SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1968)

This anthology features three short films by three well-known European directors based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. There is no obvious connection between the three--even the title Spirits of the Dead seems only to fit one of the three stories. In Roger Vadim's "Metzengerstein," Jane Fonda plays a rich and decadent countess (referred to as a "petty Caligula") who lives in a mansion by the sea, spending her days partying, holding orgies, and taking potshots at peasants, even occasionally hanging them from a tree just because she can (see photo at left). When Wilhelm, a handsome cousin of hers (Peter Fonda), moves in next door, she acts haughtily towards him but eventually flirts with him. When he rejects her, her pride is wounded so she has his barn burned down. Trying to save his horses, Wilhelm perishes in the fire, but soon a mysterious black horse shows up on the Countess' property. Could it be an incarnation of the dead Wilhelm?  The second story, directed by Louis Malle, is "William Wilson," famous as one the earliest doppelganger stories. As a youth, Wilson is a popular troublemaker at boarding school, but when a boy shows up bearing his name and looking like him, Wilson is upset. The apparent twin interrupts his cruel pranks, and later as adults (when he and his twin are both played by Alain Delon), the twin continues his unwelcome interruptions. Finally, when Wilson cheats at cards and wins the favors of an unwilling woman, the twin exposes his cheating ways. This is the tipping point for Wilson who sets out to kill his doppelganger, with disastrous results.

Federico Fellini very loosely adapts Poe's "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," presented here under the name "Toby Dammit." Toby (Terence Stamp) is a British actor who arrives in Rome with much press fanfare to take a role in what is called the first Catholic western ("Dreyer, Pasolini with a hint of John Ford"). Constantly drunk or high or just obnoxious, we see Toby journeying through a fairly hellish landscape, most notably a surreal awards show, full of grotesque people--and a few cardboard cut-outs and mannequins. He has visions of a young blond girl bouncing a ball whom he suspects is the devil, and when he takes off on a high-speed car ride through the streets of Rome one night, in the Ferrari which Toby has demanded as payment for his acting role, we know he will come to no good. These artsy, somewhat murky vignettes are the opposite of the glossy, fun, bloody movies that Roger Corman made from Poe stories. Though practically all critics find the Fellini film the best, I don't agree. Stamp is very good but the character seems so very doomed from the beginning that it all feels like a slow-motion train wreck culminating in (spoiler, I guess) Toby literally losing his head. The Malle film has the best story but it's told in a somewhat oblique fashion that blunts the impact of the finale--though Delon is always pleasant eye candy. I like the Vadim segment best--it's certainly the creepiest, both for the countryside Gothic look and the casting of real-life brother and sister Jane and Peter. The two characters never actually get close to sexual consummation, but the possibility definitely adds to the creep factor. I've seen this movie three times in my life and I keep hoping I will like it better, but I don't. I would recommend the first two segments, but don't feel like you have to hang around for the third, unless you are a die-hard Fellini fan. [TCM]