Umberto Lenzi, come on down! We’re eager for you to shock us, titillate us, and perhaps even thrill us a bit. Oh, and you’ve brought Carroll Baker with you! Please, show us the tale you’ve crafted!

Released in Italy as Orgasmo, it was one of the first X-rated movies in the U.S., and the ads definitely played it up, especially because it featured Baker. She had left America as a single mother with two children, and her prospects in Hollywood weren’t great. In Italy, despite making movies that she said “What they think is wonderful is not what we might,” she found a career. Later, she would admit that it showed her an entirely different world and brought her back to feeling alive again.

What’s confusing is that Lenzi’s next movie was released as Paranoia in Italy and A Quiet Place to Kill in America.

I love this interview that she did with Tank Magazine, answering if she ever did any avant-garde projects: “Some of the films in Europe, of course, but a lot of them I haven’t even seen. The one I’m curious about is called Baba Yaga; it was a really far-out, wild, cartoonish sort of thing. I play the title character, a 1,500-year-old witch, and all my sisters were witches, too. I didn’t have to be completely naked, but in every Italian film, there was a scene where you had to show your breasts. Usually, I was talking on the telephone or reading a book. One day, they announced a nude scene – I couldn’t believe it. But the make-up artist and hairdresser were already there, dying the other girls’ pubic hair to match the hair on their heads.”

Baker plays Kathryn West, a glamorous American widow who retreats to a palatial Italian villa just weeks after her wealthy husband’s passing. She is the picture of fragile elegance, drowning in luxury and boredom until a handsome drifter named Peter (Lou Castel) breaks down at her gates.

The villa’s isolation quickly turns from a sanctuary into a playground for predators. Peter moves in, followed shortly by his sister, Eva (Colette Descombes). The dynamic is electric and immediately suspicious. As the siblings weave a web of sexual manipulation, the truth emerges: they aren’t related, and Kathryn isn’t their host—she’s their mark.

The film descends into a harrowing depiction of gaslighting, which is a term that gets used a lot these days. Trust me. This movie has real gaslighting. Peter and Eva keep Kathryn in a drug-induced stupor, fueling her with pills and booze while playing a haunting, discordant song on a loop to shatter her psyche. It is a proto-slasher psychological thriller where the weapon isn’t a knife, but the systematic erosion of a woman’s reality. But don’t worry. In the world of Lenzi, every sin eventually demands a receipt.

Caroll Baker started off as a Hollywood sex symbol before retreating to Europe, where she’d make Baba Yaga, So Sweet… So Perverse and The Sweet Body of Deborah, amongst others. Eventually, she’d move back to America and become a mature actress. As for Lenzi, he’d go on to make Eaten Alive, Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City and more.

If you appreciate melodramatic twists, layered narratives, and visually striking sex scenes, then it’s time to indulge in this film.