Three directors each adapt a Poe short story to the screen: "Toby Dammit" features a disheveled drugged and drunk English movie star who nods acceptance in the Italian press and his producers fawn over him. "Metzengerstein" features a Mediveal countess who has a love-hate relationship with a black stallion - who it turns out is really her dead lover. "William Wilson" tells the story of a sadistic Austrian student with an exact double whom he later kills.
Only Fellini (Toby Dammit) really manages to make much of his source.
– ,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
fresh:
It offers pleasures above and beyond its status as a relic of a groovier and exponentially more swinging era.
– Nathan Rabin,
AV Club,
19 Mar 2003
fresh:
[Toby Dammit] is marvelous: a short movie but a major one. The Vadim is as overdecorated and shrill as a drag ball, but still quite fun, and the Malle, based on one of Poe's best stories, is simply tedious.