Baba Yaga (1973)

Some things I liked some I did not.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Guido Crepax erotic comic 'Valentina' was the basis for this movie. The comics themselves were not very plot-driven so the screenplay here was more inspired by them rather than being a straight adaption. Perhaps because of this, plot is not a strong point in this one. A fashion photographer called Valentina encounters a mysterious witch called Baba Yaga. The latter puts a hex on Valentina's camera meaning that anyone she photographs experiences some trauma. It's a fairly basic narrative but it has been used as a framework here for all manner of stylish madness.Isabelle De Funès plays Valentina and she looks suitably chic in the part, regular Italian genre actress Carroll Baker is the enigmatic Baba Yaga, while George Eastman gets to appear in a role that unusually does not call for him to be a psychopath but instead is a romantic lead of sorts who works as a director of commercials (his effort for a soap power advert really has to be seen to be believed!). The director here is Corrado Farina who had previously helmed another strange art-horror film called They Have Changed Their Faces (1971). While both films are in the horror bracket, it would be fair to say that their arty leanings are at least as strong as any horror angle. Baba Yaga is very dreamlike in tone with a deliberate pace. It is highly stylish in its visual approach with its sensibilities being divided between pop art and surrealism. Of the latter there are several dream sequences involving Nazis. Odd moments happen in the dead of night such as Valentina discovering a puppy lying within a circle of candles. There are strange items such as an S&M doll which has the power to transform into a woman. So, there is a great deal of oddness to this one, resulting in a film with a strange tone. Farina executes this kind of stuff with a bold visual style which is the movies main strength. Particularly nice were the sequences in which the action suddenly becomes visually formatted like one of the fumetti comics from which it was inspired. Piero Umiliani provides a pretty varied musical score which splits itself into three styles – upbeat easy-pop for the fashion shoot scenes, slower orchestral stuff for scenes involving Baba Yaga and jazzy compositions to accompany the more surreal episodes.On the whole, this is quite a strange movie which will not have widespread appeal. It's quite restrained as a horror movie and is not visceral in any way. While it does have some erotic elements, they aren't very exploitative. This is very much an art-house/horror hybrid in a lot of ways. It's not necessarily entirely successful in execution but it definitely does a lot of things very well and has some admirable ambition. It's one that is mainly aimed at those who have an affinity with style-heavy early 70's Italian movies. A very intriguing oddity that's for sure.

This is a weird, surreal movie about an improbably beautiful female photographer who has a strange encounter with a weird pale lady. The lady gives her a doll that she can apparently control the photographer with.It's hard to know what to say about this one in that it is deliberately incomprehensible and perhaps indeliberately tedious. There's nudity, but nothing all that great. The only actor in it I liked is the behemoth George Eastman. I could never see why he is described as a handsome man but he works in front of the camera better than all the ladies in this movie do.Apparently it was based on an Italian comic strip called a "fumetti". I know nothing about these, and after watching this, I'm not that interested in finding out about them either.

Italian cinema never ceases to amaze me and this was not an exception. Baba yaga is very stylish Italian horror movie but at the same time it's not as graphic as many movies of the spaghetti cinema. I can assume that it was intended for mainstream cinemas as it is quite bland in today's terms.It's plausible as a nightmare, offering very little shocks and more mystery. I wasn't looking for a masterpiece and i was entertained. It should be noted that this movie is an old kind of horror movie without excessive gore.There definitely is symbolism in this movie that many viewers might not understand. Why'd presumably wealthy, old and lonely woman want to extort a young photographer to obey her will? I thought the witch symbolized power and money and its will to gain more control. The witch wanted to corrupt and enslave the main character. She fought for her freedom and prevailed. I thought the movie was actually very political, like on other movie by the same director, "They've changed their face". I find it intriguing that a movie has a message of this kind. Many Hollywood movies just lack that aspect completely. This movie is also quite slow and if one has to have a new scene every third second, then it might get boring.I can recommend this movie to everyone (adults mostly) and not just for retro fans. It's not a masterpiece and if you're not looking for one then you won't be disappointed. It's more like a lost gem.

Psychedelic soft-erotic exploitation movies were an inexplicably popular trend amongst European directors back in the late 60's and early 70's. This generally pointless sub genre of horror consists of movies that basically don't have any plots, but are stuffed with trendy looking women parading around naked and fetishist escapades that all healthy heterosexual males are supposed to fantasize about. Yeah, right … I don't know about you, but I surely never dreamed of sadomasochistic rubber dolls or Nazi elimination squads. The list of these oddball movies is long and contains efforts from several acclaimed directors, like Mario Bava's "Lisa and the Devil", Jess Franco's "Succubus", Massimo Dallamano's "Venus in Furs", Umberto Lenzi's "Orgasmo" and Piero Schivazappa's "The Laughing Woman". "Baba Yaga" also fits into this category, but here the script was inspired by an eccentric comic books series courtesy of Guido Crepax. Basically this means that "Baby Yaga" is even weirder and more flamboyant than all the other psychedelic sex flicks mentioned here above. During a live and personal presentation of his film, at a festival in my home country Belgium, director Corrando Farina explained that he tried to translate as many comic book elements to the screen as possible, but that it certainly wasn't easy due to budgetary restriction and uncooperative producers and censorship. Still, no matter what Farina claims, nothing can divert the attention away from the fact that "Baba Yaga" is a dull and utterly incoherent movie. I didn't spot any artistic style elements at all and the hallucinogenic footage is just a bunch of randomly scraped together and irrelevant sleaze. Isabelle De Funès (Louis' yummy niece, apparently) stars as a liberated photographer in Milan. Late one night and following only a brief encounter, she reluctantly becomes the object of obsession of the funnily named lesbian witch Baba Yaga (Carroll Baker). The deranged hag turns Valentina's camera into a murder device, transfigures her best friend into an SM-doll, inflicts eerie nightmares on her and eventually lures the poor girl to an abandoned mansion with nasty sewing machines and bottomless pits. In case you're looking for significance, symbolism or possibly even an explanation, I'm afraid I have to discourage you straight away. Everything that happens in "Baba Yaga" happens for absolutely NO reason and the film finishes just as void as it begun. To round up with at least a couple of positive remarks, I really liked the music and both Isabella De Funès and Ely Galleani are stunningly beautiful ladies to look at. George Eastman (as the heroine's clueless boyfriend) is good too, but I definitely prefer the roles he played in his later career as they were practically all villainous.