Grapes Of Death (Subtitled) (DVD)

Starring: Marie-Georges Pascal, Felix Marten, Serge Marquand, Mirella Rancelot
Written By: Jean-Pierre Bouyxou; Christian Meunier
Directed By: Jean Rollin

It was the title of this movie that drew me in. When I first heard it I thought it was some gothic retelling of the famous novel. When I found out it was a French film by Jean Rollin, I decided to watch it anyway - because of the title.

At a vineyard ...
...vines there. Unfortunately this pesticide appears to be having a negative effect on the workers spraying it, which is one of the biggest case of forshadowing I've seen in a while. Of course, the pesticide ends up turning the workers insane (and also melts them, it seems...), and one poor girl travelling to the vineyard and nearby village to meet her fiance ends up having to try to escape from a hoard of murderous melting people. In the meantime, ... more

Starring: Marie-Georges Pascal, Felix Marten, Serge Marquand, Mirella Rancelot
Written By: Jean-Pierre Bouyxou; Christian Meunier
Directed By: Jean Rollin

It was the title of this movie that drew me in. When I first heard it I thought it was some gothic retelling of the famous novel. When I found out it was a French film by Jean Rollin, I decided to watch it anyway - because of the title.

At a vineyard in France, a new pesticide is being used on the vines there. Unfortunately this pesticide appears to be having a negative effect on the workers spraying it, which is one of the biggest case of forshadowing I've seen in a while. Of course, the pesticide ends up turning the workers insane (and also melts them, it seems...), and one poor girl travelling to the vineyard and nearby village to meet her fiance ends up having to try to escape from a hoard of murderous melting people. In the meantime, there's lots of blood and gore, and any female Our Heroine (I call her this because I don't think we actually get told her name till the very end of the film) meets ends up meeting her demise in an unpleasant and partially naked way.

Well, that last bit's pure Jean Rollin for you. Just about every female in his films has to end up topless at some point. If they're topless and dead it's even better. So we have a topless girl get stabbed through with a pitchfork, another topless girl nailed to a door and decapitated (although to be exact, it was actually a pretty poorly-made dummy that was decapitated)... and so on. There was no softcore lesbianism shoehorned in whenever the action faltered somewhat, which was unusual for Rollin's films - but then again, there was actually more of a plot to this film that most of Rollin's. Less tortured internal monologues and more actual plot, for one thing.

There were a couple of very well-shot scenes involving a blind girl trying to find her guide; she stumbles around the village as the insane villagers surround her, aware of their presence but not knowing of the danger she is in. The villagers for their part do nothing physical to her - they just follow her silently, slowly closing in. The tension in the scene is quite palpable as we wait to see what happens to the girl - all we know is that it probably won't be good. It was all very creepy.

The ending fell rather flat, but then again it was rather typical of Rollin - depressing and somewhat without a point. There was also a few chunks of too-obvious exposition that could have been done without, as well as the social commentary which came out of nowhere. But overall, this is a cut above some of Rollin's other works, and worth a look if you are so inclined.
 

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