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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :- One of Jean Rollin's Best!, 29 January 2002 Author: Craig Blamer (blamer@prodigy.net) from Chico, CA
This neglected cult classic is finally available for the first time in the States, on DVD with a gorgeous looking (and sounding) transfer by Synapse Films. It looks great - probably better than it did in the theatres. Not exactly a zombie flick, but that is the closest genre you could categorize it. It follows the trials of Elizabeth, a young woman traveling by rail across the French countryside, en route to meet with her fiancé, who runs a winery. Before she reaches her destination however, she encounters a homicidal man who has just murdered her traveling companion, and whose face disintegrates before her horrified eyes as he chases her off the train. Lost in the rural expanse, the woman encounters various peasants who seem to have become trapped between life and death, driven mad by the pain of decaying alive, and more than eager to throttle her and visit various abuses upon her body (implied by the fact that any uninfected individual she comes across in her adventure inevitably takes the proverbial bullet for her - by pitchfork, hatchet, or whatever lethal tool the living `dead' have at hand at the moment). Finally, it is revealed that her fiancé has been pumping out wine tainted by pesticides, which has been consumed en masse earlier at a festival by the unfortunate villagers (talk about becoming dead drunk.). This is easily one of Rollin's most accessible films, but may not be to the tastes of anyone weaned on Empty-Vee styled horror flicks. But for the discriminating palate, this is definitely recommended -- leisurely paced, atmospheric, and with liberal dollops of gore and mayhem to boot, this is late 70's horror at its best.
5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- Definitely Rollin's best, but not necessarily that good., 25 January 2008 Author: innocuous from Raleigh, NC, USA
This film is watchable, but it is hit-and-miss in several respects. The atmosphere and story are not too bad, and the gore is a bit amateurish but plentiful. My major objection to the film is the poor editing. If you are ever asked about the importance of editing and continuity to the watchability of a film, just point to this film as an example of how NOT to do it. Due to the poor editing and lack of continuity, people "jump" all over the screen and sets, showing up in one place after starting in another. One of the actresses literally walks around a corner of a building and changes clothes completely at the same time. (No, I don't believe that this was intentional.) A couple huge dogs just show up at one point (which also makes no sense), wounds change locations, and some events were obviously intended to precede other events that now appear earlier in the film.Don't get me wrong, this film is worth your time if you're a fan, but it is definitely not a slick, finished product.
6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- Claustrophobia/Isolation of the countryside, 14 March 1999 Author: damularc from Youngstown, Ohio
Rollin's "big" budget films rewards the viewer tremendously. Raisins de la Morte has been called the first French gore film, yet it is worth seeing for more than its few baser thrills. The whole movie is like a particularly convincing claustrophobic dream. Novice explorers of the European horror film or general fans of the zombie genre should be captured by the compact story of the lost girl in the near ancient village of zombies created by an uncannily debilitating batch of wine. Rollin's skill at creating the feel of a bad dream, however, is shown in the opening train scene. An extremely effective tracking shot of a nearly empty train car sets the tone of isolation and danger perfectly.
5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :- Rollin unearths fresh rural dread in surreal zombie poem, 13 November 2005 Author: fertilecelluloid from Mountains of Madness
Jean Rollin's "Grapes of Death" is a refreshing living dead poem, and an effective low key horror film from France's gentleman auteur.After Elizabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) encounters a rotting man and the corpse of her traveling companion on a deserted train, she flees into the countryside where she must battle a plague of the sad, tortured dead. The "grapes" of the title relate to the cause of the spreading problem.Rollin's films have always found horror and dread in rural landscapes and crumbling architecture; in "Grapes" the fascination with these elements continues and is intensified by suitably evocative photography. Despite some ropey focus and action sequences that don't quite cut smoothly, this is the director's most technically polished work and an important addition to French "cinefantastique".Although the plot line bears some similarity to Romero's "The Crazies" and the visuals pre-date the recent dead-on-arrival French "Revenants" (see review), Rollin does not run this show along traditional genre lines. Instead, he has the heroine Pascal encountering a blind woman who is oblivious to the contagion and a recluse (Brigitte Lahaie) who may be her savior in a white nightie. Elizabeth's final reunion with her boyfriend has a sad, tragic quality that becomes, like the rest of the film, quite surreal.There is sporadic gore and the violence is shockingly sudden in parts, but Rollin's trademark dream-like pacing and social commentary are there to be enjoyed and appreciated.
6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :- Surprisingly good French zombie flick!, 31 March 2006 Author: The_Void from Beverley Hills, England
French director Jean Rollin is best known for his messy erotic vampire films, but Zombie Lake aside; he's actually a lot better at zombie films. Along with The Living Dead Girl, The Grapes of Death represents one of the few successes for the cult director. This zombie film stands out for its morbid and surreal atmosphere, and for the fact that, as zombie films go, this one is quite original. The title doesn't suggest a good film, but it refers to the movie's main plot point; namely, the fact that it's the French tradition of distilling wine that is to blame for the zombie outbreak. It's points like this that make the film profoundly French and despite the fact that France doesn't seem like the ideal country for a zombie outbreak; the plot and location blend together rather nicely. Naturally, the main character is female; and we follow her as she makes her way to her home town of Roubles; a wine producing estate. The journey turns awry when a man infected with the zombie virus boards the train, and our heroine finds her travel companion dead...and that's just the start of it! The plot takes the familiar Night of the Living Dead style idea of the living trying to stay clear of the dead, but Rollin makes the film his own with a fine variety of weird and wonderful characters, and it usually turns out that these are more dangerous than the zombie hoards. The rural setting provides a nice base for a zombie movie, as it's quite different from the usual urban setting, and this also blends well with Rollin's morbid atmosphere. The film is also very surreal, and the director continually gives the viewer the impression that there's something nasty lurking just around the corner. Many of Rollin's films feel cheap and nasty, but this one doesn't; the cinematography is beautiful, and the acting isn't too bad either; both of which give the film a higher quality feel than the plot, by rights, should have. The only time there's a lapse in quality is the awful commentary on French politics towards the end…but it's not enough to spoil it entirely. The film is quite erotic, and even though it's quite different to his usual stuff; you can still tell that it's Rollin in the director's chair. The ending is really good, and comes as quite a surprise; and I've got to say that I loved the final message; I agree, beer is superior to wine. Recommended!
6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :- The best film Rollin ever did !, 27 May 2003 Author: macabro357 from U.S.
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
(aka: THE GRAPES OF DEATH)And I've seen just about all of his films too, so if you're looking for John Carpenter or Jason or Freddie or any other American horror schlock, you better look somewhere else. This film takes it's time in the usual French way.Hey this one's got good gore effects!! I like the realistic sores with puss oozing out of them. The cool scene of the puss oozing out of the guy's face on the train was really well done.I also like the pitchfork scene where the farmer forks his daughter in an apparent fit of pesticide-induced madness. Not bad at all.Another good scene is when the blind girl Lucy is crucified on the back door of a farmhouse and her provider comes out and chops her head off with an ax, blood spraying out everywhere...Then the gorgeous Bridgette Lahaie appears, looking normal but really isn't. We get a nice full-frontal scene of her nude, too.It has one of those typical 1970s-style ambiguous endings where no one really wins, good or bad, so you'll have to see it for yourself.Excellent Synapse DVD with extras such as an interview with Rollin and Lahaie, who still looks gorgeous after 25 years. She hasn't really aged at all.Plus there's an excellent slide-show of all the gore scenes up close.Too bad the first reviewer below didn't wait a couple of years for this DVD to come out7 out of 10 for keeping me amused.
4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :- "My brains rotting up." Dull French horror film., 31 December 2005 Author: Paul Andrews (poolandrews@hotmail.com) from UK
Les Raisins de la Mort, or The Grapes of Death as it's more commonly known to English speaking audiences, starts on a French vineyard called Roubles. One of the workers named Kowalski complains about feeling ill... Elizabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) & her friend Brigitte are travelling across France on a train when it stops at a station & Kowalski gets on, he appears to have some sort of disease. He kills Brigitte & attacks Elizabeth who stops the train & flees in terror into the French countryside. Elizabeth comes across a house where she ask's for help, unfortunately the occupants are also infected with the sickness & it quickly becomes apparent that the mysterious infection has spread throughout the French countryside & Elizabeth must fight off the hordes of crazed villagers & find safety...This French production was co-written & directed by Jean Rollin & if you don't like his style of film-making then Les Raisins de la Mort will do little to change your opinion, it certainly hasn't changed mine. The script by Rollin & Christian Meunier seems to have been heavily influenced by Goerge A. Romeros The Crazies (1973), in fact they have much in common. It is also very slow, dull & frankly boring. It has a decent central premise that had potential but the film is just lethargic & the infected villagers themselves totally disappear for the final twenty odd minutes & they are just really slow. The story, character's or situations just didn't grip or engage me & I found myself becoming more & more disinterested in what was, or in the case of Les Raisins de la Mort, what wasn't happening.Director Rollin as usual spends more time on the visual look of the film rather than the story. There is hardly any dialogue which is expected & he likes to let his images to do the talking. Les Raisins de la Mort has a nice visual look, the bleak stark French countryside with it stone house village's makes for a nice isolated location although it does become monotonous eventually. Contray to what you may have heard the gore is quite tame & the special make-up effects are generally poor as the infected villager's look like they have bits of pizza stuck on their faces. There is one gory moment when someone has their head cut off with an axe, other than that there is a poor looking slit throat, someone is stabbed with a pitchfork & a few splashes of blood, that's it. For a Rollin film the nudity is surprisingly low with just two instances.Technically the film is OK, it looks nice enough but the effects are a bit dodgy looking. I can't comment on the acting as the dialogue is spoken in French, so don't watch it if you don't like reading subtitles as I don't think an English dub version exists.Les Raisins de la Mort was disappointing as far as I'm concerned, I'd have preferred a zombie film with intestine eating & blood drinking rather than the infected villager's type thing we ended up with. I found it boring, dull & went nowhere. Even Rollins usual visual dream like surreal style seems to be absent. Average at best, not worth making any real effort to watch.
1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :- Nice, Blood and Wine, 26 May 2008 Author: ed_two_o_nine from United Kingdom
Now here is a rarity. A movie I came across late at night on one of Sky's inferior movie channels (in this case zone horror) that I actually found quite enjoyable. If you are a fan of old school horror then I imagine you will enjoy this. Yes there are some ropey gore effects and some dodgy editing but overall there is a sense of menace which is greatly aided by the slow burning pace and genuinely spooky sound track. The basic premise of the film s that off a pesticide that has been sprayed on the grapes of a vineyard turn all those who consume the wine into some form of diseased zombie type. A young girl on the way to see her boyfriend at the vineyard has to deal with it. This is my first experience of French horror and of the movies of Jean Rollin and I have to say I will be seeking out more of both on this showing. You do have to take into account that this is a 1978 movie and it does show it's age but it has genuine fright moments and a real seedy scary under currant and a lot of modern horror directors could learn a thing or two about pacing a horror movie from here. A real unexpected treat. I would definitely watch this again and for fans of the genre give an extra mark.
2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :- The Grapes of Death, 24 April 2008 Author: Scarecrow-88 from United States
A grape harvest festival, located in a wine region of France, yields an infected village..those who drank wine made from a nearby vineyard, whose grapes were sprayed with a created pesticide, are infected with flesh-eating sores which ooze puss and blood, rotting their brains causing homicidal mania to the point that they turn on those they love. Traveling to meet her fiancé(..the very one responsible for making the pesticide causing the zombie plague)at the village vineyard of Rubelais, Elizabeth's(Marie-Georges Pascal)train stops at a station picking up an infected passenger who murders her traveling companion coming after her. Fleeing the train, Elizabeth enters the vast landscape of a beautiful French countryside, with "rocks everywhere reaching to the sky like trees", not knowing what terrors await her. Along the way she runs into an infected father who murders his infected daughter right before her eyes with a pitchfork(..before crushing him with their car she leaves in), an infected man pleading for help bashing his oozing forehead through her car window, a blind girl needing directions back to her native village, the devastated village with burning bonfires spitting flame throughout while dead bodies lay rotting in the streets, village zombies with violent intent, the blind girl's infected boyfriend, and a crazy beauty(the ravishing Brigitte Lahaie..her scene in a see-through nightgown pulling two great danes is quite a memorable image to say the least) whose perfect naked body shows no signs of infection although she wears her lunacy like a badge of honor. Luckily for Elizabeth, she is rescued by two uninfected construction workers, Paul(Félix Marten), with rifle in tow, and Lucien(Serge Marquand)with the necessary sticks of dynamite when needed. Making their way to the vineyard of her fiancé, Elizabeth will seek her love for answers to what caused such a horrifying ordeal. Tragic consequences ensue.Have you ever seen a sophisticated zombie gore film? Rollin's take on the zombie genre isn't the same blunt instrument of grue that we often are used to seeing, although the French director does turn up the dial on delivering some nasty facial sores which release yucky colors and goo. The pitchfork scene is certainly a highlight..and Rollin's camera remains on the victim's stabbed body as she dies with the pitchfork sticking out. The French countryside is utilized by Rollin well(..would you expect anything otherwise?)showing us a gorgeous unpopulated picturesque space, uninhabited by the zombie hordes. Certainly an alternative to the awful low budget bloodbaths that have glutted movie shelves since Romero's movies broke the cinematic mold for gory violence. Not to say Rollin doesn't display a few gruesome highlights despite the pitchfork scene. One wacky moment shows an infected citizen beheading his female lover, stuck to a door with nails through her hands, and blouse ripped displaying her breasts! Oh, and Rollin adds to the hysteria of the scene by showing him planting a slobbery kiss to the lips of the disembodied head as he dies! Lahaie sure captures your attention as well..she disrobes in a completely gratuitous scene showing the two uninfected males that she has no sores. Pascal, as the tragic heroine, tries to show a woman losing her sanity as she bares witness to the non-stop parade of insanity occurring around her. I found her a bit over the top, but I guess we must look at what was happening and put her character's plight into proper perspective. Here's Lahaie, having arranged for the zombies to have their way with her, coming towards Liz with a lighted stick as flames threaten to burn her face. If that wasn't enough, she watches as an innocent falls prey to her infected lover, not being able to stop what will eventually happen. And, to cap it off, Liz must face the fact that her fiancé not only caused the plague but is also a victim of his creation. So, I guess I can see some heightened overacting(..pulling into her hair, screeching, with eyes bulging)being feasible under the circumstances. At the very end, Pascal displays her character as a silent shell of her former self, no longer the young woman full of life at the very beginning..Elizabeth has been put through the ringer. Although, "The Iron Rose" is still my personal favorite Rollin film, this may very well be his best one. I think "Grapes of Death" certainly shows a filmmaker who has taken complete command of his craft.
2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :- A slow-moving and eerie French 'zombie' film., 12 August 2007 Author: HumanoidOfFlesh from Chyby, Poland
Chased from her train by a bloodthirsty madman sporting a face of decaying flesh young Élisabeth flees into the desolate and bleak French countryside.Unbeknownst to our heroine an experimental pesticide has tainted the region's grape harvest and all imbibers of the local vintage have been viciously mutated into deranged zombie-like killers.It's hard to classify "The Grapes of Death" as a zombie film,mainly because it features living people driven into murderous rage by contaminated wine.As the most of Jean Rollin's works "The Grapes of Death" is set in an eerily isolated and lifeless landscape loaded with empty fields,misty bridges and crumbling houses.There is a good deal of gore including particularly gruesome decapitation and lovely full-frontal nudity scene provided by Brigitte Lahaie.8 out of 10.
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