Diagonaldi Very well executed

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Bezenby I've had this film in my collection for yonks, so I thought I'd get round to watching. Please note, I like my euro films loud and quick and full of gore, and although this film had gore, the loud and quick parts were sadly lacking. PLOT? Wine = being a zombie. That's that. There's this French chick trying to get to her fiancé and basically we're here to watch her try and get there, and the outcome of what happens there, like. But you're a busy person. You don't want the f*ckin plot, because you know it already. You're question is, is it any good.Answer: Kind of. It's nowhere near as horrible as Zombie Lake, and does contain moments of greatness, but there's an awful lot of places in the film where everything slows to a crawl just because our heroine is very slow on the uptake. I paid three pound for it. It was worth it. I think I paid 11 pound for zombie Lake, and have been unable to stay awake through it long enough to review it.

Woodyanders 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.

Stuart Richards (The_Eighth_Passenger) I got the DVD of Grapes Of Death for free with a magazine and still managed to feel ripped off after enduring its painful 85 minutes. I am no zombie film enthusiast by any means and I had never before seen any of Jean Rollin's work but I went into this expecting to be at least entertained by a dumb fun gore flick in the vein of Zombie Flesh Eaters. Instead I was treated to a poor attempt at an art-house film. You may say my expectations were what let me down and that 'Grapes' has more going for it than I was prepared for. If that's the case then may I be stricken by lightening this very day, because what I saw was not only a complete and utter failure in every aspect but also one of the worst films I have seen in my life.The plot, for what its worth, revolves around a young woman who, after surviving an attack from a diseased man aboard a deserted train, finds herself lost in the French countryside. She stumbles across a farmhouse and encounters more diseased people and the film progresses in the usual manner until the big showdown at the end. It's worth mentioning at this point that although the film bills itself as a zombie film it's really not. The infected have been poisoned by the grapes which grow locally and are more 'insane yet aware' killers than 'roaming braindead' flesh eaters.There's no need to say anymore about the plot as with this type of film you know what you're getting yourself in for and to reveal anymore would only to be explaining scene by scene what takes place.These type of films really rely on either being funny or just damn scary to keep us interested. 'Grapes' spectacularly fails at both, although I concede it was only aiming for the latter. Atmosphere? None to be found here, as Rollin's idea of conjuring up any kind of mood is to have repeated far away shots of our girl (yes, I've already forgotten the "characters" name and I can't be bothered with finding it out) walking through the hills, then, when she gets close, stick the camera another 100 metres away and let her get close again. As I mentioned before, Rollin's seems to be trying to make an arty film here but it really doesn't work and he should have just gone all out and made it a ridiculous gore fest. The gore that is here? I'll admit at times the weeping facial sores were pretty sickening but for the most part it looks fake. Budget constraints you might say? Work to your budget, I say. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead barely has any gore (for a zombie flick) and is an absolute classic. Gore isn't needed, and if your budget can't afford you good effects then don't bother. Try and tell a decent story instead. Oh dear, I just contradicted myself. What do I want Rollin to do? Make a gore fest or a story driven film? Maybe even combine the two? Hmmm, I suppose that he should have just donated the money to charity and done us all a favour. The music is typical synthesiser rubbish that you forgive when a film is good but when the film is bad it just makes you want to burst you own ear drums. I was reaching for a knitting needle...The acting is bad, although that is no real surprise given the genre and budget. When the script is good and you are engaged this is the kind of thing that won't bother you too much but obviously that is not the case here and if there's one thing worse than bad acting it's bad acting in a foreign language. When you can't understand them and still know that they're terrible then it's not a good sign. Horror films tend to have more than their fair share of annoying characters, those dumbasses who are just begging to be butchered, but the main girl in this is so dense that she makes the average slasher movie chick look like Stephen Hawkins. As for the blind girl character, if I ever hear the name 'Jaques' again I think I will turn more insane than the infected in this film. She stumbles aimlessly around saying it for at least 15 minutes of this films over drawn length.And over drawn is what this review is becoming. I could rant about this dog turd of a film for hours but it won't make a bit of difference and I feel I have already wasted far too much of my life on it. Suffice to say I cannot recommend this to anyone except... actually I cannot recommend it to anyone. Judging by the other reviews on this site I seem to be in the minority but as far as I'm concerned this is one of the most boring films ever made.

Michael_Elliott Grapes of Death, The (1978) ** (out of 4) French horror film from cult director Jean Rollin has some nice moments but not enough. In a small countryside village people are turning into crazed zombies after some dumb farmers accidentally put toxic on the grapes, which are turned into wine and drank by the locals. Like many other Rollin films, this one here has some high moments as well as some slow moments but after hearing so many good things about this film I can't help but be disappointed. The good bits include some nice atmosphere, plenty of gore and a yummy scene with Brigitte Lahaie undressing. The bad moments is the typical slowness of the picture as well as the fact that nothing really happens throughout the 90-minute running time. Also known as Les Raisins de la Mort.