Jean Rollin Trailers: The Grapes of Death

Here is the original French trailer for The Grapes of Death (1978).

Jean Rollin Posters: The Grapes of Death

Here are two very different poster designs for The Grapes of Death.

Jean Rollin Home Video Designs: The Grapes of Death

Here are some of the many home video designs that have been used for The Grapes of Death over the years.

Jean Rollin Trailers: The Grapes of Death

Here is the German dubbed trailer for The Grapes of Death.

Jean Rollin: The Grapes of Death Lobby Cards

A collage of lobby cards used for The Grapes of Death.

The Grapes of Death Wallpapers

My Grapes of Death wallpapers have been posted at my Cult Film Wallpapers spot for everyone to enjoy. Just click on the link to the right to be taken to them. More posts on The Grapes of Death are coming this week.

Lahaie on Rollin (1)

***A new series designed to gather together some available quotes by Brigitte Lahaie on working with Jean Rollin***

"I must have made my 2nd or 3rd film with Jean Rollin and what stunned me the most was his shyness...even when making (adult) films (something he was driven to more often by financial necessity) I realised that Jean Rollin shows meticulous attention to detail in researching the scenario, in choosing a team of good technicians, etc."

"Jean Rollin is a true gentleman and has a great respect for the actors though his shyness is sometimes so that he almost didn't dare direct them (in the adult films)."

"After this (first film) Jean sent me postcards promising me a real role in his next film. Need I say I didn't believe him! But, to my surprise, he was the first to give me my first chance at 'straight' cinema with a role in La Raisins de la Mort. And two years later he gave me the lead role in Fascination. I remember in that film some actors demanded that I change my name on the credits...Jean Rollin told them politely to get lost and so my name remained on this great fantasy movie."

"I always enjoyed working with Jean Rollin and look forward to any future roles in his movies."

-The above quotes are taken from Brigitte Lahaie: A Pictorial Biography from Media Publications. Reportedly some were translated from Brigitte's own biography, Moi, La Scandaleuse. More quotes are available in each and they are both highly recommended.-

Lahaie on Rollin (2)

"Rollin is a very nice and gentle man who has a lot of interesting and artistic things to say in his movies. Unfortunately many of his projects never become reality, like a movie in which I was supposed to play the lead role. He always had huge problems financing his movies, I think now more than ever. I really love Rollin. His movies are very special, a different kind of cinema. If he ever asked me to work with him again I would say, "Yes, at once!"

***From an interview conducted by Peter Blumenstock and Christian Kessler for European Trash Cinema Volume 2/Number 8.***

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Marie-Georges Pascal)

Born in October of 1946 in Cambrai, France, Marie-Georges Pascal proved to be a fixture in French cinema throughout the seventies. As the lead character in Jean Rollin’s The Grapes of Death, Pascal is extremely memorable and gives what is often just regarded as a gore film a real spirit and heart.
I’ve had a hard time tracking down too much information about Pascal. Rollin himself wrote very little on her in Virgins and Vampires, outside of calling her very “moving” and recalling that she made her character’s descent into madness extremely real. Pascal does give one of the best performances seen in a Rollin film and it’s a shame the two didn’t have the chance to work together again.
Pascal made her debut in front of the camera’s in 1971 at the age of 25 in Jean-Claude Roy’s Good Little Girls, a film which would see her playing one of the leads. This appearance led to a slew of roles in both film and television and in 1973 Pascal landed one of the most memorable roles of her career opposite Thrill of the Vampires star Sandra Julien in Max Pecas’ I Am Frigid…Why?. That role would cause the talented Pascal to almost exclusively be cast in French films of an erotic nature from that point on.
Roles followed for directors ranging from Jean-Francoise Davy to Michel Lemoine to Jacques Scandelari. Some were small, some large but none were better than Pascal’s sometimes-startling turn in Rollin’s The Grapes of Death.
Sadly her lead work in Rollin’s film didn’t help the trouble Pascal’s career and by the early eighties she was working almost strictly in television. Pascal’s final performance came in 1983 with a bit-part in Jean-Pierre Desagnat’s Shock Cops.
Marie-Georges Pascal sadly passed away at the tragically young age of 39, reportedly by her own hand. There is very little information about her online that I have been able to find. Any more information would be appreciated.

The Cinema of Jean Rollin: Le Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death) 1978

Undoubtedly one of the most pivotal films in his entire canon, 1978’s Le Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death), stands as one of the most visceral and flat out entertaining films Jean Rollin ever created. Trading in the poetic nature and sometimes deliberately slow pace of many of his earlier films for a bloody fast paced exercise in terror, The Grapes of Death is quite unlike the typical Jean Rollin film, and yet it stands as one of his most perfect creations, and absolutely the film he needed to deliver in 1978.




Rollin had been stuck in the financially driven ‘Gentil-Xavier’ period for three long years, and in The Grapes of Death you really get a celebratory sense of an artist finally back to work. Often referred to as one of the only true French gore films, The Grapes of Death finds Rollin dusting off his creative shoes and making his most infectiously alive work since The Demoniacs nearly five years before.




Rollin called The Grapes of Death his “first traditional, almost conventional, production” in his introduction for the film in Virgins and Vampires. This was due to the fact that the film had, “solid finances” for a change, “special effects by Italian experts” as well as “a complete crew under the guidance of great director of photography Claude Becognee." Rollin would also credit much of the film’s success to star Marie-Georges Pascal, whom he would recall delivered a very “moving” performance in the film.




The Grapes of Death, a film centering a group of people infected by some badly contaminated wine that has turned them into terrorizing zombie like creatures, was shot in particularly rough circumstances. Rollin told Peter Blumenstock in Video Watchdog 31 that it was “shot in a deserted mountain region” in France “called Les Saivennes” and that “it was so incredibly cold” that they had to build special protection for the camera just so it would operate correctly. Rather than hinder the film (although it did hurt the special effects) the cold seemed to work for the production, and it finally only adds to the oppressively chilling atmosphere Rollin and his cast were going for.




The Grapes of Death feels like one of Rollin’s tightest pieces, which makes the director's admission that it was “the first film where I didn’t use a shooting script” all the more surprising. It is a credit then to Rollin and his crew that the film feels so economical and remarkably put together. There is nothing rambling or loose knit about this film. It has a purpose and it achieves it beautifully.




If the astonishing pair of The Iron Rose and Lips of Blood could be considered elegiac tone poems, then The Grapes of Death is a gritty fast paced horror novela. Rollin said that he wanted to capture the essence of many of the disaster films that were popular at the time. The film typically linked to The Grapes of Death is George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead (1968), but Rollin’s film has much more in common with the wide open claustrophobia of Jorge Grau’s underrated Let Sleeping Corpse Lie (1972) than Romero’s closed in shocker. This relation to Grau's masterful work has been noted before, most noteably by Shane M. Dallman and Nigel J Burrell.




While The Grapes of Death has its foot firmly planted in the Zombie genre, Rollin said that he “wanted to get away from the usual zombie fare” and with the film he does this quite admirably. Centering on madness with a strong environmentally conscious message, Rollin’s zombies “have retained their consciousness” and they finally “suffer because of what they are”, a fact that makes them far removed from both Romero and Grau’s original works, and later zombie fare by the likes of Fulci and Mattei.




While Rollin has called the gory horror in The Grapes of Death more “intelligent” than "gratuitous”, it is the film’s sometimes-shocking effects that are most often remembered. While they all suffer from a perhaps smaller than needed budget, they still manage a real visceral impact. This is especially true of the show stopping crucifixion and decapitation of pretty Mirella Rancelot that stands as one of the most iconic and unsettling images in all of Rollin’s filmography. It’s the kind of jaw dropping moment that only the best and most pulverizing horror films can deliver.




The Grapes of Death has a lot more going for it than the effects though. As mentioned the late Marie-Georges Pascal delivers a fine lead turn, and the photography of Claude Becognee gives the film a strangely hypnotic and suitably unwell feeling throughout its slim running time. Becognee’s photography and Rollin’s images are also matched well by the eerie electronic score of Philippe Sissman. The supporting cast is a mixed bag, but Rancelot’s blind victim is very well played and seems a clear forerunner to Cinzea Monreale’s unforgettable Emily from Fulci’s The Beyond which was still couple of years down the road.




Despite all of its many virtues, perhaps The Grapes of Death's most important moment comes just over halfway through when the ravishing Brigitte Lahaie is introduced. Lahaie, who would soon become the ultimate face and body of Jean Rollin’s cinema, has a relatively small role here but she makes the most of it. Simultaneously erotic, mysterious and terrifying, Lahaie is mesmerizing in her few scenes. One moment in particular recalling Bava’s legendary Black Sunday marks itself as one of the film's most ingenious moments.







While Rollin would have to make a few more Gentil-Xavier productions in the couple of years following The Grapes of Death, the film successfully pulled him out of his artistic slump. A popular success with some critical support, The Grapes of Death has become one of Rollin’s most well liked films. Tim Lucas in Video Watchdog 31, while noting some of the film’s faults, said The Grapes of Death contained “believably chilled performances” and that “Rollin’s uncanny knack for finding picturesque locations” helped “to convey the film’s atmosphere of imminent apocalypse.” Shane M. Dallmann would grant the film an excellent review later in Video Watchdog 89 where he called The Grapes of Death “a strong, solid” entry in the zombie genre. Dallman’s review of the film is one of the best written and fans of the work should definitely search it out.




The Grapes of Death is available on several DVDS throughout the world. The Region 1 Synapse version I have is commonly regarded as the best, and it contains a terrific 30-minute interview with Rollin and Lahaie. Unfortunately the film itself is not talked about much, making one wish for a more specific special edition somewhere down the road.

Behind the Scenes with Jean Rollin on The Grapes of Death

A kind reader recently supplied me with a copy of the German Special Edition DVD of The Grapes of Death and it has some really splendid special features on it, many of which I will be sharing here in the upcoming days. To start with, here are some terrific behind the scenes shots from the making of the film.

Jean Rollin Lobby Cards (The Grapes of Death)