Mystics in Bali (1981)

I come to this review of cult classic Mystics in Bali with a lot of baggage. You see, this is a film that has been on my backlog for a hot minute, and having already seen the esteemed RedLetterMedia group cover this film once in a far more entertaining format, I almost felt there was utterly no use in making any attempt to cover it. But I suppose I shouldn't assume everyone on the internet has already seen those videos and heard of this thing; only most of them. Speaking of which, are you at all familiar with the equally infamous mockbuster Lady Terminator? If so, you're in for a real treat, as this comes from the same director. His trademarks include an almost lost-in-translation approach to aping Hollywood films that result in truly baffling work, further strengthened by a reliance on obscure regional folklore, even when the film being copied is allegedly James Cameron's The Terminator.

I almost feel like there's no point in summarizing, either. I mean, the very first line of Mystics in Bali is a declaration that our (current) protagonist Catherine Keene, a young American author chilling in sunny Indonesia, is interested in learning more about black magic. Leák magic, in fact, which is the Balinese variety of such. Presumably, this is for her book, but I'm not even sure if we're told any of that before BAM! Cathy and her beau, Mahendra, are meeting with a witch in the woods and signing over their very lives in the pursuit of curiosity. It's quite disarming and leaves you feeling kind of unmoored. There's no fifteen-minute chunk to introduce us to Cathy, her temporary boyfriend, her books, the region, why she cares so much, etc. Not in this movie. 

And the general ebb and flow is all wrong. Appropriately for something that is presumably based on a real folk tale (though the credits cite a novel as the film's inspiration, so who knows?) the structure is very old school. As in older than dirt. The closest thing I've watched recently would be Viy: here, we watch our characters dowdle about in the daytime, idly doting on one another and enjoying themselves until night falls, whereupon Cathy packs up and goes to visit the witch. It doesn't take long before this lock-step structure reveals itself, though occasionally the lovers idly passing time will be replaced with a long, meditative scene of Mahendra speaking with his father (uncle? not sure) or the nighttime excursion will be cut short. The more Cathy visits the witch, the clearer it becomes to both the audience and poor Mahendra that Cathy is playing with some really dangerous shit, things that threaten to take away her autonomy completely and see her body used to do unspeakable things across the quiet countryside. It also becomes clear that Cathy is at least a few cards short of a full deck, if you catch my drift. That's hardly a complaint though, I actually find it rather charming. The dramatic irony is rich, at least, though I may just be making excuses for it at this point.

Still, I love films like this that are made in a total vacuum. Everything about Mystics in Bali screams 'unconventional,' yet it's very endearing because you can tell they were trying their best to make an entertaining, crazy-ass movie, and maybe to teach us a bit about Balinese folklore while they were at it. There is no pretension here, it's as wholesome as something made by a child. In fact, the mood is not too far removed from that of that old j-horror film Hausu, which also felt like it was conceived and carried out by a child, especially once the Dragon Ball Z fights with rotoscoped special effects rear their head in the final chunk of the film. There's nothing clever here: everyone just meets up at the end and punches each other with magic. And just when you thought the whole thing was getting a bit predictable, the film takes a page out of Shakespeare's book and ends with every single character barre one dying horribly.

This contributes to a breezy viewing experience. Early on, it seems extremely slow, but over time the pace picks up, and its unconventional structure means that once you lose track of time, the film ends much sooner than you expect. Meanwhile, despite plenty of trough to go with its peak, Mystics in Bali is still entertaining enough to be of interest to fans of world cinema, cult horror films, and anything and everything weird. Every few minutes, something bizarre is happening, whether it's people turning into animals, a flying head eating a baby straight out of a very pregnant woman's uterus, or a strange encounter with a prehensile tongue. Or, come to think of it, a battle between good and evil, where good and evil are both represented by flying fireballs that smash into each other until one of them goes out. Don't ask. That's only the beginning of this film's cinematic nonsequiturs.

The film has the look of a low-budget seventies film when it's not painting the screen with any number of insane special effects. Sometimes effects are practical, like a tree tearing itself from the ground and attacking someone, or during either of the gruesome transformation sequences. Sometimes, however, it appears that some effects could only be done digitally via tape, and thus a print had to be transferred to a tape, and then printed back to a film print after the effects were done, leaving those parts of the film looking really awful and standing out like a sore thumb. Still, they're pretty funny. 

And then there's the rotoscoping, which is very messy yet undeniably contributes to the film's earnest, endearing quality. The reliance on dubbing and ADR will bother some people, seeing as English was definitely NOT the language the actors were speaking while filming, but at this point, I'd much rather put up with a dub than simply not watch the film at all. And the music, while extremely odd sounding, is effective enough in bringing across the mood of the piece. Speaking of the audio though, the witch's cackle, while famous for a reason, does start to grate a bit towards the end.

It's nice diving into folklore so obscure, and especially when it all feels so authentic. It's very similar to Wes Craven's little-seen The Serpent and the Rainbow in that sense. You get to see genuine ceremonial masks and garbs that look amazing, along with real Indonesian locales, dance, pageantry, theater, music, etc. It's enough to almost make you feel like a real anthropologist.

Its dedication to the lore does lead to its biggest issues, mainly its thin characterization of everyone in the plot and the hilariously miserable ending, where everybody our poor protagonist has ever loved ends up dead, leaving him alone to pick up the piec-CREDITS. Yes, the characters make awful decisions and they certainly should have known better, but it's a horror movie, alright? This is probably an adaptation of some bedtime story told to scare children and keep them from playing witchy games and accidentally sacrificing poor Timmy to a demigod, and so it makes sense that the characters would do foolish things so that the story can make an example out of them. Some of you out there may feel yourself above that sort of old-fashioned storytelling, but I always find it fascinating.

So if you have a taste for films that don't play by the rules, even if that has less to do with their artistic vision and more to do with a lack of experience and cultural isolation, Mystics in Bali is certainly worth your time. Folk horror academics will love it as well for its adapting of lore that is little-known among Western audiences. For just about everyone else, though, this film's alien quality will likely prove impossible to surmount, but then again: how does just any ole' person manage to stumble across a film like Mystics in Bali and not know that it's going to be a wild ride? Viewing with friends would probably be especially fun, because you'd have a person to constantly turn to and ask simply "What?" or "Huh?" In short, it earns its infamous reputation, and then some. Maybe I'll give Lady Terminator a shot soon...