) a sleazy playboy with numerous Mafia connections, who agrees to look into it.

After a nighttime fire at Mickey's racing stables kills a valued racehorse, he and Luca drive over to inspect the damage.

After his brother's funeral, conducted on the gang's speedboats in the Bay of Naples, with the police surveying them, Luca vows revenge.

Luca calls Perlante, who tells him more about the vicious gangster, and who is muscling into Italian organized crime to deal in hard drugs.

At his hideout in Naples, the Marsigliese (Marcel Bozzufi) is meeting Ingrid, a German drug courier from Frankfurt wanting to sell him some heroin.

In response to the Mafia killings, the Naples police chief (Fabio Jovine) orders Captain Tarantino (Venantino Verantini) to conduct a massive sweep of the Neapolitan bay area.

Luca is saved from a police raid on his house by, of all people, Scherino, who suggests they form an alliance to defeat the Marsigliese.

The mortally wounded Scherino manages to shoot at the traitorous Perlante, hitting him in the neck, before he drops dead himself.

In desperation, Luca calls upon the elderly Don Morrone (Guido Alberti), the leader of the old-guard Italian Mafia who has been reading the news throughout the movie of the numerous killings.

The following morning, a meeting occurs between Luca and the Marsigliese in a local open square where the handover to Adele is taking place.

Lucio Fulci and Giorgio Mariuzzo co-wrote the script for Contraband based on an original story by Ettore Sanzò and Gianni De Chiara with a working title of Il contrabbandiere / Violenza.

[3] The smugglers also changed parts of the script by including lines against drug trafficking and to drop the term Violenza (Violence) from the title.