Sometimes, you know you have to see a movie just by the title alone, and that whether it's good or bad, it's going to be one hell of a watch. The Grapes of Death. Les Raisins de la Mort. There was absolutely no way, when I first saw that title in the listings several years ago, that I was going to miss such a film, and to this day I have never regretted it.
Elizabeth is travelling by train to the village of Roublès (the subtitles spelt it differently, but let's go with Wikipedia) to join her fiance who works in the vineyards there. Her friend Brigitte is also on the train with her, travelling on to Spain, but soon meets a messy end when a stranger with strange oozing sores on his face and body boards the train and kills her. Elizabeth flees the train and her friend's killer, only to find herself lost in the middle of nowhere in some of the most barren countryside ever seen in a non-post-apocalyptic film. Eventually she finds an old farmhouse out in the middle of all this nowhere, where inside the farmer and his daughter sit and stand emotionlessly as Elizabeth begs them to call the police or get help. Well, they do offer her a glass of wine. The farmer has a good crop of those weeping sores on his body as well though - as does his daughter, he is quick to reveal when she and Elizabeth try to escape. Of course, her sores aren't immediately visible so he has to throw her on the table and rip her blouse open to reveal them (and her breasts) before impaling her with a pitchfork. He then has a moment of sanity and asks Elizabeth to kill him, which she does by hitting him with a car at about 10mph. Elizabeth then goes off to do some more wandering and meets several more people - a blind girl who knows something is wrong but who Elizabeth keeps trying to protect by telling her nothing is wrong as they walk past dead bodies and burning houses; a stunning blonde woman known in the credits as "La grande femme blonde" who strips off completely at one point for the most flimsy of plot reasons; an entire village of people covered in weeping sores, all of whom are murderously insane; and just when you think things can't get any more surreal, two beer-drinking Communists turn up with a rifle and a truck full of dynamite (okay, I'm not 100% certain they're Communists, but we are treated to several minutes of political statements from them at one point, including mention of fighting with the Free French in World War 2 and the desire to fight fascism wherever they find it, so I'm taking an educated guess). It turns out - this is not a spoiler because we see it at the very start of the film - that the growers at the vineyard have been using a new pesticide that has poisoned the grapes, and so anyone who drinks the wine from them starts rotting away from the inside out and goes homicidal. In the end Elizabeth finds her fiance; but as you might have guessed a film like this isn't going to have a happy ending...
With any film directed by Jean Rollin, there are a few things that you can expect from one of his films. Lots of establishing countryside shots. Plenty of female breasts bared for the camera. Very little music. Brigitte Lahaie ("La grande femme blonde"). Not a lot of emphasis on plot and a lot of emphasis on atmosphere. The Grapes of Death (which was apparently also the first gore film to be produced in France) has all of these and more. While it sounds so cheesy you could cut it with a cheese knife and have it with a good port (and it is), it also has some truly inspired moments of cinematography. The key scene that emphasizes this is the one where blind girl Lucie runs out into the village at night trying to find her lover Lucas. She is both blind and has no idea of what is going on, and so has no idea that the scabby, oozing, crazy villagers are slowly approaching her and following her around in silence, getting closer and closer to her but never actually touching her for a long time, and all grinning manically as they do. Another scene of note is where Brigitte Lahaie's character walks around the village dressed in nothing but a white billowing nightdress, holding a lead with two dogs in one hand and a burning torch in the other. There's no plot-related reason for this; it looks good so she does it. Technically, it's not a zombie movie, owing more to George Romero's anti-Agent Orange piece The Crazies, but it's close enough that we won't quibble too much about the details.
The movie does tend to drag in places - the lack of music for a lot of the film and the long shots of the countryside are the main culprits for that - and the randomness of the plot and dialogue at times will leave you wondering just what the hell is going on, but I know I found The Grapes of Death to be a surprisingly enjoyable movie for something I randomly decided to watch for the title alone at 2am one night, as well as the film that started me on my fascination with the horror films of Jean Rollin.
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