Re: headless

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

--- Pottree@domain.elided wrote:
> Reminds me, has anyone ever seen Fellini's take on
> Poe's Never Bet the Devil 
> Your Head?  It was his part of a three or four part
> movie, c 1968, but right 
> now I can't recall the title of the whole picture,
> but other sections were 
> directed by other famous Italian directors of the
> day.  Fellini's was 
> longest, last, and involved Michael Pollard and a
> Ferrari...

Terence Stamp.  The film's title is "Spirits of the
Dead" ("Histoires Extraordinaires" originally)and the
other two directors were French -- Roger Vadim and
Louis Malle.  Vadim did "Metzengerstein" with Peter
and Jane Fonda in an erotic, atmospheric tale about
the transmigration of souls; Malle's cut on "William
Wilson" is a moderately dull version of the story
about a doppelganger, starring Alain Delon and
Brigitte Bardot.

Fellini's piece ends the film, and is titled "Toby
Dammit" in the movie.  It's one of the most
frightening pieces of film I've ever seen, at least
for anyone with an imagination -- which is to say
there are no special effects and only very little
blood, so if you are expecting post-Exorcist grossout
as "horror," you will most likely be disappointed. 
Fellini scares his viewers silly with a little girl in
a white pinafore, bouncing a white ball in slow
motion.  (It's a sunny February morning here in
Portland and I've come over all gooseflesh just
thinking about her.)  Hell, the introductory scene as
Stamp walks through the Rome airport is one of the
most frightening pieces of film I've ever seen.  Or at
least the most disturbing.  It's... indescribable.

The cassette box copy mistakenly labels Stamp's car as
a Maserati, but it's clearly a Ferrari and is so
described in the dialogue; at one point, I swear you
can see Il Commendatore seated at a table, wearing his
signature sunglasses (at the awards banquet, while Ray
Charles sings "Ruby").  The driving sequence at the
end is more vintage Fellini: weird, disjointed images
flickering in the yellow light of the Ferrari's
headlamps as it speeds through the darkened, deserted
streets.  Magnificent film.  Unfortunately, my copy
has a rather bland overdubbing in English; Fellini's
sequence (at least) originally had Terence Stamp
speaking his lines in English, and the other
characters speaking Italian, either with subtitles or
-- when speaking to Stamp -- through an interpreter.

A favorite.  I have a modest collection of obscure
horror films on VHS; this is one of my most coveted.

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon

.
Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games
http://sports.yahoo.com

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