Watch The Grapes of Death For Free

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Somewhere in the midst of the zombie craze that exploded in the late 60s to the mid-80s, this French-made one is probably the least known. While not technically a zombie film, it's the closest genre to compare it to. Jean Rollin the director was often known for making low budget schlock, but with this big budget disaster flick he shows he's quite a masterful storyteller. His keen eye for even the slightest of gestures to the gory special effects blend perfectly with the well-written characters and dialogue. Now the story: Elizabeth (played by Marie-Georges Pascal) is riding a train with her friend. She's going to visit her fiancé who works in a vineyard. At the vineyard, they've recently started using a new type of chemical pesticide. However, some of the workers are starting to feel weird. In a grisly opening scene, Elizabeth watches a man's face disintegrate right before her eyes. While fleeing the man, she stumbles upon the body of her friend. She manages to escape off the train. The man has followed her off the train, but then sits down on the tracks, a look of utter despair on his face. From that point on, she comes across stranger and stranger people all suffering in various stages from some kind of decay. The worse it gets, the crazier and more zombie-like the people become. This movie borrows ideas from Romero's DEAD movies as well as THE CRAZIES but then takes those concepts in new directions. Marie-Georges Pascal plays the part of Elizabeth wonderfully. She's got such a beautiful, expressive face. Whether she's crying, screaming, or just has a look of hopelessness, you feel for her. Sadly as I stated earlier, this is a little known gem that deserves to be rediscovered. So please, if you can find it, hunt down this not-quite-a-zombie film. It's worth discovering!

Elizabeth (a strong and sympathetic performance by the fetching Marie-Georges Pascal) and her friend Brigitte (lovely Evelyne Thomas) are on vacation in rural Southern France. Brigitte gets butchered by a strange man on the train. Elizabeth gets away and runs afoul of a savage horde of lethal decomposing killers who have been infected by a toxic new pesticide used in the local grape fields. Director Jean Rollin, working from a terse and straightforward script he co-wrote Christian Meunier, wisely eschews pretense and gets right down to chilling brass tacks from the terrifying beginning to the supremely jolting and nihilistic downbeat conclusion. Rollin relates the grimly compelling story at a deliberate pace and does an expert job of creating and sustaining a quietly eerie and ominous atmosphere. Moreover, Rollin delivers several moments of pure gut-wrenching terror: a father murders his own daughter by running her through with a pitchfork, a village littered with freshly slain corpses, and a helpless blind girl being killed by her guardian who then strings up her body on a door and cuts off her head. Better still, Rollin gives the premise a substantial degree of credibility by firmly grounding the plot in a thoroughly believable pedestrian reality. The remote rustic countryside setting evokes a powerfully unsettling sense of dread, isolation, and vulnerability. The fact that the hideous rot-faced ghouls are struggling to retain their humanity while succumbing to the disease makes them that much more scary and disturbing. Kudos are in order for the sound acting by the sturdy cast: Pascal excels as the frightened, yet resilient heroine, Felix Marten contributes a solid turn as rugged no-nonsense peasant and war veteran Paul, and the gorgeous Brigitte Lahaie makes the most out of her memorably odd role as a shrewd infected woman who shows no external signs of the disease. Claude Becognee's bright, agile cinematography boasts a few striking sinuous tracking shots and offers a wealth of stunning visuals. Philippe Sissmann's spare, wonky synthesizer score also does the shivery trick. But it's the starkness of the narrative which gives this picture an extra unnerving edge. Well worth seeing.

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.

Though not up to Rollin's ROSE OF IRON (1972) or THE LIVING DEAD GIRL (1981), this is still pretty good - forming with the latter and ZOMBIE LAKE (1980; which I haven't watched) a very loose trilogy.Still, it's not strictly a zombie film (as the 'monsters' here aren't flesh-eaters and don't even rise from the dead!) - though it carries much the same kind of menace as LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (1974), also largely set in the countryside and displaying a concern for ecology in the modern world. As with many of Rollin's work, this is actually more of a hypnotic mood-piece with very little dialogue: languorous, often lyrical and undeniably haunting. In this respect, the dreamy cinematography (which is sometimes out-of-focus) and the simple yet agreeable score (despite the admittedly grim subject matter) emerge as indelible assets to its ultimate quality.The film is quite gory and the ending downbeat, but Marie-Georges Pascal's bewildered heroine generates genuine audience sympathy - even if it's a fetching yet duplicitous Brigitte Lahaie (inexplicably unaffected by the plague which is ravaging the village) who steals the show with her brief but striking role!