Many of the reviewers were on the same page. I have to fall in line, I'm afraid. The first of the trio, "Mazzengerstein", was just plain dull. You have the beautiful young Jane Fonda becoming an heiress from hell. She runs the show at all times because of her financial power. Don't cross her. However, could they have chosen someone else but brother Peter as the ultimate love interest? Fortunately, I didn't notice him in the credits. Beyond that, the story was slow moving and downright dull. "William Wilson" is a great example for English teachers of the "Doppelganger" story. In this one the young Wilson does terrible things, primarily to women. He is a psychotic. Getting quite Freudian, we see where his corporeal superego moves in to stop him. Unfortunately, in at least one case, the damage has been done. The story works better than the first, but it is hackneyed. In the third, Terrence Stamp, "Far from the Madding Crowd," is an alcoholic actor who comes to Italy to make a weird western. He is accosted by the paparazzi and driven to distraction. Of course, he is drunk the whole time. But in typical Fellini fashion, he is met by a herd of surrealist images. He has been promised a Ferrari and when he gets his hands on it, he goes crazy. We can see this coming, but no one can create a nightmare world like the wonderful Fellini. All in all, I had never heard of this film and hung in there until the highly superior last offering.

Three directors each adapt a Poe short story to the screen: "Toby Dammit" features a disheveled drugged and drunk English movie star who nods acceptance in the Italian press and his producers fawn over him. "Metzengerstein" features a Medieval countess who has a love-hate relationship with a black stallion - who, it turns out is really her dead lover. "William Wilson" tells the story of a sadistic Austrian student with an exact double whom he later kills.Samuel Z. Arkoff offered the producers $200,000 for American International Pictures to have the US and Canadian rights, but was knocked back as Arkoff wanted to cut a scene from the Fellini sequence. A year later the producers had not been able to find another buyer so when Arkoff made the same offer they took it. (I am not sure what he wanted cut.) What is interesting to me is the different audiences this film might have depending on your source. Certainly fans of European cinema would eat this up, and it is no wonder it is now distributed by Janus Films. But when AIP had it and put the Vincent Price narration in, it was probably directed more towards the fans of their "Poe cycle", despite this film being quite different in tone. Although I love AIP, I have never seen their version... and oddly was not really aware of this film's existence. It is not as championed as the (real) Price films...Vincent Canby wrote that "Toby Dammit, the first new Fellini to be seen here since Juliet of the Spirits in 1965, is marvelous: a short movie but a major one. The Vadim is as overdecorated and shrill as a drag ball, but still quite fun, and the Malle, based on one of Poe's best stories, is simply tedious." Now, I would disagree with that. Although I enjoyed all three segments, I would have to say the "Toby Dammit" segment was the most tedious. Clever ,well-acted, but in some ways overly long...

This is the only movie with "Hanoi Jane" Fonda that I have in my movie library. One reason is that it's a damned good horror movie. The other reason is that Jane has a "happy ending" in this movie. See the movie and you will see what I mean! For some reason it is only on video in French language with English sub-titles. What happened to the English-dubbed version? All three stories are nice and creepy but "William Wilson" is my favorite. And Bridgett Bardot makes that story even better! "Hanoi Jane"'s story is pretty good too, though it's kinda weird to have her own brother, Peter, playing the man she wants! I won't even talk about the horse part! The last story is well done in Frederico Fellini's usual weird style. Sure worth watching if you like them scary!

Spirits of the Dead (1968) *** (out of 4) Three directors come together to tell three different stories from the work of Edgar Allan Poe but the end results are quite mixed. The first film, "Metzengerstein", has Jane Fonda playing an evil countess who spends her life for orgies and various cruelties. She comes across her cousin (Peter Fonda) who eventually dies in a barn fire that she had set and soon afterwards her whole personality begins to change. The second film, "William Wilson", by Louis Malle, tells the story of a soldier (Alain Delon) who is being stalked by a man who looks just like him and has the same name. The final film, "Toby Dammit" from Federico Fellini, features Terence Stamp as a drunken actor who arrives in Italy to do the story of Christ as a Western. His drunken and drug fueled state leads to him seeing all sorts of strange things including the Devil who might be posing as a little girl.The first film is certainly the weakest of the three as there's very little European flavor to it let along anything else. Vadim's direction is also all over the place as the entire film never seems to know where it's going. One second the film seems like a drama then it mixes to a more Gothic tale and by the end I wasn't really sure what to think. The film, clocking in at forty-minutes, runs way too long as it becomes very boring early on and doesn't get any better. Peter is wasted in his small role and Jane doesn't come off too well either. She walks around in tight clothing the entire time so at least she treats us to that.The second film is a very strong one and manages to be quite eerie in a low key way. The movie travels along pretty slowly but that's not a put down but instead a major praise because Malle handles the story so well that the slowness just builds up a lot of atmosphere and that there brings a certain eerieness to the story. I loved the way the film tries to show the good and dark side of a human and Delon does a wonderful job at bringing this through his character. I think one could debate what was actually happening in the story but it's examples of good and evil were done very well on both the visual and storytelling levels. Having Brigitte Bardot playing the central female character is never a bad thing. Her beauty certainly shines through on top of her very strong performance, which requires her to do a lot with just her eyes.This third film is certainly a bizarre and surreal one and on that level the movie works, although anyone could come up with a different idea of what the director is trying to do with the material. I can only imagine what Poe himself would have thought sitting through something as wild and over the top as this thing. Stamp's wild performance matches the wild direction perfectly and it's was a lot of fun seeing what the two men would come up with next. The spoof of the awards show was certainly the highlight of the film but those seeking anything from Poe's story will probably be lost until the very end.