Revenge of the Revenant Review 25: The one where the zombie apocalypse is started by booze

 

Title: The Grapes of Death (Le Raisins De Mort) aka Pesticide

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Runnerup/ Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

In the last few reviews, I’ve been commenting on my surprise how few movies I’ve reviewed from the 1970s, a decade whose anxieties spawned the zombie genre. In the process, I’ve come up with some answers. One factor is simply that I already covered several major examples either outside this feature or in its original incarnation. Another is that timing of Dawn of the Dead and a few other influential films inspired a lot of ‘’70s” zombie movies that weren’t completed or released until the early 1980s, a period that has if anything been overrepresented here. Finally, the 1970s were paradoxically a time when different conceptions of zombies and the undead didn’t stand out. This time around, I have a case and point that happened to be incoming while I was planning the lineup for this and other features. It also happens to be the first example of “zombies” that are not strictly undead. Here is The Grapes of Death, a movie where the zombie apocalypse is unleashed in wine country.

Our story begins with a few scenes of workers in a French vineyard, working with a new pesticide. We then cut to our damsel, Elizabeth, who is travelling by train to a village where her fiancé owns a vineyard. When a disfigured man boards the train and kills her travelling companion, she gets off the train only to find the countryside already devastated by a strange plague that turns many if not most of its victims into violent psychotics. These are not simply ravening undead, however, but living humans who can use tools and weapons, communicate, and even ask for help. Elizabeth tries to aid several of the people she meets, several of whom prove to be infected, but her best intentions keep going awry. Finally, she meets up with two survivors who apparently escaped infection by not drinking the local wine. Together, they fight their way to an airlift. But when Elizabeth discovers her fiancé among the infected, the final casualty may be her own sanity!

The Grapes of Death was a French horror/ exploitation movie by Jean Rollin, otherwise known for the likes of 1980’s Night of the Hunted. The movie starred Marie-Georges Pascal as Elizabeth, with a supporting cast that included Serge Marquand of the original Dangerous Liaisons as the survivor Lucien and Rollin regular Brigitte Lahaie as an unnamed infected woman. The movie was reportedly filmed under the alternate title Pesticide, but released in France under effectively the same title used for English-language release. It is unclear if this was directly based on the original phrase “grapes of wrath”, or a reference the American novel and film of that name. It is also uncertain if the movie was dubbed in English, though evidently contemporary English posters attest to its release in the United Kingdom and/ or US. The movie was released on disc in 2002 by Synapse, in French with English subtitles. Lahaie went on to become a broadcaster and political commentator. Pascal died in 1985, in a reported suicide.

For my experiences, this was a movie I saw before not too long ago but didn’t remember much about, which usually is a strong sign to run away as far and fast as possible. As I went through the tail end of my list for this feature, I thought of this one and threw it on my Netflix queue without really planning on reviewing it. A little background research wasn’t in its favor, especially when I realized it was from the same crew as Night of the Hunted, a movie I definitely remembered not at all favorably. Still, I went in with cautious optimism and soon realized that this was one of the very best zombie movies of the 1970s or any other decade. It further stood out for its innovative conception of zombies, at face value not that different from near-contemporary films like The Crazies yet anticipating films as far ahead as 28 Days Later. About the only thing that I readily counted as a con was the level of skin and accompanying violence, and even that is exceptionally restrained with Night of the Hunted as a frame of reference.

The central reality of this movie is that it’s a relatively early example of a movie that tries to “rationalize” the zombie genre by making it about diseased humans rather than the undead, in itself a contrivance that I usually tune out. The usual problem with this approach is that even the isolated good examples almost always avoid the actual complexities of disease transmission and symptomology (all part of a longer rant I have bottled up for a very long time). Here, however, the finer details are not only acknowledged but made into a central element of the plot. The effects of the plague, explained as chemical contamination, are highly variable, leading to doubt and suspense. The infected show lesions that make them identifiable, but the less severely affected (of course including the women) are able to hide their symptoms. Several of the infected are not revealed for some time, and the status of one or two is never entirely resolved. There is further variation in behavior. Some are overtly violent, some just “out of it”, some distraught or remorseful. In practice, however, almost all of them become violent, especially if it becomes clear the uninfected survivors aren’t buying their deceptions and protests.

What makes the movie truly exceptional is that this is all built into something like a comedy of manners. Gender roles and further romanticized cliches are repeatedly warped or broken, not just between men and women. Early on, Elizabeth seeks shelter with a family who at first seem only slightly awkward, but soon discovers a far darker reality. Rather than learning her lesson, she then tries to lead a blind woman to safety, with darkly hilarious results as the would-be rescue protests and tries to break free at every opportunity. Then in the middle act, we have a veritable cat and mouse game between Elizabeth, the armed male survivors and the most cunning of the infected. The off-kilter dynamics continue into the finale, as Elizabeth herself becomes erratic. At this stage, certain synopses will try to reason out who is really infected, but I find this to be a distraction from what is clearly the point. Up to now, the disease has been a metaphor for madness, but the denouement reminds us that the real thing will never be far below the surface.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I had a lot to choose from, especially when Lahaie is onscreen. My pick, however, stood out from early on, though further in than it might seem on casual recollection. After her first few misadventures, Elizabeth has acquired a car, and as she drives along to the inexplicable peppy soundtrack, she has perhaps the most unnerving encounter of the film.  She pauses to explore some Medieval-looking ruins, then retreats when a clearly infected man emerges. By the time she gets back to the car, he has gotten in front of the vehicle. He advances to the driver’s side door without running or making any threatening moves. Finally, he pleads with her to take him to a doctor. When she only withdraws (away from the ignition and the steering wheel!), he becomes frustrated or else just gives up the pretense, and begins beating his head against the glass.  The glass fractures and then shatters, which is when Elizabeth does the inevitable. It’s a  low-key sequence one might assume either beyond or beneath an exploitation director like Rollin, but in fact a very representative example of his talents as seen here.

In closing, all I can do is repeat that this movie was a very pleasant surprise. It has enough flaws that I could have taken it down a rating, and enough  “cringe” that I probably wouldn’t pay money for it.  What balances things out is simply that it does what it clearly sets out to do, with far more subtlety and finesse than could be expected. For 1970s zombie movies in particular, it is easily a high point for the genre, offering a fitting if not quite equal counterpart to Dawn of the Dead the same year. After Romero’s second (or third…) contribution to the field, things would never be the same, but very few would be as good or as fun as pokey little gems like this.