Director: Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim
Year: 1968
Country: France/Italy
Alternate Titles: Histoires extraordinaires; Tales of Mystery and Imagination; Powers of Evil; Don't Wager Your Head to the Devil
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
A collection of three different Edgar Allen Poe tales by three different directors.
Review:
Metzengerstein-Living a life of decadence and depravity, a sadistic baroness enjoys living alone in her castle, watching her distant cousin carry on his life whilst ignoring her advances and existence. When word reaches her that he has perished in a deadly fire on his land, she becomes distraught and begins a fanatical obsession with restoring a tapestry depicting a fiery, wild horse he supposedly owned, while carrying on an equally deadly obsession with a stray horse that appears shortly afterward that bears a striking resemblance to the individual in the cloth. Easily the best of the stories, with a rather impressive mixture of Gothic atmosphere here, with its crumbling castle setting, expansive layouts, and decadence littering the entire area, which creates a visually haunting location to use here. As well, the lone action scene, the fire to the adjacent estate, is equally impressive with it's large-scale impact, noteworthy fire stunt and visual dynamics as this is usually the ending to many of these Gothic horrors with the burning-the-house-down finale here placed in the middle section, which is quite innovative, and with both of these segments meshing with her sense of sadism and depravity with humiliation games, orgies and other forms of entertainment overall create a rather impressive entry.
William Wilson-Rushing into a church, a distraught man, and begs the local priest to hear his confession. Starting with his first introduction, he relates the story of a man who is his identical in every way, even sharing the same name as each other, and whenever he tries to entertain himself through his usual sense of depraved fun, his doppelganger appears to ruin it, and by the time it finally grows to a maddening scale, he engages his mysterious twin in a final game of fate. This here is certainly watchable enough, as the depravity here is increased with games such as dunking into the rats, surgery on the nude woman, and whipping the woman he won in the card game, which creates a rather creepy air when they're all interrupted and dropped with clever rationalizations. There's even a bloody sword-fight to give it some nice action as well. The only real flaw to this one is that the segment tends to meander from the same set-up to the next without any variation, really keeping this one from doing anything entertaining with its premise. It does grow tiresome to know everything is going to keep repeating, regardless of what's going on, so it loses a little there, but it is overall quite enjoyable.
Toby Dammit-Arriving in Italy, a boozing, drugged actor is constantly shuffled around from one personal requested appearance to the next without delay, causing him to sink deeper into his sense of personal despair. Finally arriving at a gala award show for his honor, he finds the locals gathered there far too much for his sanity to overcome, and when he begins to let his inhibitions loose to their fullest extent, he finds himself in a deeper Hell than before. This was overall quite boring as the entire segment plays out as though it's an acid-trip nightmare. Sure, it's overtly weird and generally quite stylish visually, but that doesn't really make it scary. The drive through the deserted streets at night is about the only thing worthwhile here, as it's a lengthy, extended sequence that really gets far more enjoyable over time, though the majority of time is taken up by the strange award ceremony rather than being scary, which really does doom this entry. Not enough for the movie overall, but just slightly.
Overview: ****/5
A somewhat fun, classy Anthology effort, there's a lot to like here within the segments and only one that's a bit underwhelming, making this a strong and enjoyable arthouse-infused genre effort. Those with an appreciation for this style of genre fare, who are hardcore fans of anthology films in general, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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