Not honestly sure what I would have thought of The Grapes of Death if I had discovered it in my youth, but I liked this poncey French hybrid of The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue meets The Crazies. It also helped that Marie-Georges Pascal was a dead ringer of Melinda Clarke in it, too. Definitely my favourite find this month.
Adding it to the ever growing backlog of films I've failed to review (in time). Spent way too long on The Prisoner post.
Film:
From Hell It Came (Dan Milner, 1957)
The Snake Woman (Sidney J. Furie, 1961)
The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati, 1976) ♲
The Grapes of Death (Jean Rollin, 1978)
The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979) ♲
Madness (Bruno Mattei, 1994)
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)
Faces of Death (Daniel Goldhaber, 2026)
They Will Kill You (Kirill Sokolov, 2026)
Television:
The Prisoner (Various, 1967-1968) ♲
♲ Rewatch
Dada Debaser Notes:
- Amazed how the infamous video nasty Faces of Death (1978) has been resurrected into a modern era slasher with a Charlie XCX cameo. Very uneven film, with eye-rolling hackneyed social commentary and logic that made me lose more brain cells than that poor monkey in the original. But I did enjoy its dark humour and unexpected mean-spiritism. Gavin Brivik's soundtrack is very fitting until a horrendous pop song sampling Dr. Francis B. Gröss starts blasting during the end credits.
- There's nothing in Sorry to Bother You as remotely funny as Boots Riley going from 5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O. to sponging off Larry Ellison's nepobaby in getting it produced. I'll give his latest one a miss.
- Bruno Mattei's Madness is a Poundland Tenebrae.
- The Snake Woman comes across as a B-movie forerunner to Hammer's The Reptile (1966). Ridiculously short for a feature film, but even then, it's still something of a slog to get through. Not enough action, sadly.
Speaking of Hammer, I'm hyped for the uncut version of Dracula (1958) finally getting released this year.
A Warriors rewatch is always time well spent.
ReplyDeleteWhat was censored in Dracula then?
The Warriors is another fine example of the director cut of a film being inferior to the theatrical version.
DeleteMostly Dracula's death scene. It was originally far more graphic, apparently. Scenes with sexual overtones were also censored.
I really need to see more Jean Rollin flicks. THE GRAPES OF DEATH I have heard seems to be about as close to a conventional horror film as Rollin would ever get, yet I am sure it still has some of his unique style.
ReplyDeleteThe new release of Hammer's DRACULA reinstating about three minutes of excised footage for the first time is quite an event for us vintage horror fans.
Based on what I've watched so far, I think The Grapes of Death and The Living Dead Girl are probably the closest to traditional horror in Rollin's filmography. Both of those still contain his "fantastique" style, regardless.
DeleteAbsolutely cannot wait to see Hammer's restoration of Dracula on the big screen. Definitely an event film.