The Grapes of Death

A woman visiting Roublès deep in France’s winemaking country discovers that the pesticide being sprayed on vineyards is turning people into killer zombies.

A woman visiting Roublès deep in France’s winemaking country discovers that the pesticide being sprayed on vineyards is turning people into killer zombies. The notion of a film mixing zombies and winemaking may seem an almost obligatory avenue for someone in French cinema to furrow, but regardless this is far and away one of Rollin’s best – and most frightening – films.

The story's cautionary ecological subtext was one that Rollin touched on in other films such as Night of the Hunted and The Living Dead Girl, and this was a briefly topical theme in 1970s horror – most similarly deployed in Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974).