Mystics in Bali

1981 Indonesian nuttiness

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A woman researching black magic heads to Bali and meets a witch who promises to let her in on some secrets of a local black magic cult. Unfortunately for Cathy, the witch has ulterior motives and plans to use her head to unleash evil upon the world.

Do you like cackling? You have to have a pretty high tolerance for a buttload of cackling because that witch spends the entire movie with this high-pitched laughter that the Wicked Witch would think was a little over the top. If you can get past this, there's plenty to enjoy here. And I really need to see more movies from Indonesia, I think. I don't think I've ever see a boring movie from Indonesia. You might accuse this of being poorly acted and almost entirely incoherent, but you definitely can't say this is boring. It all begins with wildly percussive credits and all these creepy masks. There's a cool little hand trick, a bad special effect but still something you can appreciate because it reminds you of a scene from Evil Dead II which is never a bad thing. There's blood drinking, cackling, a pretty funky pig transformation scene, another transformation scene involving snakes, a flaming snarling ball attack, blood drinking. Oh, and there's a scene where Cathy kisses somebody and immediately starts puking up mice. How's that supposed to make a guy feel? During an ending fight scene, you get to watch an old guy and the witch shoot cartoon lightning at each other, another pig transformation, and a boob stab. Of course, the whole thing disappointingly ends without any of that actually mattering, but sometimes it's not about the end result. It's about the process. And the process that brought us Mystics in Bali is nothing short of demented. I did mention the head with dangling innards, right? It looks like this:

Yep, just kind lifts out of there and then scoots around to wreak havoc, including one scene where it sucks a fetus out of a woman (I think) and then flies out the window again while some onlooking gentlemen don't even bat an eye. The whole thing's Cronenberg-esque. That witch has impossibly long fingernails and that impossible cackle, and when she talks, it often reminds me of Yoda. She over-witched, in epic fashion, but a lot of it had to do with some delirious dubbing. Fun little movie if you like your Indonesian cinema a little on the insane side--which includes apparently all of them.