Jean Rollin and Terroir: Return to Les Raisins de la mort

Jean Rollin took a break from semi-abstract vampire films in 1978 to make his zombie masterpiece, Les Raisins de la Mort This also marked a departure from gauzily shot female vampires wafting around random French countryside areas Instead it was an overt foray into alterglobal ecocriticism, as it focussed on the danger (death and becoming a zombie) of using modern fertilisers in an attempt to rationalise wine production in the pursuit of economic growth. Rollin's film goes beyond the admittedly forceful image of a village turning into zombies thanks to modern chemical farming methods to assert the defensive community aspect of living-on after chemical and industrial invasiveness. This article looks to formulate Rollin's secret and possibly unwitting reading of the troubled excess that underpins resistant French village life.