Synopsis
When the wine flows, the terror begins…
A young woman discovers that the pesticide being sprayed on vineyards is turning people into murderous lunatics.
The Grapes of Death
1978 ‘Les Raisins de la mort’ Directed by Jean Rollin
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Alternative Titles
The Raisins of Death, Pesticide, Zombis geschändete Frauen, Pestizide – Stadt der Zombies
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I’ve had a deep fascination with Jean Rollin’s work since the late early 2000’s when my cousin showed me, ironically enough, Fascination, and over the past few years I’ve been delving deeper into his catalog with Kino Lorber’s ‘The Cinema Jean Rollin’ blurays, revisiting favorites, as well as films I haven’t seen and it’s been quite a journey, filled with exquisite cinematography, unorthodox plot development coupled with artful yet sparse dialogue, erotic everything, bonkers finales, and fixations with rural landscapes and crumbling architecture... all coated in a thick and dreamy surreal aesthetic that calmly screams fantastique..
After Elizabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal who I LOVE in this) encounters a decaying homicidal man and the corpse of her traveling partner on a deserted…
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Hooper part V: A Second Beginning
4/31: an anniversary film
This was......amazing. It’s only by second Rollin film and it’s really left me wondering how I managed to become such a hardcore horror fanatic without ever experiencing his films until recently. I guess nobody’s perfect after all huh?Pesticides turning villagers into zombies is some great 70’s eco-terror that is still relevant today, if not more so. There’s some good gore, including a guy who has a giant blister-like welt on the side of his face that starts to ooze blood in a honeycomb like pattern (trypophobics beware) and a truly great decapitation. Brigitte Lahaie is fabulous and her character was so bizarre and incredibly watchable that I really wanted to…
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The Grapes of Death is Jean Rollin's moody trip into the French countryside, where all the locals have become pus-ridden festering zombies thanks to some contaminated wine! The plot is kind of similar to the earlier Spanish zombie film Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, but the similarities end there. Rollin's film is a haunting journey into a world where humanity has brought all the horror upon itself. The simple country life invaded by meddling scientific efforts. The rustic aesthetic is well captured by the director and this bodes well with the eerie score and soft focus. The pace is slow but deliberate, even during the more violent scenes - the director really squeezes out every ounce of atmosphere. Marie-Georges Pascal is…
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Blood and Poetry - A Jean Rollin Retrospective #2
Several years ago I was at a vineyard in the Hunter Valley. As I swished a drop of wine about my palate with a suitably raised pretentious eyebrow, the owner was babbling on about this and that. Primarily, he shared with us a few touching vignettes about growing up on the vineyard. It sounded like that although the men might have cultivated the vines with precious care, it was his late grandmother that ruled the roost with love and compassion.
He concluded by mentioning that when his grandmother passed away her ashes were dispersed across a particular field just over yonder. And in fact from that very field grew the grapes…
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This is a film that really sneaks up on you. I wasn't quite feeling it at first, and if you'd told me that I'd end up giving it 5 stars I would have thought you were crazy. However, by the time the credits rolled, that's exactly what I knew I'd have to score it.
A bleak and atmospheric film that evokes a strong sense of isolation. Gorgeous shots of the French countryside. A haunting but sparse score. And, a lovely downbeat ending. What's not to love? ʅ(°_°)ʃ
Some people describe this as a zombie film. I suppose it bears some resemblance to the subgenre. But these aren't the shambling undead variety, or even the viral kind.…
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Having been introduced to Rollin through his later, more dreamlike films, I was pretty surprised to find a French Crazies/Night of The Living Dead analog, with a quaint village setting inhabited by tool-wielding murderers who shamble out of the woodwork that also recalls Resident Evil 4's opening fight.
The music is cool, sounding like Roger Daltrey might shout, "Out here in the fields!" at any moment, and the gore is surprisingly effective for ostensibly being dollops of peanut butter and jam, with an egg cracked over it for added blech here and there.
So yeah, not exactly what I've come to (perhaps erroneously) expect from Rollin, especially during the running and gunning bits that'd feel at home in an episode of Combat!, but if you're confused about who made this, look no further than the thin, white nightgowns, which drop to the floor as surely as Woo's doves take flight.
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Rollin's enviromentally-minded take on the zombie genre is one bizarro trip. Wine made from poisonous, pesticide-drenched grapes is the source of a strange outbreak among the villagers in a remote region of rural France. Passing through the infected area, Élisabeth and her friend are caught by L'homme du train and when her friend winds up as a bloody corpse on the bathroom floor, Élisabeth jumps the train and hightails it into the countryside. She soon finds herself on a desperate ramble through the sticks, playing a deadly game of dodge the decomposing. The disease mainly manifests itself as hideous pus-encrusted lesions and red + yellow secretions (many hot dogs were harmed in the making of this film), prefiguring rabid bloodlust.…
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A drifting nightmare; a fugue state with no release, just a freeze frame and roll credits. More Messiah of Evil than Night of the Living Dead. So many things here make me think of Fulci -- the endless, decaying countrysides, the goopy, pus-filled gore, the blind girl -- but this is an altogether different type of dream than he'd ever conjure up.
This is why I don't drink.
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My boom box is basically haunted. I mean, it's not technically mine, it's my bf's 90 yr old dad's but ...
And when I say haunted, I mean, only plays just exactly what it wants to. (Or maybe just exactly what you need to hear? No. Too creepy. Shut up.) Fine.
Well, anyway. Long story short, an hour ish later, I end up responding when, like, I thought it was pretty obvious, to the question 'what r u doing?' With, 'rocking out to Tori Amos and taking selfies with my new-old calico elephant (who I named Ella Funt after the one in Ramona and her Mother because she tried to make pants for her, and couldn't, but my Ella has…
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Jean Rollin's ecological disaster/horror set in a rustic French setting with rural villages, stone ruins, and ancient vineyards. Rather than vampires, this film features a manmade outbreak causing mayhem and insanity. It's Rollin transitioning to darker shades of contemporary society from his sensual vampire films. The vibes get more surreal as the sun gets lower of which Rollin is kind of a master.
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I want to thank Letterboxd and all the wonderful people who write some incredible reviews. This site has opened my world to some masterful cinema that I may have never found without it. This is my first venture into the mind of renowned filmmaker, Jean Rollin. I wasn’t sure what to expect and I definitely never thought I’d fall in love. I could throw this picture on again right now and enjoy it just as much, which is something I can say about very few movies.
Les Raisins de La Mort is among the greatest French cinema I have yet to see. There’re a precision to Rollin’s style, an exactness to his substance and meaning. This results in an image…
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After abandoning a train striken with an ill and very murderous passenger, a woman stumbles across misty countryside trying to escape from rotting villagers driven to rage from vineyard pesticide.
Taking a breather from nubile lesbian vampires, Jean Rollin supposes what might occur if The Crazies (1973) had spread to largely uninhabited French moorlands strewn with stone ruins. Like the rest of his work, this more infection than zombie film almost solely focuses on evoking a surreal, airy atmosphere than the literal order of events. Despite being one of his most accessible, this might turn off novices to the filmmaker's whimsy, especially with its very dodgy scene transitions and kindergarten class project effects work.
Aside from the environmental note possibly…
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