The Grapes of Death

The Grapes of Death is Jean Rollin’s 1978 film of people turning into murderous ghouls. Kind of his Crazies, but with the local villagers poisoned by wine altered with a new pesticide rather than by a virus.

Elizabeth is travelling to Roubles to meet her fiance at the wine estate. Her travels are interrupted by an infected local, and she travails the local countryside avoiding the bloodthirsty, visibly infected villagers. Rollin uses the isolation of the village to good effect and he pours on the gore more than usual.

Marie-Georges Pascal is suitably traumatised as Elizabeth, and Brigitte Lahaie always commands attention as the Tall Blonde Woman. Lahaie undresses to show two unaffected beer-drinking farmers that she has no infection scars. You can’t argue with that, but it is revealed she is as crazy as the villagers and wants to throw Elizabeth to the murderous hordes.

Elizabeth samples the local wine on two occasions, which takes its toll on her and her rescuers, leading to Rollin’s usual bleak ending.