This French/Italian co-production is a portmanteau movie
with three short films based on stories by Edgar
Allan Poe, an American author best known for his tales of mystery and the
macabre. An outstanding European
director directs each one.
In Tim Lucas notes that accompany the 2011 release of
the film on Blu-ray he opines that Histoires Extraordinaires (1968) ‘reinvented the cinema’s approach to Poe, and
ultimately, the boundaries of the horror genre itself. Vincent Price was
nowhere in sight; instead the films creators used the opportunity to reach back
to an older, European tradition of using Poe as the basis of delirious,
experimental, confessional cinema’[1].
He also argues that the three should be seen as a whole and not as individual
films, and I would concur that the three films are certainly better enjoyed as
a whole.
Roger Vadim’s (And
God Created Woman 1956) Metzengerstein
is the mesmerising first segment not set in any
particular time span and stars his wife of the
time Jane Fonda in a part that reinforces the fact that she was a strikingly
beautiful and desirable actress. In this
wonderfully costumed drama Jane plays a character that Poe had cast as a 18
year old male in his original story but in Vadim’s screenplay she is a young
women, the Countesse Frederique von Metzengerstain who has inherited the family
estate and lives a life of promiscuity and debauchery, a sort of existence that
Caligula
would have been proud of. Her ancestors have always been rivals with another
part of family called the Berlifitzings and who still it impossible to even
talk with each other. One day while out in the forest hunting Frederique’s leg
gets caught in a bear trap and fortunately her cousin Baron Wilhelm Berlifitzing
is also out riding and frees her. The Countesse craves an incestuous
relationship with the good-looking young Baron, who is played by Jane’s brother
Peter, which does add an edge to the screen portrayal, but he rejects her.
Frederique decides to extract revenge on the man that had the audacity to turn
down her advances. Her actions lead to a death, a reincarnation and a mystifying
incident with a black horse and a damaged tapestry. Partly spoken partly
narrated the movie is lushly photographed by Claude Renoir especially the
opening scene where we see the Countesse and her entourage riding on the cliffs
above Kerouzere Castle in Brittany and I’ve already mentioned the fabulous futuristic costumes
designed by Jacques Fonteray. Is your fate predetermined?
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| The Countesse Frederique von Metzengerstain |
The penultimate segment is an intriguing
piece of work directed by the French director Louis Malle (Lift
to the Scaffold 1958) and is set in 19th century France and told in
flashback. Atheist William Wilson,
played by French heartthrob Alain Delon, enters a church and forces his way
into the confessional demanding that the priest take his confession. The Malle
co-scripted film tells the story of a cold-hearted sadist who claims he is being
pursued by a doppelgänger who goes by the same name, William Wilson! One of his
flashbacks involves a card game with a beautiful cigar smoking woman
Giuseppina, a man in Poe's original story, but there's no mistaking Brigitte
Bardot even with black hair. After an all night card session she eventually
looses to Wilson who ends up whipping her after the other Wilson has appeared
and accused him of cheating at cards. The ultimate nightmare is indeed a nightmare about
a nightmare?
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| The cigar smoking Giuseppina. |
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| William Wilson! |
Like William Wilson in the previous
segment Toby Dammit is a gambling man
but unlike Wilson his bet is always with the devil with whom he wagers his
head! Inspired by Mario Bava's devil in Kill
Baby Kill (1966) the apparition takes the form of a young girl with white
blond hair wearing a simple white dress holding a luminous ball that she
bounces towards him in slow motion. This final segment was originally to be
directed by Orson Wells who pulled out at the last minute to direct an
uncompleted project in Yugoslavia. Instead Federico Fellini was asked to direct
in his place. Fellini decided on a Poe story called Never Bet the Devil Your Head, set it in a contemporary setting, which as Tim Lucas points out was transformed
into 'a bizarre, acid tinged, three
ringed circus - the closest the cinema has come to bring Peter Blake's amazing
Sgt Peppers album cover to life'[2]
And who better to play a bizarre acid tinged character than Terence
Stamp. Dammit is a famous actor who is loosing his career to the ravages of
alcohol and drugs but is still convinced of his own celebrity status and agrees
to travel to Rome to appear in a film where his fee is to be a brand new
Ferrari. A guest of honor at a film award evening he drinks too much and has
visions of a young girl holding a large luminous ball that ultimately leads to
him completely loosing his head. He blew
his mind out in a car[3].
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| Toby Dammit. |
Although all three work very well, Fellini’s
segment is the most surreal of the three films and probably the best known.
Similarities between the three are purely coincidental but what we get is a
great example of sixties European film making from some of the eras best
directors and best known actors and actresses. The original film made its
theatrical debut in Paris in 1968 but did not do remarkably well in the box
office. American International Pictures bought the distribution rights for the
US, changed its name to Spirits of the
Dead and released it in July 1969,it was the first horror movie released in
America to carry an ‘R’ rating. This collectively splendid piece of cinematic
film history will not immediately appeal to every one but if, like me, you are
prepared to give it a go you will be justifiably rewarded in this world if not
the next!
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| Never bet the devil your head! |
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