Ten Days of Terror!: The Grapes of Death

Film: The Grapes of Death (Les raisins de la mort, Pesticide)
Format: Streaming video from AMC through Amazon Prime on Fire!

There are conversation, often heated, in the horror community, about what technically makes a zombie movie Your absolute purists are going to say that what most people call “zombies” are actually ghouls, flesh-eating, reanimated corpses. Zombies are specifically reanimated by Voodoo. A lot of people will say that Romero’s Dead films are zombie films—they feature reanimated corpses. 28 Days Later, by that argument, is not a zombie film because the monsters are merely infected, not resurrected dead. I bring this up because on the Zombie sub-list of the They Shoot Zombies list, the distinction seems to be about how the creatures act, not their source. It’s why The Grapes of Death (or Les raisins de la mort and more rarely Pesticide) appears on the list despite our creatures being infected, not reanimated.

I am of the opinion that it’s more about behavior than anything else, which is why I don’t really object to films like Night of the Comet and Pontypool being classified as zombie films, or at least zombie-esque films. The Grapes of Death certainly falls into this gray area, since we’re going to be dealing with people who are suffering from a sort of fungal infection to turn them mindless and murderous, a sort of precursor to The Girl with All the Gifts. In fact, I would suggest that Romero’s The Crazies, which predates this by about a half decade, is the inspiration for much of what happens in this film.

Ten Days of Terror!: Fascination

Film: Fascination
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

There are times when I get very interested in a movie without knowing a great deal about it more than the title and a picture or two. That’s certainly the case with Fascination. My curiosity about it came from a fairly iconic picture (shown above) and the fact that, try as I might, I couldn’t find a copy of it. Suddenly, Fascination is streaming on Prime, so it seemed like a good chance to indulge myself in watching a film that had eluded me for so long.

There are a lot of ways that Fascination can be described, or at least a lot of different descriptors can be used for it. It’s clearly folk horror, an erotic thriller, and possibly a vampire film, although this is less explicitly true and more simply implied. Also, rather daring for 1979, there are clearly a few bisexual characters and a scene or two of lesbianism. In short, this isn’t one to watch when your parents are in town or when the kids might walk into the room.

Ten Days of Terror!: Le viol du vampire

Film: Le viol du vampire (The Rape of the Vampire)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I go into every movie that I watch with hope. There are some movies that I know are going to hurt me (see: Martyrs, Salo, L’Interieur), but there is always hope that I will emerge on the other side having gotten something from the viewing. That happens often enough that I continue to push myself in what I view. So, when I get something like Le viol du vampire (The Rape of the Vampire in English), I can’t help but be disappointed in the complete mess that is on the screen. This isn’t about being hurt because the movie takes the audience to awful and disturbing places, but being hurt because the movie is a nonsensical mess.

I also try to write these reviews based on my own experience viewing, but in the case of Le viol du vampire, I have to look at the notes that I have available to me. I watched this on Kanopy, and the synopsis is fascinating. I’m going to quote from it, because it will give you a solid idea of exactly how clown shoes this movie is: “Everyone on the crew was making their first film. All copies of the script managed to get lost within two days...The resulting film...is a glorious puzzlement.” This is very charitable. The resulting film is actually a confused mess of unfinished concepts and tits.

Blood in, Blood out

Film: The Living Dead Girl ( La morte vivante)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

In many movies involving the dead coming back to life, the fact that this is happening is far more important than why it is happening. Sometimes, as in Night of the Living Dead, it simply happens and we don’t get an explanation. Other times, we do, and it doesn’t really matter that much if it matches anything completely ridiculous. Toxic waste, weird bacteria, whatever. It’s toxic waste in The Living Dead Girl (La morte vivante in the original French), which feels unique in the sense that our living dead girl in the title is not a Romero-style ghoul who creates other undead, but more of a reanimated vampire who requires blood to survive.

First things first—we need to get some toxic waste in position to revivify a corpse. We get that from a pair of men apparently delivery toxic waste for disposal. Rather than do their jobs, they stop at an abandoned crypt to put the waste there. While they are there getting rid of the waste and taking a few moments to rob the graves of the people buried in the crypt, a minor earthquake causes the toxic waste to leak, which causes one of the corpses to wake up and attack. Since this corpse, who we eventually learn is named Catherine Valmont (Françoise Blanchard) has been dead for a few years, it’s a bit of a surprise that there is not a bit of decay or decomposition. Must be the favorable atmosphere in the catacombs.