Hey! Our Month of the Living Dead entry is in with a whole day to spare!
Grapes of Death
Jean Rollin’s sort of zombie movie in which inhabitants of France’s bleakest countryside catch an infection from contaminated wine that turns them into murder happy zombies. Well, sort of zombies, anyway. Rollin was better known for weird vampire films with no scripts or logic, but Grapes of Death represents at him at his most accessible and coherent. And because I don’t want to offend anyone on this family-friendly board, rather than post a snapshot of a gory zombie with oozing forehead or a topless woman in the process of also becoming headless, I present to you instead this photo of a contemplative older gentleman smoking a cigarette.
#1 by Tom Meade on October 30, 2007 - 7:29 pm
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Alarmingly phallic. Obviously the cigarette represents a return to the genital fixation and a child-like state in times of stress. An attempt to reject consciousness and reponsibility, if you will, by sucking on a tiny, flaming wang.
#2 by Tom Meade on October 30, 2007 - 8:41 pm
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Putting that aside, I have purchased this film from Ebay. It sounds like just the sort of movie I’ve always wanted to see.
#3 by KeithA on October 31, 2007 - 11:16 am
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I think the combination of smoking with the contemplation is symbolic of his questioning of the meaning of manhood in a world over-run with the insane. as the world continues to crumble, and as he continues to smoke, the length of his phallus is slowly burned away, until at last he finds himself held at gunpoint by a hysterical woman. At this moment, the final ash of his cigarette falls to the ground, and he is emasculated.
#4 by Tom Meade on October 31, 2007 - 8:20 pm
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Not having seen the film, I could only infer. Obviously, I will concede to the more learned party.
Talking like a caricature professor is not as much fun as they make it out to be.