Let me squeeze in a great, little cult horror film with an... off-beat home video history real quick before I get into a couple of new releases: 1978's
The Grapes Of Death by
Jean Rollin. I'm not normally a big fan of Rollin's; I feel like I'm just indulging his private fantasies whenever I watch one of his vampire films. And while I'll admit there are usually some effective images to be pulled out of them, it requires sitting through too much plodding, generic softcore to get to them. For me, it's enough to watch all the trailers; I could've done without seeing most of the films.
Update 8/9/19 - 5/15/26: It's the last day of Update Megaweek, so let's end on a fancy, new release I'm really excited for - Indicator/ Powerhouse's
Grapes of Death 4k UHD limited edition. And what else can I get in under the wire? How about the US DVDs of
Eric Rohmer's
Summer Tales and
A Tale of Winter? Get all these discs off my to-do list!
But
The Grapes Of Death is different. There are still plenty of Rollin trademarks (i.e. pretty girls running through ruins in the middle of the night wearing see-through nightgowns), but this is more of a conventional movie, which normally would be more of a criticism than a compliment. But in Rollin's case, I think he benefits from having more of an engaging plot to follow. It's basically a zombie film, but in 1978 before the genre became played out. The titular grapes come into play because pesticides have contaminated a village's wine, turning everyone into mindless, blood thirsty madmen.
Marie-Georges Pascal travels out there to meet up with her fiance, but is quickly chased off course and runs from place to place looking for non-zombified allies to help her make her way home.
It plays like a cross between
The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue and
The Crazies, with some dependable people slowly turning madder and more dangerous as time passes. There's lots of great little melodramas as the film dives headfirst into supporting characters' subplots. And Rollin concocts some delightfully madcap sequences once cult/ porn star
Brigitte Lahaie enters the picture late in the second act, carrying a burning torch in one hand and leashing two killer dogs in the other. It's sort of a blast, but also an unrelentingly tragic, nihilistic depiction of humanity slipping away and dying in agony over and over, with Pascal escaping from one scene in a nightmare into another, but never able to break free. I kinda love it.
Grapes has been released all over the world, but two key US editions seem to encapsulate all you really need to know about this film on disc. First, Synapse put this out as a "Special Edition" DVD in 2002, and then in 2013, Redemption Films (who also handled the UK DVD in 2005) and Kino Lorber released it on blu. There is a newer, UK release from Black House, but from what I've been able to glean online, it's essentially the same transfer, but minus the extras. But now it's gotten a brand new, limited edition (mine is #5066 of 6000) 4k restoration on a proper UHD from Indicator/ Powerhouse, which a bunch of new, better special features as well.
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| 1) 2004 Synapse DVD; 2) 2013 Redemption BD; 3) 2026 Indicator UHD. |
Until Powerhouse finally stepped in, this had been some underwhelming, old master stuff. Synapse presented the film in anamorphic 1.64:1, which Redemption opened up just slightly to 1.62:1, revealing slightly more image around the edges. Then Indicator widened it out some more, to 1.67:1, displaying more picture on the left-hand side specifically. All three discs are taken from the original 35mm negative, but the blu comes off awfully soft. Other reviews online I've read chalk this up to Rollins' camerawork itself, which is demonstrably true; but now that we can actually see the film grain (which ranges from faint to completely smoothed away completely on the BD, but is perfectly captured now), we can finally tell for sure exactly how much detail should be in the image. Even the DVD looks sharper, although on closer inspection we can see a lot of that is just video/ compression noise. The blu is darker, which is an advantage in the brights, which are a bit over-contrasty, if not quite blown out on the DVD. But on the other hand, it seems to lose some detail in the shadows. At least the colors are deeper. The DVD is definitely dated, looking noisy and washed out at times, but the blu is a rather underwhelming upgrade to HD. The UHD, of course, doesn't have any issues with the brights or shadows, and flat-out just looks so much more beautiful than anything that's ever come before it.
All three releases present the original French mono, in lossless LPCM on the BD and UHD, with optional English subtitles.
The special features are interesting, too. Synapse labeled their disc a "Special Edition," but it's a bit light, consisting primarily of one featurette interviewing Rollin and Lahaie. It's an interesting overview of past work, but they don't talk about
The Grapes Of Death at all, so it's a little disappointing. And that, two trailers and a photo gallery are all that make up Synapse's edition.
Despite Synapse's interview falling short of discussing the film we were all there for, though, I was sorry to see it go when Redemption put out their version. They've replaced it with their own interview with Rollin... where he again neglects to mention
Grapes Of Death, even in passing. Instead he talks about art and science fiction literature, which is sort of interesting, but come on. There is a brief (102 seconds) intro, though, where they do manage to get him to say a word or two about the film, but it's a very minimal piece. It's just an introduction. Besides that, we get the trailers, a collection of trailers for other Rollin films, and a nice, 16-page booklet by
Tim Lucas.
The Synapse stuff is (mostly) back now in 2026. They've re-edited
the interviews, possibly for copyright reasons. They also include the
Redemption extras, unedited, plus a half-hour retrospective on Rollins'
work (in conversation with Rollin himself) from an old German DVD.
They do talk a little about
Grapes in that one. So all legacy extras have been assembled here, which is satisfying. But even better is all the new stuff. We get an expert audio commentary by
Jeremy Richey, who wrote a book about
Sylvia Kristel, and an on-camera interview by the always thorough
Stephen Thrower. Best of all, is a new 32-minute retrospective, which is mostly centered around an interview with co-writer
Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, but also includes Brigitte Lahaie,
Natalie Perry (very briefly) and some vintage interviews with Rollin. So we finally get some solid coverage of this particular film, in addition to Rollins in general. Also included are two trailers, two image galleries and an 80-page booklet. The booklet and digibook are housed in an attractive slipbox with the classic poster art.
This film is a grim treat, and it's about time we got it looking up to snuff. Synapse's disc was decent for its day, but this movie always felt like it could look better. Now that's been proven. This is a real must-upgrade now matter what version(s) you've owned before.
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