French film choice: pioneering 1978 zombie horror The Grapes of Death

With the cartoonish modern version of Halloween just passed, we retain the spooky spirit with this month’s film choice, for which we delve into the long and rich seam of French horror.

This is a genre that critics and fans tend to bracket in with science fiction and fantasy under the broader umbrella of ‘fantastique’ – where, as the BFI says, “realistic settings are quietly or violently disrupted by the supernatural, the uncanny, and the horrific”.

There are some decade-spanning classics to choose from, including the 1960 surrealist chiller Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) and Julia Ducournau’s acclaimed 2016 coming-of-age body horror, Raw. But our more leftfield pick, which neatly includes winemaking and the dangers of pesticides among its prescient environmental themes (it was made in 1978), is Jean Rollin’s Les raisins de la mort (The Grapes of Death).

Considered France’s first-ever gore film (expect lots of fright-fest make-up), it was shot in the Cévennes and tells of a young woman (a brilliant performance by Marie-Georges Pascal) visiting the vineyard owned by her fiancé.

She is attacked on a train by seemingly possessed humans and, upon arrival at the village, discovers that the pesticide being sprayed onto vines has infected wine-drinkers who attended a recent local party – turning them into killer zombies.