Zombie Winos

The Raisins of Death. That’s how the title of the 1978 French zombie movie sorta translates. I don’t know why, but this rocks my world. Probably because I occasional sprinkle death raisins atop my dinner cereal.

So Les Raisins de la Mort (aka, The Grapes of Death) is a nicely gory horror flick that uses contaminated grapes (or “les raisins”) squished into wine that, when consumed with pinky extended, turns one into a rotting zombie. And here all this time I thought drinking wine turns you into a snob, or “snombie.”

How did the grapes get contaminated? Glad you asked. A worker at the Roublès winemaking vineyard becomes ill, complaining of a pain in his neck. (Either his boss, wife, or both is my guess.)

As the infection spreads to others via this pain in the neck, people meet painful ends: throats cut, assorted mouth bites, cars parking on your torso, stranglings, garden forks jammed into chests instead of nutritious salads, and best of all (or worst, depending on which side of the handle you’re on), living heads being chopped off with a hatchet. Makes sense when you think of the rudimentary wine-making tools they had back in the late Seventies.

As previously hinted, blood gooshes from every orifice, opening and so forth. Bright red blood, too. Not like that fake stuff you see on the news. But wait, there’s more – full frontal chick nudity, which comes with a side of bare naked boobies and glistening infected open wounds that look like someone glued rubber novelty vomit on said fun bumps. Lots of endless shrieking and screaming, probably caused by drinking face-pinching, sour ass wine instead of cold, refreshing beer.

Since everybody in France slurps wine – especially so during last week’s wine festival that infected the small village and made their faces turn into freshness-expired mini-mart soufflès – there’s no shortage of zombie attacks. That’s pretty much it, except that every single one of The Grapes/Raisins of Death actors and actresses have tongue-tangling names that no one but their mothers can pronounce. (Jean-Pierre Bouyxou? This guy is just begging to be turned into a zombie.)

Dolls and Vomit

According to Guatemalan folklore, worry dolls (about half an inch high) are given to children who tell them their worries before they go to sleep. They place the worry dolls under their pillow and in the morning the dolls have taken their worries away. I think it’d be really funny to swap out the worry dolls with some tried ’n true rubber vomit while the kids are asleep. That’d give those little brats something to worry about. Heh. So the comfort device now gets drafted into the horror realm with upcoming Worry Dolls movie, premiering at England’s Film4FRightFest in August, 2015. (Their website said is was coming out summer of 2014. Liars.) Nevertheless, Worry Dolls, with a really slick ad poster, goes a little something like this: “In the aftermath of the hunt for a serial killer, an ancient curse consumes a city, causing a series of brutal murders and pits a detective against the clock to save his daughter’s life.”

I bet the ancient curse somehow involves the use of rubber vomit. There were worry doll horror movies before this. First up was Dangerous Worry Dolls (2007), this one had the title characters coming out of a swollen hole in your forehead meant for a pineal gland gone wild. (See From Beyond/1986.) Here’s how dangerous these worry dolls are: “While serving time in a brutal women’s detention center. Eva wishes away her troubles to a set of tiny worry dolls. The dolls crawl in her ear at night and soon Eva becomes possessed.” And, for those of you with a more sensitive horror stomach, Worry Dolls, featured as an episode on R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour: The Series, aired in October of 2013. There were no pineal glands in that one, which is why it sucked. You can find worry dolls on Etsy™ for $19.95. But you can get yourself outfitted with a timelessly hysterical rubber vomit novelty toy for $7.30 (+ $2.04 shipping) on eBay™. Talk about putting the gag in gag gift. Heh.