Baba Yaga or the Devil Witch the (United Kingdom) titles, or Kiss Me, Kill Me/Black Magic (1973) the (US) titles
“Weird {is} the operative word here. Though framed by a simple story, director Corrado Farina's approach to the film is every bit as avant-garde and surrealist as its source material. The plot had me scratching my head in bewilderment. Compelling visuals kept me watching.'' "” from Brian Lindsey’s Eccentric Cinema review.
☞ SPOILER ALERT:
READ PART 1 Tam Lin HERE
In Slavic/Russian folklore, the Baba Yaga is a strikingly revolting witch who flies around in a giant pestle – and steals and eats children. In the middle of a Russian forest, she lives in a shack built on top of giant chicken legs that can move at will. The folklore Baby Yaga is a sinister, macabre mythological presence, unlike the deviant sensual being that Carroll Baker portrays in Corrado Farina's Euro-horror film. This iteration of Baba Yaga is the seductive sorceress who manages to summon – with simmering antagonism, a world of pain – "˜symbolically' baring her predatory, wanting lips, which desire the heroine – Valentina.
According to the Monthly Film Bulletin review from 1974, critic Geoff Brown noted that he reviewed an 81-minute dubbed version of the film Baba Yaga. Brown stated that “due to 20 minutes of the film being cut and through the English-language dub, “the film had lost some of Farina’s socio-political arguments.” However, Brown also commented that most of these removed elements were reduced to “modish chit-chat” on topics ranging through various ideas.”
In the 70s, while exploring Giallo and Euro-exploitation films, I remember my first shudder and first impression of Baba Yaga. I had the feeling that something odd and erotic had taken place, and for me, it was like waking up from a hazy, surreal dream. Carroll Baker has always captivated me, and in the role of Baba Yaga, I felt she brought a level of Old World Hollywood class to a very provocative horror film.
An Italian/ French co-production, Baba Yaga is a delirious mixture of the supernatural, psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, vivid color schemes, pop art, eroticism, and fetishistic imagery. Baba Yaga, the film, revamps Russian folklore and transports the story into contemporary Milan.
As a stylish arthouse horror film from the 1970s, Baba Yaga explores the borderline between reality and imagination, embracing the sleazy allure of after-dark cinema"”fascinating and perhaps too challenging to define. There are striking elements that establish themselves with a clear sapphic element that already existed in Crepax’s work, creating an eroticized vision seen through the heterosexual ‘male gaze’ and driven by what Laura Mulvey termed "to be looked at-ness" that are kept in Farina’s film.
While I am still drawn to the film as an artifact of this decade's concentrated influence on an unmistakably hybrid genre (Horror, Euro-Exploitation, Giallo), Baba Yaga still manages to weaponize the straight male visual pleasure of actualizing their faulty version of lesbianism and bases the narrative around male sexual fantasies.
Farina and Crepax reveal the inherent bias fueled by a male-centric culture through a lens shaped by a male-centric point of view, which emphasizes the heteronormative expectation of female-female sexual exploitation.
Setting these critical observations aside"¦ The backdrop of Baba Yaga's 1970s fashion and Italian pop culture adds washes of a chic, mod, and bold cinematic experience.
Director Corrado Farina, who had previously envisioned another strange art-horror film, They Have Changed Their Faces (1971), now delivers this strange film with a mesmerizing array of visuals. The film seamlessly transitions from sharp pop design to muted Gothic hues and vents into full-fledged experimental cinema. Farina roams free with unrepentant visual skill frame by frame.
Baba Yaga, adapted from the risqué S&M erotic graphic novel series "˜Valentina' by Guido Crepax, thrives on its invocation and sense of a comic book world. Crepax, who earned his reputation as the world's most seductive cartoonist, stands as one of the eminent figures in the realm of adult comics and garnered greater recognition during the 1960s and 1970s.
Crepax's prominence stems not only from his introduction of erotic themes but also from his innovative approach to storytelling within the medium, incorporating nudity and daring themes.
Director Farina was a big fan of fumetti, Italian comics, and Italian artist Guido Crepax. However, Farina decided to discard a key element of Crepax’s work: its unapologetic and explicit salaciousness, which could be translated better in comic book print. This presented a problem for Farina, who recognized that it would have been very easy to fall into the area of ‘bad taste’ or the erotic scenes becoming vulgar.
Farina solved his problem by incorporating the B&W frames of Valentina and Arno’s lovemaking"”using panels inspired by Crepax’s vignettes instead of one colorful, moving sex scene.
Baba Yaga, with a central enticement of lesbian S&M, increasingly blurs the lines between reality and daydreams of overt eroticism and surrealism. Co-written by Giulio Berruti and Francois de Lannurien, the film alternates between comic-book visuals and hallucinatory fantasies but falls short of effectively combining Crepax's brilliance with the European exploitation movement during that period in cinema. He is perhaps best recognized for his graphic adaptations of iconic literary works such as The Story of O and Marquis de Sade’s Justine.
Crepax introduced the character of Valentina, a photojournalist, in 1965. At first, the girlfriend of superhero Neutron, comic book heroine Valentina evolved under Crepax’s vision and assumed her own series in 1967, marking a significant shift in his focus – over three decades, he chronicled Valentina’s unconventional and frequently erotic escapades, often alongside her companion Phillip Rembrandt (Neutron). The Valentina stories evolved from science fiction into an erotic realm infused with hallucinatory elements, dreams, and themes of BDSM (Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, Sadism & Masochism).
Director Corrado Farina's artistic approach is unmistakably characterized as a collection of ethereal and abstract visual narratives that yield a dreamy, stylized, and inventive fusion of psychedelia and eroticism."¨He incorporated the use of "flashbacks” involving intricate layers of narrative and temporal shifts, adding depth and complexity to the comic-book form.
Before this film, Farina delved into the world of Crepax through a documentary titled “Freud a Fu'metti.” Interestingly, Crepax had also lent his artistic vision to storyboards for Tinto Brass’ “Deadly Sweet.” However, Brass found Crepax’s visual style so uniquely intricate that he deemed it nearly impossible to translate onto the screen.
Upon finishing the shooting and post-production phase, Farina departed for a vacation. Once he returned, he discovered that the producers had made significant cuts to the film, claiming it was too long, directly altering the negative and removing half an hour of footage. Farina explained in an interview that he had consulted with his friend, director Brass, who himself had fought for autonomy over his work, and he also went to the press telling them what had happened to his project. Fearing the negative press, the producers gave Farina back his film, but at that point, it was difficult for him to re-edit the continuity where they had removed pieces of the actual negative. Despite efforts by the director and assistant director Giulio Berruti to salvage the movie, Farina ultimately felt that the essence of what was lost could never be fully recovered.
One original lost scene features a bit more of the dream sequence in which Valentina encounters Carroll Baker in the boxing ring. The extended scene emphasizes the lesbian component and features Baker caressing the inside of De Funès naked thigh.
Farina had to contend with the producer’s butchering his film, and the censorship board’s objections went beyond those edits. While the film might have pushed boundaries with its portrayal of lesbians and irreverent religious imagery, it was surprisingly the nudity that sparked the most resistance. Specifically, the board took issue with the full frontal nudity of both De Funès and Baker,
Corrado Farina admits that he avoided explicitly adapting the erotic comics of Guido Crepax to the movie screen. He also claims to have been inspired by French director Roger Vadim's film adaptation of Barbarella, which cleverly infused his titillating film with a rather inconspicuous sexuality. For some, Baba Yaga may have suffered a bit -from an unassertive approach to graphic sexuality, instead shrouding its libido as awkwardly arty. But that would deliver the film into the realm of soft-core pornography instead of a surreal erotic daydream/nightmare.
While Shameless’s cut represents Farina’s closest vision, issuing Farina's original film, adding 6 minutes and salvaging part of what the producers had chopped off before the film premiered, the original negative was deliberately destroyed, and significant alterations remain. The Blue Underground release includes censored scenes, notably a full-frontal nude scene with Carroll Baker. Additionally, the DVD contains a 22-minute interview with Corrado Farina, in which he reveals Jean-Luc Godard’s influence on his work.
Above are two images – here: features Maria Rohm in Venus in Furs (1969).
Elke Sommer and Telly Savalas in Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil (1973).
In the realm of unconventional, offbeat cinema, films of this nature find kinship with other avant-garde works by Euro-exploitation-horror maestros. Examples include Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil (1973), Black Sabbath (1963), and Massimo Dallamano’s Venus in Furs (1969).
Other highly stylized directors to whom this work can be likened are Jean Rollin, Roger Vadim, Mario Bava, Antonio Margheriti, Jess Franco, Dario Argento, Nicholas Roeg, and Federico Fellini.
Baba Yaga possesses an achingly transgressive and beautiful cinematography that highlights the fantastical psychedelic experience of a fever dream. Cinematographer Aiace Parolin creates both cinematic and graphic panels using visual techniques (inspired by fumetti), with the duration of the shots and the scenes and the progression of action emphasizing how they both manipulate time. Included are additional scenes edited by Giulio Berruti.
This compositional choice used to control the tempo of the storytelling focuses on the effect of smaller comic book-like tiles as blended photographic black & white stills to recreate Crepax’s stark line drawings.
With Baba Yaga's graphic novel format"”static B&W visuals"”the story unfolds across a series of illustrated frames alternating with live color filming"”both are merely a collection of "˜still' images. In Baba Yaga, this device is repeated, particularly in Valentina’s flashbacks, creating a motif that mirrors the structure of comic book panels and offers insights into Valentina’s psyche. It is the progressive influence of her dream world that acts as the catalyst for Valentina to become more aware of her sexuality.
Baba Yaga is a peculiar kinky odyssey into the depths of the male-informed feminine subconscious, filled with mystical imagery and uncanny scenarios and landscapes.
In this mosaic of scenes, reality shifts into bizarre comic strip fantasies. From a surreal Nazi trial – in a Rollinesque scene where Valentina is suddenly part of a firing squad that is shooting one of Valentine's naked models on a desolate beach-scape. There's also a surreal boxing match and a truly irreverent soap powder commercial that is downright offensive.
There are perilously fragmented spaces, transitioning from vibrant primary colors reminiscent of the Giallo film aesthetics, characterized by intense and saturated hues, in creating provocative and risqué set pieces. These are pooled together with elements drawn from the comic book art and fumetti, known for their graphic storytelling style – happening In the blink of an eye under the spell of Baba Yaga’s magic and Valentina's fever dreams.
In the mesmerizing realm of nightmares, Carroll Baker embodies the seductive attracting force of Baba Yaga, wrapping her devilish charms around Isabelle De Fun̬s as Valentina Rosselli Рexploiting her hidden vulnerabilities. With a tantalizing performance, Baker weaves a web of sensuality that draws the character of Valentina into a world where reality and illusion intertwine. The costumes and wardrobe by Nadia Fabriani and make-up designed by Oretta Melaranei add to the chic look of the characters.
Crepax’s beloved Valentina was inspired and fashioned after the silent film vamp Louise Brooks. While director Farina tries to translate Crepax's style as closely as possible, with Valentina's strange dream sequences that mark the transition from one day to the next, some aren't happy with his casting choice. Initially, Farina had someone like Elsa Martinelli in mind for Valentina, but he was never able to contact the actress.
Publicity portrait of American actress Louise Brooks (1906 – 1985) in the film ‘Now We’re in the Air’ (directed by Frank Strayer), 1927. (Photo by John Kisch Archive/Getty Images).
Actress/fashion model Isabelle De Fun̬s Рwide-eyed and crowned by a French New Wave bob is beguiling as the persecuted heroine hunted by the ravenous witch who seeks to seduce, dominate, and consume her.
Amidst this surreal canvas of Baba Yaga emerges a glimpse of intimate delights. The golden hair of Carroll Baker as the infamous Baba Yaga and the luscious obsidian locks of Isabelle De Funès as the desired Valentina. Their presence injects a palpable thrill into the spectacle of modern Gothic pageantry.
Isabelle De Funès captivates as Valentina, the left-wing photographer whose confrontation with Baba Yaga sparks a feverish curiosity within her character. Despite the perilous stakes, Valentina finds herself irresistibly drawn to Baba Yaga’s enchanting games, becoming her unwitting pawn in a spellbinding dance of danger and desire.
Some critics feel that De Funès’s characterization of Valentina is too wooden and planted too rigidly in reality. They say she is not as lithe as Crepax's heroine, who was able to drift more fluidly between her waking reality and the dreamlike world"”a force that exists outside herself. I had no problem with De Funès; however, I am not a follower of Crepax's comic book heroine, so I'm not informed enough to make that judgment.
Isabelle De Funès
There are a few interesting cameos by singer Franco Battiato as the creepy religious Man in white at the cemetery and Valentina creator Guido Crepax himself as the driver of the white car as well as director Corrado Farina as the Nazi with the white Persian cat. Rounding out the cast is Angela Covello (So Sweet. So Dead 1972, Torso 1973) as Toni and Daniela Balzaretti as Rowena.
Baby Yaga features Italian co-star George Eastman (who also went by the name Luigi Montefiori) playing Valentina's boyfriend, the struggling commercial film director Arno Treves. EuroTrash regular Eastman (The Unholy Four, The New Barbarians) is known for his role in the gruesome Anthropophagus, aka The Grim Reaper 1980, featuring a scene where he eats his own intestines!
George Eastman enters the screen at a trendy party in his flamboyant 70s shirt and fabulous coat as Arno Treves, adding a splash of slick sex appeal to the mix.
George Eastman in The Grim Reaper (1980).
Amidst the more despairingly seedy sections or the opulent backdrop of Milan’s fashion scene, the most alluring models find themselves ensnared in a harrowing descent into a world of forbidden desires and macabre sadism.
Are these depraved acts and carnal crimes the manifestations of a woman’s darkest fantasies or the sinister machinations of the accursed Baba Yaga, wielding her devilish, depraved magic upon unsuspecting souls?
Valentina's cursed camera manifests a destructive force aimed at anything that moves. In essence, to end the fluidity of life. The camera now captures images that bend toward its will. As a photographer, Valentina herself, with her artist’s eye/camera, unwittingly uses it as a weapon that freezes or "˜ends' moments in time, capturing them frame by frame. She imbues the images – within her own reality – creating a "˜still life.' Ultimately, all the victims die.
Baba Yaga’s relentless pursuit of Valentina’s body (and her essence) diverges with Valentina’s playful unraveling of her lover Arno’s (George Eastman) desires, forming a mesmerizing dance of contrasting energies between the heroines, both protagonist and antagonist. Despite her gentler facade, Valentina’s manipulation is just as potent. Though Valentina seemingly acquiesces or gives way to Baba Yaga's entrapment or stratagem, this doesn't necessarily prove that Baba Yaga – as the beast of prey is the one with all the power – the triumphant one.
After this serendipitous encounter with Baba Yaga, the captivating faded society doyenne, Valentina's life spirals into a world of uncanny occurrences. Baba Yaga, drawn to Valentina, intertwines herself into the provocative photographer’s world in strange ways, fostering a fixation that transcends mere friendship, calling forth supernatural torture. It is up to Valentina to resist Baba Yaga's physical and psychic torments.
To get into the 70s mood, the groovy soundtrack by Piero Umiliani opens over the B&W illustrations and credits with a progressive bass groove. Later, there are threads of a sparse yet mysterious piano melody. Umiliani delivers a richly diverse musical score that encompasses three distinct styles: a funky disco mood during scenes involving fashion shoots, haunting melodies surrounding interludes with Baba Yaga – including the deeply unsettling nightmare sequences. Then, jazzier progressions punctuate the surreal moments in the film. Umiliani is renowned for his creation of “Mah Na Mah Na,” famously covered by The Muppets!
The versatility of Umiliani to create music that is beautifully evocative – only to go off the rails with the completely delightfully whimsical sound that found its perfect expression in his work with the Muppets. With their boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm, Henson’s beloved characters, playful, joyful, and downright mischievous, provided the perfect canvas for Umiliani’s musical shenanigans.
While an original soundtrack for Baba Yaga remains elusive, the mesmerizing theme song on Umiliani’s 1971 lounge album, To-Day’s Sound, serves as an irresistible invitation into his musical world.
ABOUT CARROLL BAKER :
"Life seems to be a never-ending series of survivals, doesn't it?"
The true Queen of this piece is, of course, Carroll Baker as Baba Yaga. After studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio and performing on Broadway during the captivating era of 1956-1958, Baker debuted in director George Steven's Giant in 1956. The stunning actress from The Actor’s Studio was chosen by Elia Kazan to play the lead – "˜Baby Doll Meighan' in Tennessee William's 1956 adaption to the film of his play Baby Doll.
This luminous American actress achieved a resounding triumph with Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956) following her roles in Westerns. Her performances in culturally and visually significant films, such as writer Edna Ferber's epic story Giant 1956 and director John Ford’s How the West Was Won, further solidified her acclaim.
Yet Carroll Baker chose to vanish from the silver screen, a deliberate act of defiance against Warner Bros’ relentless pursuit to exploit her captivating allure. She immortalized her screen presence in Baby Doll, breathing life into the postwar enchantress, The Nymphet.
Baby Doll stands as a quintessential portrayal of a provocative character in cinematic history. Conceived by the masterful collaboration of Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, this iconic incarnation of the complexities and sexual awakening of a nymphette initially lured Carroll Baker. Yet, she subsequently resisted similar roles out of a spirited fear of being typecast.
Carroll Baker takes shots for the premiere of Baby Doll in Sweden.
Instead of gracing the set of God’s Little Acre, she opted for a hiatus. However, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, she resurfaced in grandeur, appearing in blockbusters such as The Big Country in 1958, sharing the screen with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, and then in the epic saga How The West Was Won in 1962 where she held her own opposite the legendary James Stewart.
Baker’s career shifted as she moved between larger commercial films and smaller, well-received B&W independent productions. Notable examples include her roles in Bridge to the Sun and her incredibly powerful performance in director/husband Jack Garfein's Something Wild in 1961, a film that dealt with a raw authenticity – Baker's brutal rape.
Something Wild tells the story of Baker as a young woman following a brutal rape and attempts suicide only to be rescued and held captive by a gruff mechanic named Jack (Ralph Meeker), who watches over her in his squalid basement tenement apartment in Manhattan"”As he offers her a safe haven, she begins to find solace in Jack's simple kindness and the two begin to navigate their individual challenges as an unlikely bond begins to form.
Naturally, the subject matter stirred up controversy amongst reviewers, but since – the film has been critically reexamined as one of the groundbreaking independent pictures of the early 1960s that ran alongside similar gritty realist American films featuring the work of maverick directors like Garfein and Robert Rossen whose The Hustler 1961 dealt with suicide and rape and the unorthodox Frank Perry's whose David and Lisa 1962 dealt with mental illness.
In 1963, she inked a contract with Paramount Studios, stepping into roles initially intended for Paramount starlet Stella Stevens in films like Harlow, The Carpetbaggers, and Sylvia. None of these films received critical acclaim and were considered disappointedly trashy.
In her autobiography “Baby Doll,” Baker reflects on a turning point when she accepted roles in glitzy, superficial melodramas at the behest of producer Joseph E. Levine. The studio believed Baker to be a serious actress capable of more dramatic roles and equally charismatic.
But films like Harlow, The Carpetbaggers, and the dreadful neo-noir Sylvia in 1965 marked this phase of her downfall. Her increasingly stagy performances in these films led to declining opportunities for more serious roles in Hollywood.
Carroll Baker would eventually appear in lurid low-budgeters and exploitation films in the 1960s and 70s. Baker would wind up making a break for it and relocating to Italy, where she starred in numerous risqué sexploitation films that were being mass-produced at that time. Even Baker admits upon reflection that all these sleazy projects seem to run into each other after a while, the titles and plots seemingly interchangeable.
L’actrice américaine Carroll Baker à Rome, Italie. (Photo by KEYSTONE-FRANCE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images) shoot for Orgasmo, aka Paranoia 1969.
Giallo and softcore films, including A Quiet Place to Kill, So Sweet So Perverse aka Paranoia 1969, “L’harem,” “The Sweet Body of Deborah,” “Orgasmo," “Paranoia,” “The Devil with Seven Faces,” “Knife of Ice,” “Death at the Deep End of the Swimming Pool,” “Il Corpo,” “The Private Lesson,” “The Virgin Wife and Bad.
Erika Blanc and Carroll Baker in So Sweet… So Perverse 1969.
Carroll Baker, Collette Descombes and Lou Castel in Lenzi’s Paranoia 1969.
Three of the most notable of these genre flicks of Carroll Baker's are The Sweet Body of Deborah, Paranoia, and A Quiet Place to Kill – roles which showed her in various stages of bondage and undress.
Not only a Giallo Scream Queen, she eventually became known as a Queen of Camp, appearing in the odd auteur Andy Warhol's Bad in 1977, a film where Carroll Baker burlesques Gloria Swanson's immortal Norma Desmond from Billy Wilder’s classic Hollywood noir – Sunset Boulevard (1950).
However, her more serious dramatic acting style would come full circle for Baker when she inhabited the role of Annie Phelan in Hector Babanco's Ironweed in 1987.
For the role of Baba Yaga, Farina had envisioned someone androgynous like singer Ornella Vanoni, and actress Anne Heywood had come the closest. Heywood had starred in the Italian exploitation The Nun and the Devil, aka The Nuns of Sant’ Archangelo (1973).
Anne Heywood was originally cast as Baba Yaga but withdrew before filming and was successfully fined by the studio. Baker was a last-minute replacement, according to director Farina. Three days before shooting began, the British actress Heywood left to star in the Rod Taylor adventure film Trader Horn (1973). Baker was in Italy working on the Giallo thriller The Flower With Petals of Steel (1973).
Farina voiced his dissatisfaction with Carroll Baker’s casting, asserting that she didn’t fit the physical mold of Baba Yaga, who in the original comic strip was portrayed as possessing an androgynous and unconventional beauty. But Baker, known for her daring film choices in the ’60s and ’70s, often ventured into offbeat cinematic territory. Apart from casting Delphine Seyrig, Carroll Baker was the perfect choice as she embraced the role with a hypnotic grace.
The lost scene with Carroll Baker’s full frontal nudity.
Infamously, for the film Baba Yaga, Carroll Baker appeared in a scene completely nude, a moment, unfortunately, hacked out by censors and absent from the restored version on this Blu-ray; however, it can be found among the bonus features. Similarly, the film’s only other instance of full frontal nudity, courtesy of Isabelle De Funès, suffered the same fate at the hands of censors but is also included in the extras.
It was a bold move for a mainstream Hollywood actress in 1973. Farina, an authoritative source from the Blu-ray extras, adamantly asserts that the scene was not scripted but rather conceived entirely by Baker herself.
The Plot :
Baby Yaga is set in the mod and fashionable landscape of Milan, where the slinky, flirtatious, and intellectual Valentina (the sensual De Fun̬s) wages her playful allure while achieving success as a highly spirited Marxist fashion photographer with a flair for the provocative and controversial photoshoots Рsemi-nude layouts Рshot in her hiply decorated flat.
Valentina loves to shoot semi-nude layouts in her flat. Valentina remarks to Arno when asked about influential French New Wave auteur Jean Luc Godard; she tells him, "His last great film was Pierrot le Fou (1965) and that she'd Rather watch something from Laurel & Hardy. You can expect a laugh."
Meanwhile, her pseudo-boyfriend, the suave director Arno (George Eastman), who deplores the violence by the rebel forces wishing to destabilize the government, dances on the precipice of desire, yearning to get into Valentina's bed, but the honor temporarily eludes him. He tries to persuade her that it's 3 am, the foggiest time of the night. Valentina – "Fog turns me on, ok." Arno –"Is that the only thing that turns you on?" Valentina – "I better go with you; you shouldn't be alone at night." Valentina –"Listen Arno. I don't feel like making love with you"¦. (Pause) Tonight."
His longing is palpable, his attempts to seduce Valentina a blend of earnestness and uncertainty, as he laments that he may never have Valentina as his lover, "I don't know if I'll ever be ready for that chick.”
In the original comics, Valentina’s romantic counterpart was the superhero Neutron. However, Farina opted against incorporating Neutron into the film, deeming him too complex for the narrative."¨Instead, he introduced the character of Arno from another work by Crepax; here, he is a director of commercials.
OK, VALENTINA’S JOURNEY BEGINS"¦
Cartoon artist Crepax in a cameo role. Seen at the party and who drops Valentina off with Arno in his white sports car.
On a moonlit night, amidst the lingering echoes of a swinging party teeming with bohemian Eurotrash, waves of alcohol and appetizers, bare-breasted femmes, artsy types, intellectuals, and old lechers spouting lines like "The path of the moon will be my cloak," the captivating fashion photographer Valentina Roselli (Isabelle De Funès) and Arno Treves (George Eastman) leave the party along with Crepax in a cameo role who is driving his little white sports car, Arno desperately wants to bed Valentina. Amidst the darkly lit backdrop of Milan, every cobblestone holds a tale; the dance between Valentina and Arno unfolds with his avid sexual attraction to her.
Valentina insists on being dropped off and walking the rest of the way home after riding with the two men.
On her way to her flat, swaying in her long fur coat like a blackbird hovering along the wet, darkened street, Valentina finds a little dog lying within a circle of burning candles in the dead of night. The dog must suddenly be rescued from an approaching luxury car. Valentina teeters perilously close to the sleek, menacing tires. Grabbing the dog, she stumbles onto the pavement, stunned by the near impact.
Behind the wheel sits a figure cloaked in mystery, oversized black hat brimmed with a veil, black fur coat, and buttoned-up boots; the driver steps out of the car as the piano flourishes, creating the motif that will become Baba Yaga's melody. With calculated movement, Baba Yaga approaches Valentina. Even with her pallid, almost colorless complexion, Baba Yaga is either a glamorous blonde or a ghastly testament to unseen torments that await Valentina.
It is the enigmatic Hollywood sex symbol turned cult icon -Carroll Baker – filmed in yellow pancake makeup and tattered remnants of bourgeois hair.
After nearly colliding with Valentina and the dog while driving her elegant antique Rolls Royce, this mysterious woman, with a coy trace of guilt lingering from the near-crash, insists with clandestine arrogance and a low, growling, forceful yet sultry tone on driving Valentina home.
Baba Yaga exits the Rolls, "I'm very distressed." Valentina, " It's alright." Baba Yaga, "I don't understand what happened." Valentina, "It's nothing. It's my fault, really; I saw this dog in the middle of the street." Baba Yaga, "Get in the car. I'll drive you home." Valentina assures Baba Yaga that she lives close by. Baba Yaga, "Please, it's the least I can do after the shock I've given you. I won't take no for an answer."
Valentina studies the woman driving until Baba Yaga breaks the silence, "It wasn't the dog." Valentina asks, "What did you say?" Baba Yaga, "I was driving too fast. I had to. I knew something was about to happen. Our meeting was preordained."
Baba Yaga pulls up to Valentina's apartment. Valentina, "How did you know this is where I live?" Baba Yaga, "There are many things that you'll want to know, my dear. But not now. Perhaps I'll be able to explain them to you later, but first, I must be sure."
Baba Yaga, "Allow me." She grabs Valentina's thigh. Valentina struggles. Baba Yaga nicks a clip from the top of Valentina's stockings. Baba Yaga, "Ooh, I apologize but I need a personal object of yours. Be assured, and I'll return it to you tomorrow." She tastes the clip, just slightly tasting it with her tongue, and caresses her lips with it suggestively. Later, she will also fondle Valentina's camera.
Baba Yaga who possesses an insatiable thirst for both carnal delights and unfathomable torment, in the instant her gaze meets Valentina’s, a twisted infatuation blooms. Baby Yaga has warned Valentina that fate has brought them together.
As Valentina exits her car, the mysterious woman insists, "Goodnight, my dear. And don't forget my name. My name is "” Baba Yaga!"
From their first encounter, Baba Yaga’s intentions are as clear as daylight, pushing out the story’s darkness. She sets her sights on Valentina, determined to claim the beautiful, subdued photographer as her own, even if it's seemingly against Valentina's will.
Baba’s conquest of Valentina might be an allegory for her potential liberation from sexual constraint. Right from the beginning, Valentina asserts her independence by turning down Arno's offer to take her home and rebuffing his overtures to come up to her apartment.
The intensity of Baba Yaga's desire and the notion of an otherworldly stranger, particularly one as enigmatic as Carroll Baker, materializing out of thin air to declare ownership is simultaneously startling, chilling, yet dangerously seductive to Valentina who is increasingly drawing herself into Baba Yaga's world.
Later that night, under Baba Yaga's spell, Valentina experiences sexually disturbing and distorted hallucinations, a series of erotic and violent dreams flanked by a pair of female Nazi soldiers and being stripped naked in front of a Nazi general with a white Persian cat; she is pushed into the depths of a black abyss.
Corrado Farino openly admits his cameo is a way of paying homage to Hitchcock!
One of Valentina's regular models, Tina, comes to her flat for a photo shoot. While Valentina looks into the mirror, she sees a series of muted black & white frames – of the Nazi general and falling into the bottomless black hole. She doesn't say anything to Tina but begins to take a series of exotic photos until the buzzer alerts her that someone is at the door. A sudden chill, a deep swallow, somehow Valentina knows Baba Yaga has arrived.
Baba Yaga has come to return the garter clip as promised. She enters the apartment and begins to take it all in, also quietly acknowledging Tina, whose breasts are exposed, as she gets dressed to leave."Well, my dear, I've come to return this delightful little object"”that which I took from you." Once again, she takes the clip and flirts with it as she teases it to her open mouth.
Baba Yaga caresses Valentina's face and then suggests, as she kneels, "May I put it back?" Baba begins to try to place the clip on her thigh, but her advances are repelled. Valentina scolds, "Stop it! You can't do it. (She hesitates.) I'm not wearing the belt now." Baba Yaga looks up at her seductively and says, "Oh, that is a pity."
Baba Yaga stands up and, dressed in all black, walks in front of Valentina's white photography screen; the contrast is notable. Against the stark white background, Baba Yaga appears like a dark, shrieking bird of prey.
Valentina asks, "Last night, you said our meeting was preordained. Preordained by whom?" Baba Yaga replies, "There are forces that control our actions and our feelings." Valentina asks her to clarify, "What forces?" Baba Yaga, "It is too soon, Valentina, tis too soon." Baba Yaga walks over to Valentina's camera. " Ah, do you always work with this?” She tells her, "Well, yes. It just depends on the kind of shot I'm after."
Baba Yaga begins to run her hands over the camera. There is a background sound"”an electronic swirling of an oscillator. The witch begins to take control of the object. She whispers, "That's the eye"”the eye that freezes reality."
As she holds up Valentina's camera, her long pale fingers, like icy tendrils, clutch the camera. Infatuated by this beautiful young woman and unwilling to be rejected by her, Baba Yaga conjures a spell that transforms Valentina's favorite camera into a supernatural weapon, causing terrible things to plague anyone it photographs. Thereafter, bizarre things begin to happen, casting the young photographer into a labyrinth of nightmares with no discernible escape from this macabre dance.
She gives Valentina her home address and leaves after insisting that Valentina come to her "˜old' house. Later, as Valentina tentatively picks up a few of her books, including works by the Marquis de Sade, she can't get Baba Yaga’s image out of her head.
Valentina begins to have flashes of Baba Yaga's visit, particularly her fixation on the camera."¨Soon, she discovers that she might unknowingly be causing harm to those close to her as she becomes entangled in a destiny that links her inexorably to the mysterious blonde enchantress. Though Baba Yaga claims their meeting was destined to happen, there is no unshakable truth that they are fated to be together in the end. There is no poetic symmetry between the heroine and anti-heroine; in the end, one of them must be swallowed by the abyss.
Arno calls Valentina from a bar and says she should meet him while he shoots his commercial; she meets him in a desolate part of Milan as he sloshes through a mucky alleyway to retrieve a dead rat for a photo shoot. As Valentina begins to snap pictures of Arno's photo session, he has technical issues with his equipment.
This is the first sign of trouble"”as soon as Valentina clicks a shot of Arno laboring away, his movie camera seizes as if struck by a technical flu the moment she presses the shutter button. Valentina suddenly has a flashback of Baba Yaga.
Arno astutely discovers that Valentina is a contradiction, and so, as he predicts, Valentina embraces the idea of them making love. But as the two park her little red sports car in front of the building and run up to her flat, to the bottom left corner of the screen, Baba Yaga's car lurks while her signature piano melody describes her lustful countdown.
As the couple begins their seduction, Baba Yaga watches from her Rolls. Valentina and Arno drink wine and look through a book of violent erotic comics. The two make love, their bodies entwined in color and then interspersed with B&W panels of their lovemaking. They have become eroticized illustrations laid over fluid, dissonant jazz.
In the next scene, while lying in bed asleep, Toni slips into the apartment wearing a cowboy hat and a vest that bares her breasts. She points a pistol at the couple, which startles Arno. Toni is there for her photo shoot. She mentions Baba Yaga's visit yesterday and says, "Well, didn't you notice Val? She's madly in love with you."
Valentina grabs her cursed camera and begins to photograph Toni. As Valentina aims her camera, Toni suddenly collapses.
Arno calls for a taxi and takes Toni with him. Once they leave, Valentina reflects on what has just happened. She looks over at her camera. She puts the bewitched camera in a gorgeous worn-in brown leather case and her leather bag and heads out to Baba Yaga's house.
Enticed by her new admirer’s invitation to photograph the old house where she resides, Valentina embarks on a journey that leads her to encounter even more truly bizarre circumstances.
Accompanied by discordant harpsichord and dramatic piano refrains, Valentina walks outside Baba Yaga's ancient house with its decrepit facade of collapse. The house is surrounded by a fence and gate that has seen better days.
Once inside, Valentina stares upward and around the eerie quietude of the inner space, with its ticking clock and swathed in crimson velvet curtains, large wooden staircase, and the pale luminescence that incandesces behind the green stained glass.
In a twisted tapestry of darkness, the "˜devil witch' Baba Yaga ensnares Valentina inside the ancient walls where she dwells within this Gothic Revival mansion, though fallen into disrepair – dark and oppressive – its halls adorned with cascades of satin and crimson velvet weighing heavily upon the senses.
The parlor is a shadowy, oppressive room cluttered with various old velvet furniture, with a small monkey in a cage. Baba Yaga sits with her back turned to Valentina, looking pale and almost ghostly. Her hair and eyebrows were slightly whitened, not blonde, and she was of weary age. She is rocking in a chair, caressing a white Persian cat. She greets Valentina, pleased that she has come. Valentina inspects a tangle of old necklaces and gives them to Baba Yaga, who takes hold of her hand and strokes it slowly. Valentina starts to pull away but allows herself to linger. "Oh, they are lovely to touch but even lovelier to hear." Baba Yaga tells her there are more interesting things to photograph in other parts of the house.
Valentina wanders and comes upon the memorabilia cluttering up Baba Yaga’s house, stumbling upon a surreal menagerie of oddities. Baba Yaga gathers odd treasures and trophies – a house filled with a collection of creepy taxidermy and macabre cursed curios. Baba Yaga sits at a table with curious little carved wooden symbols that she moves around like runes; their meaning is esoteric and never explained.
Valentina begins taking shots of the odd antiques in the parlor and old relics that are not seemingly worth anything. The photographer that she is wraps the necklaces around a taxidermy hawk. Amidst the clutter, there is a Nazi helmet.
As if the oppressive oxygen inside the house weren’t curious enough, serpent-like whips coil around rusty sewing machines. Valentina discovers an unsettling feature: a sinister bottomless abyss.
Valentina trips on something while wandering through another room. She discovers an odd bowing underneath the rug, and as she pulls it away from the floor, it exposes a gaping black hole. Baba Yaga continues staring into space, rocking in her chair, but is completely aware of what Valentina has found. Under Umiliani’s straining, increasing assaultive electronica, Valentina nearly tumbles into the black void before grasping what’s happening. A black hole of nothingness is hidden beneath the rug"”the hole that leads to hell.
Unnerved yet intrigued, Valentina tests the abyss. When she drops an empty film canister into the hole to gauge its depth, she is met with an eerie silence as the canister seemingly never reaches the bottom. The canister’s descent seems endless, and the telltale sound of it coming to a stop is not heard.
Now, up in the attic, far from housing typical bric-a-brac, boasts an arsenal of implements. A collection of whips, shackles, and knee-high patent leather boots. That's not as surprising as the porcelain doll dressed in a miniature studded leather bondage harness.
Venturing into the depths of Baba Yaga’s menacing house, Valentina aims her lens towards the dusty random items. Yet, as her gaze wanders, she finds herself caught in the embrace of the house itself. Its weathered walls echo the weariness of time, mirroring the true essence of the haggard inner visage of its mistress, Baba Yaga. There certainly is a trace of the tired tracks of time peaking through her reserved exterior.
Exploring the attic, she begins to shoot film of the odd dusty typewriters, bottles, Singer sewing machine, chains, high-button shoes, an old iron bed frame, a sharped steel gauntlet with fingers like steel knives, and shackles. Then she sees a curious doll.
Valentina takes some photos of the doll. She is strangely drawn to her. Then she picks up a delicate leather glove and holds it to her cheek before she tries it on. Set to jazz, this new feeling of sensual euphoria washes over her as she lies down on the iron bed. Wearing the glove, she begins to caress her body masturbatory – once again interweaved with the muted B&W panels of her almost illustration-like, while Annette doll looks on. Perhaps Annette is in control. Black and white frames of Valentina's naked breast with a viper coiled around it.
Valentina brings herself to climax just before Baba Yaga calls out her name and breaks the haze of her sexual pleasure. She tells Valentina that her visit has given her pleasure. In fact, she has something to give her. "Here, this is Annette. You must always have her with you. She will protect you from any harm." Valentina gets defensive, "What do you mean? There's nothing threatening me." "You never know, my dear. You never know."
With this unsettling encounter, Valentina soon begins to realize what she has risked in accepting Baba Yaga’s gift: a mysterious companion, Annette, the Bondage doll.
Annette, a realistically rendered Victorian doll dressed as a mistress of bondage, is veiled in an enigma. Baba suggests that it will "˜protect' her and that she should always keep her close. Valentina accepts the doll as a gift with deadly consequences.
The doll will turn into Ely Galleano who appeared Lucio Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin 1971 and the Italian poliziotteschi High Crime 1973 aka La polizia incrimina la legge assolve starring Franco Nero. Ely Galleani, an Italian actress and Playboy centerfold, has no dialogue in Baba Yaga but contributes to the sense of murderous eroticism when wielding her whip in the S&M torture dungeon."¨ Emanuelle in Bankok 1976.
Ely Galleano in the Italian crime thriller High Crime (1973).
With its ominous implications, this eerie doll portends a fate far more threatening than its promise of protection. Baba Yaga's gesture lacks innocence.
Next, one of the truly eerie whispers that brushes against the screen happens while Valentina is developing the film from her unlucky camera taken within the walls of Baba Yaga's house.
Strangely, not one trace of the old possessions taking up space in the attic"”no high-buttoned fetish boots, whips, or chains"”manifests itself in the emerging images on film. Even more baffling, Annette, the Bondage Doll, appears in a conventional dress devoid of anything sinister. Dressed in white, she is now a quaint porcelain doll. This starkly contradicts the odd and forbidding atmosphere Valentine encountered up in the attic.
                                                                                                                                                      In the next scene, men in riot gear and protestors demonstrate in the streets. Valentina shows up to photograph the protest. The camera cuts away to Baba Yaga purposefully moving around her little wooden symbols as if she has control over the cause and effect of the events that will take place. Valentina, while documenting the street protest at the grand steps of a downtown cathedral, is jolted by the shock of one of the protesters named Carlo, who collapses lifeless at the exact moment Valentina snaps his picture. As she aims her camera at him, he falls to the ground as if shot with bullets. We see Baba Yaga's hand in one interspersed frame, each finger banded with an ornate ring.
Valentina keeps reliving that horrible scene while in bed. She has a vision of a grotesque figure in a white robe in a cemetery, the Nazi general, Carlo, the man who died, a female Nazi guard, and of course, Baba Yaga. All are now inside a boxing ring. From above, Valentina and the protester, Carlos, enter the middle of the ring. She punches him, and he falls down. Suddenly, Annette, as the doll, has snapped a photo of Valentina. When Baba Yaga approaches Valentina and places a kiss on her lips, Valentina awakens from her surreal dream.
But when she begins to get dressed, she sees the Annette doll sitting up in the chair, though she recalls having tossed her on the floor hours before.
Annette is inexplicably appearing in locations she distinctly recalls not placing it. Finally, Valentina will have an undeniable revelation as she faces the unsettling truth – Annette possesses a life of her own.
Annette’s eerie presence is matched only by her lethal weaponry; along with Valentina’s cursed camera that Baba Yaga calls “the eye that freezes reality," the sting from Annette's hairpin is fatal. While her deadly deeds are committed, Annette undergoes a chilling metamorphosis, shedding her doll-like form to emerge as a sensuous maiden attired in leather bondage wear that showcases her bare-breasted vigor.
She picks up a pair of scissors, contemplating stabbing the doll, but the phone rings. Baba Yaga hangs up. This call has broken Valentina's momentary instinct to destroy the doll and prevents Valentina from hurting Annette.
Valentina goes back to see Baba Yaga. She walks in without knocking and goes to the parlor, looking for the mysterious woman. She picks up one of Baba Yaga's wooden ciphers and drops it back onto the table. Valentina looks around for a few moments. There is a B&W panel/still frame of Baba Yaga's face blended with a real-life color frame of Baba looking at one of the enchanted wooden pieces, and somehow – Valentina is gone. Baba Yaga rocks in her chair to her melody, conveying an air of longing. Valentina drives fast through the busy streets of Milan until she comes to a stop.
In the next scene, one of Valentina's regular male models shows up at Valentine's apartment to pose for some shots for an upcoming series. He instantly appears freaked out by the Annette doll sitting up in the chair – its lifeless eyes – watching him. Soon, Rowena (Daniela Balzaretti) shows up, and they are ready for the photo shoot. When Rowena goes to touch the doll, she says it is so pretty; he freaks out and tells her not to touch it. At this point, Valentina picks up another camera, deciding not to use the cursed one. She begins photographing the pair of models, playing "˜50s rock and roll music to underscore the shoot.
Like a few others, this scene is scattered with Baba Yaga's manipulation of her wooden pieces the entire time; the Annette doll is watching from her chair.
After the male model leaves (he has no credits I can find in the film), while Rowena begins to get dressed and Baba moves her pieces around, a sudden power outage plunges the room into darkness. Amidst the blackened silence, something sticks Rowena in the darkness, startling her with a sharp sting to her thigh.
Annette's killer instinct comes to life, and she stabs Rowena – piercing her with a poisoned hairpin.
When the lights flicker back to life, Rowena appears to have a sharp pain in her thigh. In a surreal tableau, the Annette doll is sprawled on the floor beside the model, clutching a slender hairpin with an air of eerie intent. Valentina's cursed camera is also on the floor.
After she dresses and leaves, Valentina calls Arno, but Baba Yaga picks up inextricably, and Valentina drops the phone.
Meanwhile, the cursed camera has mysteriously taken an entire film reel on its own. Valentina deliberately chose not to use the malevolent camera for fear of its sinister energy.
Overwhelmed by a sense of unease, Valentina hastily seeks out Arno, troubled about the series of eerie encounters plaguing her since the fateful night she crossed paths with Baba Yaga.
Arno is shooting an ad for a laundry detergent commercial in what appears to be an industrial yard. He has called Valentina from a local bar and suggests to come to meet him at the shoot.
Initially perplexing, the scene unfolds with startling racist undertones. The “hero” of the commercial, a white man clad in pristine white attire, triumphs over his adversary, a black male gangster who becomes enveloped in white powder. The commercial’s message, delivered by the victorious white figure, about a product eliminating grease, carries unsettling implications. This moment is fraught with cinematic racism and is undeniably jarring.
It comes across as a fantasy sequence. A man dressed in an all-white suit is pursuing a black man dressed in an all-black gangster suit, who is firing a gun back at the man in white as he tries to get away. Finally cornered, the man in white, a sardonic grin as he gloats, having vanquished his enemy, dumps a large bucket of white powder on him. The black man dressed in black dissolved away until he was barely an outline of ashes. At the end of the shoot, a naked model appears on the set of the soap ad. "Oh, fantastic. How did you do it, Captain White?"
Valentina shows up at the photo shoot, desperate to speak with Arno about the weird things happening.
Arno – "It all boils down to this mysterious lady who would like to introduce you to the delights of Sapphic love. So what? You give her a lovely curtsy, and you say many thanks, but I'd much rather make love with my friend Arno." Valentina – "You don't understand anything; there's something different about Baba Yaga. It's as if she came from some other world. A world subject to other forces. Her eyes are so strange."
She is now convinced that Baba Yaga is a witch and has cast a spell on her and her camera to possess her.
Arno –"The big world is filled with people with strange eyes." Valentina –" No, not like this. There's something else. I don't know what it is. I can't even imagine it. And that's what scares me. (She is trembling) For example. That hole in her living room doesn't just lead down to her basement; there's no end to it. Don't you see?" Arno looks at Valentina with an all too casual, cynical glance. Arno- " Haha, soon you'll be telling me that it's the pearly gates of Hell. And your Baba Yaga's the custodian witch." Valentina asks, " How do you know she isn't?" Arno –" Because it's mad, that's all! Because we're living in the 20th century, we're putting men on the moon and transplanting organs. Witches don't exist. Listen, you're a bit too naive. Hell, Val, if it's anything, it's the world we're living in. And if it did exist, I'll bet you, with all those souls, you can be certain that by now it certainly would have been turned into some kind of supermarket." Valentina -"If only I could"¦ but something happened today. When the lights went out. I don't know what, but there's something. Some detail that I can't pin down that would help me understand. Even if the idea scares me to death." "¨Arno –" Understand what Val? Now look, you meet an old lesbian, huh, and a friend of yours gets a headache, all of a sudden it's sorcery and witches." " She's pale. Her hands are icy. " " Listen, I have an old aunt in Trabecia who has two teeth like that (he points two fingers out like fangs), but that doesn't make her Dracula."
The couple go to the movies to see director Paul Wegener's 1920 version of THE GOLEM. The movie's haunting expressionist frames of the golem are invaded by stills of Baba Yaga, the cursed camera, and Annette, the doll. Valentina is disturbed by the images and rushes out of the theater. She argues with Arno about the cursed camera and takes him back to her place.
Arno suggests they develop the roll of film captured by her supposedly cursed camera. Despite the prevailing darkness enveloping the room during the supernatural happenings, Arno suggests that this ghostly reel may harbor images, though each frame should be a dark void.
In the darkroom, the film is not blank; instead, it shows Annette coming to life as she stabs the model with her hairpin.
He sees the Annette doll and laughs. They go into the darkroom to develop the film that mysteriously was shot when Valentina wasn't using it during the shoot where Rowena got pricked by the hairpin. Though impossible, appearing in the photographs is the living version of Annette dressed in the same bondage gear, holding the hairpin-like a knife. There are dozens of images of Annette stabbing Rowena. Now Arno believes her and quickly calls to check on Rowena. He finds out that she is dead.
Again we are visited by a fantasy sequence in a Rollinesque beachscape where Valentine is now a Nazi guard tying a blindfold around Rowena's eyes. The scene was filmed using very blown-out lighting. Sitting in a Rattan woven peacock chair, Baba watches from the sidelines. The firing squad shoots the naked Rowena as she walks into the ocean. Then Valentina hallucinates that she is back in her apartment wearing the Nazi uniform, holding first a gun and then the hairpin with Rowena's blood on it.
And Annette comes to life. Annette, dressed in her leather bondage gear, grabs the camera and walks out of the apartment with it. Valentine looks on bewildered as she leaves. Baba Yaga calls, telling her she now has the camera at her house. This wasn't a hallucination. Valentina didn't imagine the Annette doll coming to life and taking the camera. As she looked, she found the camera case was empty.
Soon afterward, Valentina gets yet another call. Summoned by the call of Baba Yaga, Valentina confronts the witch, accusing her of wielding black magic, weaving dark spells, and committing gruesome crimes.
With the mere touch of her ethereal hands, hands with white nails like claws, not only has she cursed Valentina's camera – Baba Yaga weaves a spell over the bewitched beauty, plunging her into a maze of seduction and unspeakable cruelty.
Yet, Baba Yaga explains that she herself is the victim and conduit of arcane powers beyond her control from which she cannot escape. Baba Yaga demands Valentina's absolute psychic and sexual submission.
Baba Yaga shows Valentina her camera is on the table –" Your camera." Valentina –" Why did you kill that boy, and why did you kill Rowena?" Baba Yaga asks, " I?" Valentina –" I was not responsible for it."
Baba Yaga –" That is meaningless, my dear. There are forces that can strike out at any moment. These forces make use of us. It’s useless to oppose them.'' Valentina –"˜' I will oppose them."˜' "˜' You're very presumptuous. Then, all you people are. You think you hold the moon in the palm of your hand, but you don't even know the secrets of your own earth. You will come with me, Valentina. And you will know the secrets that men have been trying in vain for centuries to know. You will be rich and powerful. You belong to me, Valentina. So don't you forget it. I've already demonstrated that I can do with you as I like.” (Baba Yaga caresses Valentina’s cheek and slowly reaches her breasts with her long, wandering fingers; Valentina smacks her hand away. " No! I couldn't care less about power and riches and your cosmic secrets! And don't try to tell me who to make love with. Because no man has ever done that. Let alone a woman." Baba Yaga – " What you want is of no importance. You'll come with me whether you like it or not. Now go upstairs to the bedroom and wait til you're summoned."
And so Valentina puts her head down"¦ and goes"¦ and waits.
Arno goes to Valentina’s apartment. He sees Baba's address written on the pad and races off to find her."¨Valentina is crouched down in the dark while the clock ticks away. Suddenly, Annette opens the door to the room, standing there with a candelabra; she leads Valentina to the attic room.
Annette now completes her transformation as the living, breathing dominatrix strips Valentina naked, binds her, shackles her ankles, and proceeds to whip her while voyeur Baba Yaga watches lustfully.
As Valentina is on the brink of becoming yet another victim of Baba Yaga's perverse power and Annette's lesbian-sadistic rapture – Arno's rescue is in the works.
Arno arrives at Baba Yaga's house but is locked out of the chained gate. In the pouring rain, he looks up at the rooftop and sees Annette – a flash of her standing triumphant in washes of a blue rainy light, looking down on him – and then she is gone. He climbs the gate, and we find Valentina crouched in the dark once again. Has she ever left that room? Has any of the bondage fantasy ever really happened, or is it Valentina's wish fulfillment?
Naked in the dark, the clock ticking like a tinny heartbeat against the thunder, Valentina stands up and realizes her back aches from wounds. A flashback shows that Annette is whipping her.
As he lifts a heavy, club-like branch, Arno breaks the door down. The lighting floods the space with a blue glare. He's in the house now and is startled.
There is a serpent coiling itself through the darkness. He finds Valentina's camera on the table. He knocks over the cage, and the monkey is set free. There is also a cage with a large bat. Arno stands on the staircase as Annette approaches from behind with her hairpin ready to stab him until Valentina screams. Arno grabs the heavy branch-like club and hits Annette over the head until she crumbles into pieces – Annette as a broken doll.
Baba Yaga clutches Annette to her with her claw-like hands and lets out anguished cries, calling out Annette's name. She slowly moves towards Arno, who is frightened as the witch rises up to avenge her beloved Annette's murder. However, Valentine sees the hairpin on the floor and runs between Baba Yaga and Arno.
Valentina moves toward Baba Yaga, who backs up and begs her to stop. Then, the two women struggle. Valentina pushes her, and she tumbles backward into the black pit.
Baba Yaga is consumed by the gaping maw, the mysterious hole in the floor, and descends into the abyss of hell.
Much like its comic book origins, this film unfolds as a surreal dreamscape, awash with splashes of lesbian sadomasochism rather than a conventional narrative. Yet, within its bizarre tapestry lies an undeniable charm, drawing audiences into its twisted allure.
Image courtesy of Goregirl’s Dungeon.
Baba’s conquest of Valentina might be an allegory for her potential liberation from constraint. Right from the beginning, Valentina initially asserts her independence turning down Arno's first offer to take her home, gently rebuffing his overtures to come up to her apartment. Eventually, Valentina embraces Arno as her lover when the lure of Baba Yaga's lesbian overtures frightens her.
We’re left to wonder about the lingering impressions of these erotic fantasies thrust upon Valentina. Baba Yaga offers a set of bizarre phantasmagoria that fuses sex and violence. On the screen, we are overwhelmed by an abundance of soft nudity, though we only get a solitary glimpse of complete frontal exposure.
The film also offers subjects of thought – wired with the offensive Nazi tropes (in one of Valentina's dreamscapes – a Nazi officer flanked by two female Nazi soldiers drags a half-naked Valentina, who is then dropped into the bottomless pit. We will later encounter the pit in Baba Yaga's house.
Baba Yaga has a structured plot filled with darkly imagined iconography"”the enchanted camera "¨that kills and its destructive force, the cursed ritual object of the creepy porcelain doll decked out in S&M-stitched leather straps, and the fanfare of photographed naked breasts in Valentine's studio. What is tangible throughout the film is the world of off-center sadomasochism and Sapphic revelry, such as the homo-erotically tinged boxing match.
Baba Yaga emerges from the pages of artist Crepax, whose creations are steeped in the depths of psychoanalytic exploration. Through a Freudian lens, concepts such as "˜queerness' libertinism, non-conformity, bondage, and sadomasochism, along with those who embrace them, are often labeled deviants.
Thus, Baba Yaga stands as an aberrant figure. Yet Valentina’s fascination with Baba Yaga mirrors this deviation, painting her character just as inexplicable.
We witness Valentina willingly, consciously, or unconsciously inhabiting a world where she is both a player and its creator.
From a Jungian perspective, the concept of this type of "˜neurosis' arises from the idea that the dominance of rational thought in modern society has left individuals vulnerable to the influence of the subconscious or unconscious mind, often referred to as the “psychic ‘underworld.’
This suggests that when rationality suppresses or ignores aspects of the psyche, such as dreams, symbols, and emotions, it can lead to inner conflict and psychological disturbances, contributing to neurotic tendencies.
Baba Yaga has either materialized from Valentina's dreams or emerged from the depths of the underworld and now desires to pull Valentina back down with her.
So Valentina awakes from the stirrings of her enigmatic reverie of literal bondage "”or was it more metaphorical and just a dream?
This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying, it’s been a stirring reverie at The Last Drive In. Hope you’ll materialize here again soon!
This is part of The 2nd Annual ‘Favorite Stars in B Movies’ Blogathon hosted by the fabulous Brian Schuck at Films From Beyond the Time Barrier!
Stunning photos and hadn’t heard of this film although I had heard of Baba Yaga. Lovely companion piece to Tam Lin.