REVIEW: LES RAISINS DE LA MORT
REVIEW: GRAPES OF DEATH
REVIEW: JEAN ROLLIN [ 1978 ] 90'
REVIEW: FILMS A.B.C.
CAST: MARIE-GEORGE PASCAL, FELIX MARTEN,
CAST: SERGE MARQUAND, MIRELLA RANCELOT
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: I'M NOT DRINKING ANY F'ING MERLOT!

When doing the planning for this feature I was struck with quite an ugly conundrum - I only wanted to write three reviews for it, as is my present norm for features, and I had four French zombie films at my disposal from which to choose. Those were, of course, the three that have ended up in this feature and the Jess Franco helmed French/Spanish co-production ABIME DE MORTS VIVANTS (OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES) [1981]. In the end it turned out not to be such an ugly conundrum after all - ABIME DE MORTS VIVANTS is a hideously unoriginal and unentertaining exploitation piece while the film being reviewed here as well as the much more recent LES REVENANTS both present patently original and, in the case of the latter, completely revolutionary views on the genre. So the better two of the three won out - much to my viewing pleasure - and ABIME DE MORTS VIVANTS has been resigned to its rightful place on the crap pile for the foreseeable future.

Some may be a bit alarmed to see that both this film and the previous feature reviewed - LE LAC DES MORTS VIVANTS [1981] - were both helmed by the same man: Jean Rollin. While a certain level of animosity is certainly justifiable given the incomparable idiocy of the preceding film you really needn't have worried.

The film begins with a group of vineyard workers who are liberally applying a newly created pesticide to the vines. One of the workers, Kowalski, reacts unfavorably to it - developing a fever and a slight pain in the neck - but the owner, Michael, assures him that it's nothing. A new shipment of face masks - these completely air tight - is due in the next day and Michael is sure that this will solve the problems. Some time later Elisabeth, Michael's girlfriend who lives in the city, is headed for Michael's vineyard by train with one of her friends in tow. It's October, well outside of the travel season, and the train is completely empty aside from the two young women. Elisabeth's friend goes to brush her teeth as the train stops and picks up another passenger - Kowalski from the previous scene. He moves to the booth where Elisabeth is seated and sits across from her. The train gets moving again and Elisabeth is made uneasy by the fact that her friend has yet to return - this unease quickly turns to raw panic as Kowalski's face begins to rot before her eyes. She pulls the emergency stop and runs from the train, discovering her friend dead in the bathroom along the way. Kowalski pursues Elisabeth, who escapes into a railroad tunnel, and then sits on the tracks behind the train and ponders what he has done.

Elisabeth makes her way through the French countryside searching feverishly for anyone who might be able to help. Unlucky for a good length of time, she eventually stumbles upon an old farmhouse where a middle aged man lives with his daughter. Neither of them look terribly happy as Elisabeth relates to them the events that transpired earlier in the day - even worse, the father has a sore on his hand that looks quite the same as that which developed on Kowalski on the train. Elisabeth realizes that something is going quite wrong with the world and attempts to escape the house - the daughter stops her and demands that Elisabeth get some rest and calm herself. On her way upstairs she notices an open door to a bedroom and wanders in - inside she discovers the body of the mother of the household, her throat cut, covered with a sheet. Before she can scream the daughter comes in and explains that her father has gone quite mad - if the two of them can just get the keys to the car then they can both make a break for it together. The father, his sore spread now to cover his entire forearm, breaks in on the two of them just after Elisabeth pockets the key for the car - he's not happy at all with the idea of his daughter leaving. He's so unhappy, in fact, that he rips open her shirt - revealing that she's infected as well - and stabs her through the stomach with a pitchfork.

Elisabeth takes this as an opportune moment to escape the crazed family and rushes to try and start the car. The father, suddenly realizing that he's just murdered his own daughter, places himself in front of the car and demands that Elisabeth run him down with it - she agrees, begrudgingly, and sets off once more in search of help. On her way she discovers that the local countryside is relatively full of crazed rotting people. After one unfortunate incident the car ceases to operate and Elisabeth is forced to wander on foot once more. Along the way she meets Lucy, a young blind woman, who is lost and alone. Elisabeth offers her information about the appearance of the surrounding landscape and the blind woman, in turn, leads her to her home town so that she can find help. In town it's quite clear that something very bad has happened - the streets are littered with the mutilated dead and fires have been started at random. Lucy leads Elisabeth to her home but wanders off again on her own in search of her dear friend Lucas. She finds him and, in return, is strangled and decapitated with an axe as the crazed Lucas screams, "Lucy, I love you!" Elisabeth goes on the run again but is hampered considerably by the fact that the entire town seems to have been turned into insane zombies.

Elisabeth meets up with a blond woman who insists she's the only uninfected person in the village - but before long the creepy woman has tossed Elisabeth into the hands of the zombie townsfolk under her command. Two local hunters - somehow having escaped whatever has caused the rest of the townsfolk to go nuts - intervene and rescue Elisabeth, but not before putting an end to a number of the townsfolk (including Lucas, who's taken to toting around Lucy's disembodied head) and having their truck blown up by the creepy blond woman. Elisabeth and the two hunters head out through the countryside on their own and discover the only thing that differentiates them from the rest of the infected is the fact that they did not attend the local wine festival - of which Elisabeth's boyfriend's vineyard was a top provider. The three of them decide to head off to Michael's vineyard in an attempt to get in touch with some sort of outside help. Upon arriving they succeed - with one of the men having radioed in a helicopter. It is confirmed here that the cause of the infection seems to have been contaminated wine and that the authorities are working together on an antidote. Elisabeth heads into the depths of the vineyard on her own, searching for her beloved and hoping that he, too, has not been reduced to a violently insane zombie.

Jean Rollin proves himself an absolute master of atmosphere with LES RAISINS DE LA MORT by making good use of the available French countryside with its ancient castles and crumbling villas. Direction and editing are an enormous step up from the film I previously reviewed - the two are so different in nature that I find it difficult to believe they could possibly have been helmed by the same man. The screenplay, here co-written between Rollin and screenwriter Christian Meunier from a story by Rollin and Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, is also a considerable step up and provides the director with many many opportunities to offer up the sort of atmospheric set pieces he's known for. The film also benefits from Rollin keeping his often exploitative background in film well out of the picture for the majority of the running time - nudity, while present, is kept quite minimal and never reaches the exploitative levels.

The biggest thing working for the success of Rollin's film is in my opinion the zombies themselves, however. It's arguable that Rollin's creations aren't really zombies at all, particularly if you go by the standards of Romero and Fulci and the like. His creatures, while violent, are also emotionally torn apart by their condition and appear truly tormented by the acts of violence they commit. Lucas screaming in agony just prior to hacking away at Lucy's corpse with an axe is a prime example of this and the father's reaction to just having killed his own daughter being another. Rollin's zombies, for lack of a better word, are pitiable creatures by and large and aren't nearly as easy to right off as inhuman as those of most other directors. Special effects, while generally minimal, are well handled and the film manages to serve up quite a few shockingly effective set pieces in its running time. The more human characters the film has to offer should not be discounted either, however - while dialogue tends to be sparse the performers all do ample jobs of pulling off their roles, with none of them suffering in the least from the age old problem of being so aggravating that you simply cannot wait for them to become zombie chow.

This is not to say that LES RAISINS DE LA MORT is without its problems - pacing, for one, is an issue during some sequences. Worse, the story is often quite illogical, with characters putting themselves into various situations without any real reason to have done so. These are issues that nearly every zombie film - and many films in general - have in common however and they tend to be made up for here through the consistently beautiful camera work and the overall competence of the production. This film was largely overshadowed by the release of Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD the same year and never received a theatrical release stateside to the best of my knowledge. Luckily for us the good people of Synapse Films saw fit to release this film on a quite fantastic special edition DVD a few years back - it's a disc that's quite easy for this reviewer to recommend.

All in all, LES RAISINS DE LA MORT is a satisfyingly original take on the tried and tired zombie mythos from the same man that, ironically enough, brought us one of the worst films the genre has to offer. While that film is certainly good for a few laughs I have no trouble at all recommending this one as one of the best French zombie films you're ever likely to see.