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.

I have just watched Baba Yaga, and i found it to be quite a boring film for most of the time. It was about a girl photographer called Valentina who meets this witch that puts a curse on her camera, and anyone that poses for the camera gets damned. I do like most 70's Euro horror but this film i just could not get into. I found the story quite hard to follow. It seemed quite slow for most of the time, with not a lot happening. I thought that Carroll Baker who played the part of the devil witch was very good. apart from that i felt that the rest of the acting was pretty bad. I do think that the movie could have lasted for a little longer than the 85 min runtime, which would have given more time for the film to develop.

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.

Wow...this was in a DVD 4 pack called "Blood Bath" and there was barely any blood...someone got stuck with a pin, the bloody pin was the only blood I remember...also someone literally "drops dead" & someone falls in a hole. On there other hand, the only redeeming thing, was lots of Euro-boobs, but even nipples don't make up for a boring, slow, rambling plot. The atmosphere started out nice, the characters at first seemed possibly interesting...but nothing really develops... Who was Bababooey? Why was she interested in Valentina? Why was the Dog in the middle of the street with a weird cut in it's forehead...and surrounded by candles? Why did the camera make one person sick, one person collapse...who, what & why is Annette a creepy dominatrix doll that comes to life? (but looked hot & bare breasted) I give it 2 stars, one for breasts, and 1 for a glimpse of the 1972 IKEA catalog. (her big round table lamp is still available!)