Toby Dammit

Loosely adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s story “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” Federico Fellini’s contribution to the omnibus film SPIRITS OF THE DEAD is one of the filmmaker’s most extravagantly stylized cinematic dreamscapes—a psychedelic profusion of artificial backdrops, feverish colors, and waxwork-like weirdos. Terence Stamp telegraphs ever-mounting mania as an alcoholic Shakespearean actor who arrives in Rome to make a “Catholic western,” only to find himself beset by surreal visions that build toward a careening late-night ride on a highway to hell.