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Les Raisins de la Mort
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Wikipedia article
'Les Raisins de La Mort' (English: 'The Grapes of Death', also known as 'Pesticide') is a 1978 French horror film directed by Jean Rollin. It centres on a young woman who becomes trapped in a village where a dangerous pesticide has turned the residents into aggressive zombies.
Plot
At the Roubls winemaking vineyard, the workers spray the fields with pesticides. When one of the workers becomes ill, complaining of a pain in his neck, his boss insists it's just a minor injury and tells him to go back to work.
lizabeth is travelling by train to Roubls to live with Michel, her fianc and the owner of the vineyard, and makes a friend with Brigitte, a woman on the train. Brigitte excuses herself to visit the restroom and doesn't return for a long time; then the vineyard worker comes aboard, encounters Brigitte, and a bit later joins lizabeth in her compartment. In time, the man's neck suddenly grows an ulcer which starts oozing blood. Panicked, lizabeth escapes him, stumbling upon Brigitte's corpse on the way.
Leaving the train, lizabeth flees to a nearby village for help. A man named Pierre and his daughter Antoinette take her in, but react coldly to her tale. lizabeth panics when she sees Pierre's arms disfigured by infection, but Antoinette holds her back, telling her to get upstairs to take a rest. When lizabeth enters the bedroom and discovers a woman whose throat has been cut, Antoinette explains that the dead woman is her mother, and that her father killed her because he's become insane. lizabeth and Antoinette try to leave the house, but Pierre, now featuring the same facial ulcers as the vineyard worker, catches them and rips open his daughter's blouse, revealing similar ulcers on her body. He kills Antoinette with a pitchfork, but lizabeth flees and takes Pierre's car. When he gets in front of it and begs her to kill him, she runs him over and drives off.
lizabeth travels further into the area to look for help and is approached by a man whose head is covered with ulcers and who is asking for help. When the pain from the infection makes him smash the car's window, the panicked lizabeth shoots him with a revolver taken from the glove compartment. She comes across a blind girl named Lucy, who is searching for her caregiver, Lucas. While helping her, lizabeth comes upon more bodies covered with the same strange ulcers strewn all over the village, while others are stumbling around like zombies, driven into murderous insanity by the infection. lizabeth declines to tell Lucy, who runs off on her own and is killed and decapitated by Lucas, who has also been infected.
As the infected chase her, a blonde woman rescues lizabeth. This woman has been trapped in a house for a few days, so she and lizabeth try to get out and run, but the woman suddenly grabs lizabeth and leaves her to the infected. Two men, Paul and Lucien, show up and start killing the infected. They encounter the blonde, who convinces them that she is not infected by briefly disrobing, and they tell her to wait by their truck. Escaping her assailants, lizabeth reaches the truck, where she and the woman get into a fight. lizabeth clubs her with a torch, revealing previously hidden infection boils on the woman's face. The woman then tosses the torch into an open dynamite crate on the truck, blowing the car up and killing her.
While lizabeth, Paul and Lucien leave the village on foot, they begin to deduce that the infestation happened just after a wine festival on the Sunday before. lizabeth suggests seeking out her fianc for answers, and so the three proceed to the vineyard. Finding it apparently abandoned, Paul and Lucien sit down for a meal after learning from a phone call that the authorities are aware of the infection. Restless, lizabeth searches the grounds and finds Michel, also infected but still lucid. He reveals that he invented the pesticide which tainted the wine that started this baleful infection, which spread so quickly because he had illegally employed immigrants as cheap labor, which prevented him from notifying the police.
Despite Michel's urgings that she stay away, lizabeth embraces him. When Paul comes looking for her and discovers the two, Michel, unwilling to become insane, leaps at Paul, compelling the latter to shoot him. Now apparently infected herself, lizabeth picks up Paul's gun and shoots him, then ambushes and kills Lucien when he comes looking for them. The film ends with lizabeth allowing Michel's blood to drip on her face from the loft above.
Cast
* Marie-Georges Pascal as lizabeth
* Flix Marten as Paul (credited as Felix Marten)
* Serge Marquand as Lucien
* Mirella Rancelot as Lucy
* Patrice Valota as Pierre
* Patricia Cartier as Antoinette
* Michel Herval as Michel
* Paul Bisciglia as Lucas
* Brigitte Lahaie as Tall Blonde Woman (credited as Brigitte Lahaye)
* Olivier Rollin as Undead Who Smashes his Head
* Franoise Pascal as Train Passenger
* Evelyne Thomas as Brigitte
* Jean-Pierre Bouyxou as Undead with Scythe
* Jean Rollin as Man in Vineyard (uncredited)
Home media
'Les raisins de la mort' was first made available on DVD in the United States via Synapse Films on 25 April 2002; this special edition release preserved its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1. It was released again in the US, by Redemption Films, on 20 May 2008. Both releases of the film in the US were uncut. In the United Kingdom, the film was released on DVD by Redemption Films on 25 April 2004, also in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1.
Redemption released the film for the first time on Blu-ray in the US and Canada on 25 April 2013.
Other titles
'The Grapes of Death'
'Pestizide'
'Pesticide'
'The Raisins of Death'
'Foltermhle der gefangenen Frauen'
Featured in
* "Vampires and Virgins: The Films of Jean Rollin" episode of 'Eurotika!', a documentary television series directed by Andy Stark and Pete Tombs (1999)
* 'La Nuit des horloges', directed by Jean Rollin (2007)
* 'Secret Cinema', short film directed by Michael Wolf (2007)
* 'Spark of Life', short film directed by Mike Bazanele (2008)
References
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