Movie Review: Spirits of the Dead, starring Jane Fonda, Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, and Terence Stamp (1968)

Spirits of the Dead is an intense, surreal, sexy, stylish, fever dream of a film. Based on three short stories by Edgar Allen Poe, it’s an anthology film as three different casts and directors take on the three tales. Released in Europe in 1968 and the USA in 1969, the film is a who’s who of swinging 60’s cinema. The film stars Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, and Terence Stamp. The directors were Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini.  

Whether you like the film or not, you’ll be dazzled by the exquisite costumes and sets, and the very pretty people you get to watch. Here are my thoughts about the three stories. 

Metzengerstein, starring Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, directed by Roger Vadim. This story was filmed just after the terrific campy space movie Barbarella, also starring Jane Fonda and directed by Roger Vadim, her husband at the time. Side note: Vadim was married to Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda. In between those marriages, Vadim had a relationship with Catherine Deneuve. I don’t know if I’m more impressed that Roger Vadim was with these three amazing women, or if I’m more annoyed at him for not making the relationships work out.  

This segment was the slowest of the three. But Fonda’s wardrobe is amazing, full of gorgeous and sexy costumes. If you get bored, you can just start counting her costume changes.  

Fonda’s character is a young countess who pursues a life of indulgent pleasure. Fonda’s brother Peter plays her cousin—their families have been feuding for centuries, but she feels an inexorable pull towards him. Having Peter Fonda play this role was a great choice, as it lends the story the requisite oddness/creepy factor.  

The story loses steam halfway through, and the ending isn’t a surprise, although there’s still lovely scenery to enjoy. 

William Wilson, starring Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot, directed by Louis Malle. It’s Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot, and they both look super hot. What more do you need to know? 

The story concerns a man named William Wilson who encounters another man who is also named William Wilson. This other Wilson haunts him throughout his life, as their lives run on parallel tracks. This continues the theme of doubles or doppelgangers in Delon’s movies, which is a major theme in Purple Noon, La Piscine, and Mr. Klein. (Side note: Maurice Ronet, who played characters who mirrored or doubled Delon’s characters in Purple Noon and La Piscine, provided the French narration for the Fonda/Vadim segment.)  

The kinky sadomasochism that was an undertone in the first story is brought to the forefront in this story. Delon’s character is extremely sadistic—he would have been a formidable match for Fonda’s countess. It’s always effective when directors used Delon’s good looks to play a character who is morally corruptible. (See also: Purple Noon, Le Samourai.)  

The highlight of this segment is seeing two icons of French cinema, Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot, on screen at the same time. Delon and Bardot never made a full movie together, which is a shame, but they also appeared together in 1961’s anthology film Famous Love Affairs. Bardot and Delon were good friends, and their chemistry together in Spirits of the Dead is electric. They don’t need words; they just need smoldering glances across the table as their characters play cards. What card game are they playing? I don’t even know. It doesn’t matter.  

Bardot’s part is difficult to play, as there’s really not much for her to work with. What you need in that scene is a female who can match Delon’s charisma and star power. You need that scene to be a battle of equals, between two giants, and Bardot delivers. Even with an unfortunate black wig.  

I don’t know if William Wilson was my favorite segment of the movie, but I really liked the creepy, unsettling aspect of the story, and Delon’s excellent performance.  

Toby Dammit, starring Terence Stamp, directed by Federico Fellini. Terence Stamp was one of the coolest guys ever. He shared a flat with Michael Caine, before they both rose to stardom. He dated Julie Christie and supermodel Jean Shrimpton. His brother Chris Stamp managed The Who. He was living at an ashram in India when the call came to play General Zod in Superman. Terence Stamp simply had style.  

I can’t quite get over the fact that the name of Stamp’s character is Toby Dammit. This is also the name of the character in the Poe story this segment is based on. I want to put a comma in there, to make it a sentence: “Toby, dammit!”  

Toby is an actor, and as the segment begins, he’s flying into Rome to make a spaghetti Western. Part of his payment for the movie is a new Ferrari. Call it surreal, call it expressionistic, but it’s not a surprise that Fellini’s segment would take place in a kind of heightened reality, where even the Rome airport seems to be merely a film set.  

I interpreted Toby Dammit to be a satirical commentary on celebrity, specifically modern film celebrity. Everyone wants something from Toby; everyone acts as though everything he says is vitally important. While in reality, he’s an alcoholic actor who is terrifyingly close to a nervous breakdown. Maybe Fellini is saying “Film actors are normal people, we should treat them like normal people.” 

Fellini shows us the parts of film celebrity that are ancillary to the work itself. We don’t see Toby on the set of his new movie, instead we see Toby on a TV talk show, and at an awards show. These are the obligations of the modern film celebrity. In addition to performing on the film set, Toby also has to perform in front of the camera at these events as well.  

Stamp, nattily attired in jaunty black scarf and purple velvet pants, nails the part, even with his black hair dyed blonde, and he captures the duality of Toby: he always looks as though he’s either about to drive off into the night with a supermodel on each arm, or pass out at his table from too much Johnnie Walker red label.  

At the awards show, the producers beseech Toby to offer a short speech, “Something from Shakespeare. But short.” He offers the “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy from Macbeth. It ends with the famous line about life: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Toby stops, never finishing the last two words of the speech, as he talks about his own personal problems before crawling back to his seat.  

Because Toby cannot accept love when it is offered to him by the woman who whispers in his ear at the awards show, he instead chooses the path of self-destruction. When Toby obtains his gorgeous Ferrari after the awards show, we know he’s on the road to oblivion. The Ferrari, by the way, was custom built for the film. Originally a 1963 racing Ferrari 330 chassis, the body was modified, but modeled after the 1964 Ferrari 275 P. Fitting with the vibe of the whole movie, the car is both sexy and alluring, but also sinister and dangerous.  

Spirits of the Dead is a movie that really needs to be seen to be experienced. Love it or hate it, it’s a visual treat of 1960’s European cinema. 

Movie Review: Jane Fonda in "Barbarella" (1968)

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968.

This is the picture you find if you look up "sex kitten" in the dictionary.

Another tough day at work for director Roger Vadim.

1968’s campy sci-fi flick “Barbarella,” starring Jane Fonda at her most radiant, is one of the odder movies I’ve seen. I’d heard about the movie for a long time, in particular the famous opening scene where Fonda performs a sexy zero-gravity striptease. The opening titles cleverly scramble around to protect Fonda’s modesty as she strips naked, but we do see her breasts in several shots. And then we still see her breasts, even after she puts on clothes 10 minutes into the movie. When “Barbarella” was re-released in theaters in 1977, it was given the subtitle: “Queen of the Galaxy,” but I think a more apropos subtitle would have been: “Jane Fonda’s Boobs.” 

There’s nothing that can quite prepare you for actually watching “Barbarella,” and all of the silliness that transpires during its 98 minute running time. If you want to see a movie where famous mime Marcel Marceau actually has a speaking role, you’ve come to the right place. However, that’s not the reason most people saw “Barbarella.” The real reason is how unbelievably hot Jane Fonda was in 1968, and all the sexy costumes she’s almost wearing in the movie. 

“Barbarella” was based on a French science-fiction comic about a sexy female astronaut, and was directed by Fonda’s then-husband Roger Vadim. Vadim was most famous for directing his first wife, Brigitte Bardot, in her breakthrough performance “And God Created Woman” in 1956. Vadim earned the envy of every straight man on earth during the 1950’s and 60’s thanks to his marriages to Bardot and Fonda. Oh, and in between his marriages to Bardot and Fonda, he romanced Catherine Deneuve, which officially qualified him for the “Luckiest Bastard Ever” award. For obvious reasons, Vadim titled his 1986 autobiography “Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda: My Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World.” 

The plot of “Barbarella” is really secondary, but it involves Barbarella carrying out a mission for the President of Earth. Barbarella is supposed to find the missing scientist Durand Durand, who has invented a “positronic ray.” (Yup, that’s where the 80’s British band Duran Duran got their name.) In this future setting, no one on Earth has any need for any weapons, as peace and harmony reign. The President of Earth doesn’t even have any armies or policemen. So why does he choose Barbarella for this mission? Well, because she’s a “five-star double-rated astronavigatrix,” whatever that is. And she’s performed missions for the President before; as he says that one day he hopes to meet her in person. (Probably because he keeps ogling her boobs as he talks to her through a two-way TV screen.) 

Despite being a “five-star double-rated astronavigatrix,” Barbarella actually proves to be quite incompetent, and during the film she’s often reduced to being a damsel in distress who is saved by a succession of different men. Barbarella survives innumerable death traps throughout the movie, ranging from toy dolls with gruesome sharp teeth to a deadly pleasure-inducing machine. Along the way, Barbarella discovers the pleasures of making love, as she meets the hirsute Mark Hand after her spaceship crashes in the icy plains of Weir. Hand saves Barbarella from the killer toy dolls, and when she says she doesn’t know how to thank him, he thinks of the oldest way in the book. (The future doesn’t actually seem that advanced as far as gender relations go.) When he tells Barbarella he wants to make love to her, she is puzzled and responds “What do you mean? You don’t even know my psychocardiogram!” She goes on to explain: “Well, on Earth, for centuries, people haven't made love unless their psychocardiogram readings were in perfect confluence.” Lovemaking is now achieved by taking a pill and touching hands for a minute or until “full rapport” occurs. In one of the funniest parts of the movie, Hand asks Barbarella why people no longer make love the old way. She says, “'Cause it was proved to be distracting and a danger to maximum efficiency! And… and because it was pointless to continue it when other substitutes for ego support and self-esteem were made available.” 

“Barbarella” is ultra-campy, and it thankfully has its tongue planted firmly in cheek most of the time. In addition to the lines about future sex, there are some funny moments, as when Hand takes off his fur jacket, revealing that he is just as hairy without the jacket as he is with it. Hand gives Barbarella one of his furs to wear, and it looks like a skunk, complete with long tail that gets caught in the door of Barbarella’s spaceship. 

Barbarella’s spaceship then crashes again, and she meets the blind angel Pygar, played by the statuesque John Phillip Law, and his friend Professor Ping, played by Marcel Marceau. (Marceau’s voice was dubbed.) Barbarella thanks Pygar for saving her by making love to him, and he thus regains the will to fly. (I told you this movie was campy!) Barbarella then makes her way to the city of SoGo, where she meets a concierge (Milo O’Shea and his giant eyebrows) who is an assistant to the Great Tyrant, the Black Queen, played by Keith Richards’ then girlfriend Anita Pallenberg. Pallenberg also had a small role in another 1968 sex farce which was also co-written by Terry Southern, “Candy.” I reviewed “Candy” here, and the movies do have some similarities, as they tell picaresque tales of attractive young women that make every man fall in love with them. The male performances in “Candy” are better, as you get to see huge stars like Richard Burton and Marlon Brando hamming it up, but Jane Fonda is a much better actress than Ewa Aulin, the Swedish actress who played Candy. 

Meanwhile, as the plot trundles on, Barbarella has to survive another death trap, as the Black Queen captures Barbarella and puts her in a cage to be pecked to death by birds, in an obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock. But Barbarella escapes down a hatch and meets the funniest character in the film, a revolutionary played by David Hemmings, fresh off his most famous role as the photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up.” Hemmings reminded me a lot of fellow swinging 60’s British actor Terence Stamp, as they both have the same intense, heavily lidded blue eyes. Hemmings mines his small role for all the comedy it’s worth, as he stammers over his lines and insists that Barbarella make love with him in the new Earth way, by taking pills and touching palms, which literally makes your hair curl. Hemmings then gives Barbarella an invisible key to the Queen’s sleeping chambers. Yes, an invisible key. It turns out that the concierge is actually Durand Durand himself, and he uses the positronic ray to wreak havoc on the citizens of SoGo, killing just about everyone before he gets killed by his own evil invention. Oh, and there’s some subterranean sludge called the Mathmos, which makes SoGo evil, or something like that, but Barbarella’s innocence saves her and the Queen from being destroyed by it. Nope, not kidding about that.

“Barbarella” is a ridiculous movie, but it remains a fun romp because of Fonda’s knowingly humorous performance, and her amazing costumes, designed by Jacques Fonteray and Paco Rabanne. Fonda is amazingly beautiful and sexy as Barbarella, and she brings the right amount of wide-eyed innocence to the role. Barbarella is completely guileless, and doesn’t understand why all of these men are falling at her feet. Had Fonda been a less gifted actress, “Barbarella” could have doomed her to be typecast as a bimbo, but she was able to escape the sex kitten image she created in “Barbarella.” The very 60’s soundtrack is by the superbly talented Bob Crewe, who wrote and produced many hits for the Four Seasons, and is a great singer in his own right. 

“Barbarella” was fun to watch, but I think it must have been more fun to see it back in 1968, when it was shocking audiences and when its boundary breaking would have seemed fresher. But if you want to take a trip back to the swinging 60’s, watch “Barbarella.”