Two Dead Spirits Out of Three

The credentials are impressive. Federico Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim, each directing a brace of international superstars in a loose adaptation of a Poe story, seem to promise one of the better anthology films.

But the ads have something else in mind. "Edgar Allan Poe's ultimate orgy of evil and unbearable horror!" they shriek, conjuring up images of a dawn-to-dusk scare show at the local drive-in. Obviously the distributors were afraid of something--probably the spooks that Spirits of the Dead promises but never actually delivers.

The first episode, Metzengerstein, is something of a family affair: Jane Fonda, under the direction of her husband Vadim, dashes about the medieval countryside in none too maidenly pursuit of her brother Peter, who looks lost with out his Harley-Davidson. Peter and Jane play the sole descendants of two feuding families, a fact that only adds zest to Jane's passion. In a singular frenzy, she burns down Peter's stable while Peter is still inside trying to save his favorite horse. The horse lives, but Peter perishes. Unfazed, Jane gets hung up on his black stallion. It's all terribly kinky, with Peter in his leather pants, Jane in her Story of O decolletage, and the stallion with his quivering nostrils and muscular flanks--a porno graphic My Friend Flicka.

William Wilson, the second episode, comes as something of a relief; almost anything would. Louis Malle (The Thief of Paris) works some interesting cinematic variations on Poe's classic Doppelganger story, but Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot seem, to put it gently, out of place. The kinetic opening, with Delon running desperately down the street trying to escape from his own suicide, conjures up a proper air of terror that the rest of the vignette cannot sustain.

It is the third episode that keeps Spirits alive. Never Bet the Devil Your Head is Federico Fellini's first film since Juliet of the Spirits, and it is a 40-minute excursion across the surreal landscape of his boundless imagination. Never centers on a washed-up Shakespearean actor named Toby Dammit (Terence Stamp) who has come to Rome to star in "the first Catholic Western." He is hounded by his own self-contempt and haunted by a vision of a corrupt cupid from hell, a devil in crinoline (Marina Yaru), who appears before him bouncing a large and somehow ominous white ball. At the end, Toby terminates his pilgrimage and turns himself into a final sacrifice to Satan.

This is familiar Fellini territory, but the maestro has added a few more flamboyant turns of the screw. His camera swoops through the Rome airport during Toby's arrival, catching glimpses of bizarre travelers bathed in demonic orange light, their bodies contorted into poses that are parodies of reality. Indeed, there is almost too much in Never for a short film. Fellini's sometimes prodigal genius threatens to overwhelm the story, which he apparently agreed to do only on the advice of his astrologer. But even to such journeyman projects, Fellini brings the kind of stylistic prestidigitation that has made him one of the world's greatest film makers.

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