Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga (1973) is an Italian surreal horror film directed by Corrado Farina. Starring Isabelle De Funès as the carefree photographer Valentina. When approached by a lecherous old man at a party who propositions her with “I want to photograph you nude in a field of wheat”, Valentina replies “Ok, we’ll talk about it, thanks for the chicken.”

She meets a mysterious older woman who calls herself Baba Yaga, played by Carroll Baker, who might be a witch but definitely drives a Bentley and lives in a dusty old house. Valentina falls under her spell and eventually becomes her captive. Baker was no stranger to Italian genre cinema but she feels miscast as the mysterious Baba Yaga. George Eastman, another regular of exploitation cinema, is Arno, boyfriend to Valentina, and is out of his depth for the majority of the film.

There is a strange doll given to Valentina called Annette. She is dressed in S&M gear and acts as a conduit for the witch, and she comes alive in all her leather-studded glory to deal out a cruel punishment to Valentina.

The film does drag and, although visually stunning, it feels laboured. Renowned film critic Kim Newman described Baba Yaga as “enormously boring”. It did have a more favourable review as “an exceptionally handsome example of 1970s Italian exploitation, sweetened by Piero Umiliani’s lounge-jazz score”. The acid jazz title music is definitely the highlight of the film.

Thirty minutes was trimmed by the producers as they considered it too slow. Goodness knows it didn’t really pick up the pace with a quarter of it gone. How dull would it have been at nearly two hours long?

Gallery

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Trailer

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From the score

• Piero Umiliani: Open Space (title music)

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• Piero Umiliani: Slogan

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Filed 24 October 2026 by Darren Evanson.