Mystics in Bali

An American anthropologist named Cathy travels to Bali to study black magic. Her boyfriend Mahendra warns her that Leák magic is dangerous stuff. It can kill. Cathy presses on anyway and meets the Leák cult leader, a cackling witch who agrees to teach her the dark arts. What Cathy doesn’t realize is that the witch has her own plans, and before long Cathy is transforming into a severed head that floats through the night sky, entrails dangling from its neck, hunting for pregnant women.

Read that last sentence again.

Now ask yourself how a movie with that premise manages to be boring. Mystics in Bali finds a way.

This was an Indonesian production designed for export to Western audiences. At the time, the Indonesian government saw films as a possible source for foreign revenue. To smooth the path, the filmmakers dropped the knockabout comedy and musical numbers typical of local cinema and cast a German tourist in the lead. She was spotted by a producer’s wife, which is a charming origin story but not a substitute for screen presence. She does fine with what she’s given. What she’s given isn’t much.

The film aims for the feel of a Western horror picture but can’t shake the air of an amateur production. Disjointed editing. Exposition-laden dialogue. Special effects composited on a home video deck. The version I saw ran 86 minutes; apparently a Malaysian cut exists that’s half an hour longer, which might explain some of the continuity gaps. I doubt it explains the rest.

The theatrical dubbing pushes the witch into Monty Python territory. When she extends her hand, grotesquely oversized fingernails and all, and Cathy hesitates to shake it, the scene plays like a sketch. At one point Cathy is left holding a disembodied arm with a bloody stump. She drops it. Nobody mentions it again. Later, deep in the witch’s thrall, Cathy wakes up and vomits two whole mice and several pints of green slime. Mahendra watches this and says, “Cathy, what’s the matter with you?” Not with shock or horror, but the concern of someone who’s caught a friend sneaking a cigarette when they’re trying to quit.

Defenders will point to the film’s imagination. A flying head trailing organs and feeding on the unborn is certainly not something you see every day. But the creature comes from Indonesian folklore by way of a novel. The movie didn’t invent it. It just rendered it with effects that couldn’t do it justice.

The location photography offers occasional beauty, and viewers with an affection for low-budget regional horror shot on video may feel right at home. For them, stiff acting and cheap effects are features, not bugs. Everyone else should look elsewhere. This isn’t Indonesian cinema, it’s low-budget producers looking to exploit government subsidies.

As for that longer cut, it might smooth a few rough transitions. But I don’t think the shorter version was butchered. I think it was trying to make lemonade. It didn’t work, but at least it’s a shorter lemon.