Spirits of the Dead

(1968)

Spirits of the dead, titled as Histoires Extraordinaires in France and Tre Passi Nel Delirio in Italy, contains three separate tales derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s first collection of short stories. This is partly French directed, which is how I stumbled across it, but I was really dying to view it because Fellini, who I am just crazy for, directed the third segment.

Metzengerstein *

William Wilson *

I found both these tales to be one big sleeping pill. The plot of Metzengerstein was simple, and really only needed five minutes rather than the forty it was given. A bratty countess inherits a fortune at a young age causing her to behave like an annoying, spoiled jackass that everyone fears and obeys. She pulls shenanigans like hanging little boys from trees so she can shoot them down with a bow and arrow, and forces women into threesomes. After getting caught in a bear trap, she falls for her neighbor Wilhelm, a very feminine man that refuses to give her the time of day. This pisses the princess off, and she sets his stables ablaze. Poor dainty Wilhelm perishes while trying to save his beloved horses. Later, an unruly horse, believed to have escaped from the fire shows up at her doorstep. She’s the only one who can tame the beast, and she soon becomes obsessed with riding it. One evening during a thunderstorm she lets the horse ride her into flames and dies. I’m leaving out a few details, but who really cares. The only notable moment of this film is for a half a second there is a man on the screen that looks like JSP and JPX’s father.

William Wilson was a little better, but I’ll leave out the summary because I’m lazy and it’s unmemorable. I will say that this story does provide a bit of good pipe in the ass.

Toby Dammit ****

This is where the film shines, and makes the other two parts look like a third grader put them together. Unlike the first two, which begin slow and unimaginative, Fellini draws the viewer into a surreal and stylistic film. Red and orange are the two dominant colors, and they set just the right tone. Nuns, with instruments scuttle across the screen, while a woman in a circular black and white TV screen prattles on. The score, with its playful yet dark sound, fits this film like a glove.

Before I get myself lost in Fellini’s style, I should mention the plot. Toby Dammit is a washed up drunk Shakespearean actor from England who is offered a Ferrari if he will perform in a film in Rome. Here’s the best part, it’s a Jesus western, got to love Fellini. Toby is a drunken, tortured soul, who is stalked by the devil, which appears to him as a little girl in a white dress with a white ball. However, the film is about much more than Toby. It’s about Fellini’s bizarre and crazy visuals, packed with meanings not easily digested, it’s about the quirky characters that flutter in and out, but most of all it’s about never quite knowing where Fellini will take us next.

I read somewhere that Fellini thought the other two segments were going to be directed by Ingmar Bergman and another notable director and when he found this wasn’t the case he took a fit and tried to get out of the contract; however, I also read that due to a substantial debt to someone he wasn’t given a choice whether to direct the short or not.