Federico Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim adapt works by master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe in the 1968 anthology film Spirits of the Dead [Histoires extraordinaires]. Dealing with tormented characters experiencing a personal hell, filled with angst and delirium, Spirits of the Dead was a ground-breaking departure for the adaption of Poe in cinema.

Vadim directs Jane Fonda as Countess Metzengerstein, a debauched heiress leading a life Caligula would commend. The Countess becomes tormented by the denial of her incestuous desire for her cousin Baron Berlifitzing (fittingly played by her brother Peter Fonda). Malle directs Alain Delon as William Wilson, an Austrian solider who is haunted by his doppelgänger, tormenting him at times in his life where he is at his most cruel and sadistic. Fellini's famed segment sees Terence Stamp as Toby Dammit, an actor arriving in Rome to meet the producers of his new film, the first Catholic Western. Drugged and drunk, Dammit is disturbed by the haunting image of the devil, which like Mario Bava's Kill, Baby... Kill! and Bunuel's Simon of the Desert, is actually a young girl, ominously bouncing a ball.

Opinion all seems to favour the Fellini segment, which prompted Vincent Canby in the New York Times to remark that the director had "assimilated his source material in such a way that it has become a kind of postscript to La Dolce Vita, the picture of an exhausted, once beautiful person handing his soul over to the devil."

Spirits of the Dead [Histoires extraordinaires] will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow Films on 25th October 2010 at the RRP of £22.99. The disc will include multiple audio options for all segments including Terence Stamp's original English audio in Toby Dammit¸ English and French dubbed tracks for Metzengerstein and William Wilson. Special Features will include:

• Newly commissioned cover artwork;
• Original trailer;
• Vincent Price audio narration from the American theatrical release;
• 60-page booklet reproducing original poster artworks, Edgar Allan Poe's original stories on which each film is based, an essay on Spirits of the Dead by author and critic Tim Lucas and an essay on Toby Dammit by author and scholar Peter Bondanella.