Director: Jean Rollin
Starring: Marie-Georges Pascal, Serge Marquand, Felix Marten, Patricia Cartier, Brigitte Lahaie
Grapes of Deaths opens with two women traveling by train who are attacked by a man who almost appears to be rotting before their eyes. One of the women are killed by the man and the other, Elisabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal), manages to escape the train and runs for help.
Upon arriving at a house she asks the occupants, a man and his daughter, for help in contacting the police. The father is acting strangely and has a rotten area on his hand, similar to that which the murderer on the train had on his face. The daughter forces her to stay against her will, but soon reveals that it is with the intention of aiding her own escape from her father, who is infected with a madness and has killed her mother.
When the two try to flee the father catches them and kills his own daughter, but once having done so he breaks down with remorse and begs the woman to kill him, which she does so reluctantly by running into him with a car.
As Elisabeth begins her journey to find help she is forced to abandon the car and go by foot where she meets a blind woman, Lucy, who is lost and trying to find her way back to her village. Together they make their way to the village, and once there they find everyone dead, each body is inflicted with the same kind of rotting disfigurement. When night falls the village is suddenly full with the zombie like people and they have a serious case of the munchies.
This small village is turning a French tradition on his head. The village’s vineyard is using a new spray on their grape crops, but the pesticide is not doing what it was made to do, it is infecting the villagers with a rotting disease that takes hold of their minds and compels them to murder. Everyone who drinks the wine becomes infected, and the town just had a yearly wine festival!!
As far as Jean Rollin (Fascination, Requiem for a Vampire) films go, Grapes of Death is very straight forward and lacks the more surreal and lyrical elements of some of his earlier films, and at the same time benefits from it. The story is fairly tight for Rollin, and contains very little of the eroticism Rollin is known for; it’s not until Brigitte Lahaie makes an appearance that things start heating up. That said, this is still very much a Jean Rollin movie, his visual style is unmistakable; his obsession with old ruined and deserted buildings is still very apparent.
This slight departure from the norm for Jean Rollin might actually give someone unfamiliar to his films a good introduction. The film takes large helpings from the classic zombie film Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974), while adding Rollin’s own distinct touch. Much of Rollin’s output is something of an acquired taste, but Grapes is a highly enjoyable and entertaining film, which would undoubtedly appeal to a wider audience if given the chance.
