The Grapes of Death (Les Raisins de la Mort)
(1978)
Day two of HMM, and I'm still in unknown territory!
Today's movie is The Grapes of Death (or the original French title Les Raisins de la Mort). This was another used DVD that I found at a store and just bought, because how could I pass it up?
I don't think I've ever watched a French horror film before. This one should be interesting, All I really know about it is what is on the back of the DVD case. Two friends are vacationing, but one of the girls gets off a train and wanders into a zombie infestation (apparently caused by the pesticide used on the grapes they make their wine from).
Oh, and apparently the director liked putting a lot of naked women in his films.
The film starts off with a group of people walking through a vineyard and spraying pesticide all over. Uh oh, the guy driving the tractor doesn't look so good. He's got a small something by his ear. His boss tells him he'll be fine.
Of course, he isn't fine, because he wanders over to a train station, climbs on the nearly empty train, and kills one of the two women on board. We meet them about two minutes before this, which is just enough time to learn that Elisabeth is on her way to the vineyard her fiancee works at.
Tractor man strikes, Elisabeth finds her friend's body, books it off the train, and wanders the French countryside trying to find her way to her fiancee.
On her travels, she wanders into the house of a man and his daughter. The man is infected, killed his wife before she arrived, and before she can flee, kills his daughter with a pitchfork. Then, after Elisabeth tries to take his car, he begs her to kill him. She complies.
Uh-oh! The car won't start now! Guess we're walking again.
The next person she meets is Lucy, a blind woman trying to find her way back to her village after Lucas, her fiancee, tells her to run. When Elisabeth leads her back, it is very clear why. Everyone who isn't infected is dead, and anyone alive is infected.
Lucy is caught by the infected Lucas, who takes off her top, nails her to their front door, and chops her head off with an axe. He is seen a bit later still carrying her head around, and then he stops and starts making out with it.
I won't give anything else away, but as any good zombie movie should, this does not have a happy ending(even if the ending did make me angry).
The soundtrack was bizarre and it was just all over the place. Half the time it sounded like a toddler was playing with the keyboard or harpsichord.
This movie was at least interesting, which is more than I can say for yesterday's film. Maybe it was because I had to read the English subtitles, but I felt invested in this movie. That's not to say it was a masterpiece, but it certainly wasn't terrible. I think I'd stick it somewhere in the middle range.
Tomorrow's movie is Teenage Space Vampires. It should be a weird time.
