Baba Yaga (1973)

Interesting facts

Baba Yaga is a 1973 horror film directed by Corrado Farina based on the Guido Crepax Valentina comic series. The film stars Carroll Baker, Isabelle De Funès and George Eastman. The subject is Valentina Rosselli, a Milanese photographer, who meets a middle-aged seductress who inexplicably calls herself "Baba Yaga."

Production

Baba Yaga was an adaptation of Guido Crepax's comic series Valentina. Crepax had previously done film work with Tinto Brass who commissioned him to create the storyboards for his thriller film Deadly Sweet. Brass had at one point considered adapting the story La forza di gravità from the Valentina comics to a film, but abandoned the idea when he felt that it would be impossible to portray Crepax's visual sensibilities to a film.

During pre-production Farina signed a deal with producer Turi Vasile, which led him to Franco Committeri who later took over for Vasile as the film's financial backer. Farina made changes to the script by removing the character Philip Rembrandt and turning a small character in the comic, that of film director Arno Treves into a role as large as Valentina.

After completing shooting and post-production on the film, Farina left for a vacation. On returning, he found that producers, finding the film too slow, had edited nearly half an hour out of it. The cuts made to this film were done on the negative of the film, making Farina lose his original edit of Baba Yaga. Farina was furious and threatened to take his name off the film.

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