Yes, another horror film from Jean Rollin – generally considered to be his best film – and how appropriate it is to see at the beginning of the film a group of people all wearing masks. Wanting to move away from George Romero's zombie films, the creatures here are perhaps of the same 'family', but are people who haven't come from the dead: they are humans suffering from a deadly infliction. These are vine workers, taught to use a new chemical spray, from which at least one is suffering the side effects, although the management has promised to be supplying more effective masks. Not that that will help though: soon everyone in this area of the Cévennes who drinks the wine becomes a murderous monster.
Élisabeth (Marie-Georges Pascal) is on an almost deserted train to the (imaginary) village of Roublès in the Cévennes to rejoin her fiancé Michel (Michel Herval). A man with an ugly scar on his face enters her compartment and swiftly his face becomes bloody and ulcerated. Élizabeth runs from the compartment in terror, leaving her belongings, pulls the emergency stop handle and runs from the train.
She's in the Cévennes area but almost everywhere she goes people are either dead, wholly unwelcoming or of murderous intent. Eventually she meets Paul (Félix Marten) and François (Patrice Valota), who are 'normal' because they only drink beer and out-of-season wine: they know only too well that they'll be turned into monsters if not. They all make it to Roublès but it appears to be completely deserted, although Élizabeth has a look round and discovers Michel alive but unwell: he tries to warn her from him but she runs to embrace him. Then Paul discovers them, Michel threatens him as the disease grips him, and Paul shoots him dead. Stricken by grief and emotionally unhinged by everything she's been through, Élizabeth grabs Paul's rifle and kills him, moments later also killing François.
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