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.
