The Complete Mystics In Bali, and the Queen of Black Magic

Western audiences probably would've first encountered Mystics In Bali as a shaky, Nth generation VHS tape from the "membership only" service Video Search of Miami.  They featured it on their mid 90s sampler tape, which showcased clips from about 50 of their wildest cult films, including The Johnsons, Death Laid an Egg and Pinocchio 964.  It highlighted the wildest and most sublime moments from their 10,000+ international cult films.  And even there, Mystics In Bali stood out as the most outrageous and intriguing of the bunch.

A demented, gap-toothed witch with a flower in her hair laughs maniacally at a young woman whose head suddenly lifts up off of her neck and into the air, dragging out her lungs and other organs along with it.  "And now," she said, in dubbed English with Japanese subtitles running underneath, "I will have to borrow your head for a short time!"  And with that, the woman's head flies off, innards still hanging below.  Cut to a midwife telling a sobbing pregnant woman that everything will be alright, when the head flies in through their bedroom window.  It smacks dead into the midwife, launching her through the opposing wall!  Then the head, now baring fangs, swoops down between the aghast mother's knees and we watch her belly deflate as it slurps the fetus out.

Graphic and extreme to be sure, but the film also displayed an ambience beyond simple exploitation.  In fact, Mystics In Bali is an Indonesian film from 1981, originally titled Mistik (Leak), referring to the leak of Indonesian folklore.  It's actually a reasonably faithful adaptation of a short pocket book called Liak Ngakak (The Laughing Leak), published by Selecta Group in 1978.  Disappointingly, it's never been printed in English.  The only novel by Putra Mada, it’s highly regarded for detailing so much specific Indonesian folklore within its modern story.  It's also been written about academically several times over the years for its opinionated depiction of the tourist invasion of Bali.

Mondo Macabro first released Mystics In Bali in the UK (yes, PAL) in 2003.  It was anamorphic widescreen, but they still remastered it for their US NTSC DVD in 2007.  These were the only legit releases of the film, outside of what are now incredibly rare Indonesian VCDs.  The first, issued by the Malaysian company MVM Home Entertainment, came out in 2002 under the title Rahsia Ilmu Iblis, which roughly translates to The Secret Science of Evil.  That's reasonably appropriate, as the story follows a foreigner named Cathy who's come to learn the secret techniques of a dark magic.  Less appropriate is the cover featuring a sexy woman in red lingerie who certainly never appears in the film.  So we' advanced from VCD to DVD and now, finally, BD.  Last Halloween, they opened pre-orders for a limited edition (of 1500 copies; mine is #86) 2-disc set of this and Queen Of Black Magic (updating their 2008 DVD).  It sold out in two days and copies have finally started to arrive.  And the best part?  This blu-ray contains the full, uncut version of Mystics In Bali, which runs a full thirty-four minutes longer than the popularized DVD version!

Yes, and that version is so much better (and just plain makes more sense).  Even Citizen Kane would come off as disjointed, convoluted and nonsensical if you haphazardly chopped 37 minutes out of it.  And these aren't subtle edits.  Right away, you'll notice that the original has a different beginning, a different ending, and tons of unique and extended scenes throughout.  For instance, in the extended cut, we follow our leading man Mahandra into a covert meeting in the woods, where he learns how to find a leak master.  He returns to Cathy, the foreigner (who's either from the US or Australia, depending which audio track you listen to), explaining that the meeting can only take place during a storm.  When Cathy points out that it’s drought season, Mahandra tells her not to worry because he’s hired a rainmaker.  This film gets laughed at for the amateurish continuity when it suddenly starts and stops pouring on them as they huddle in the woods, waiting for the witch to reveal herself.  But now we see that it’s all a deliberate part of the writing: the rain is being magically altered and the filmmakers actually went to some trouble to get the weather correct.

More critically, in the film's big climax, a new character suddenly appears to dispatch the villain, one of the many seemingly random and thoughtless elements that's given a little extra set up when you watch the film completely intact.  Early in the film, Mahandra takes Cathy to see one of these Barong dances, and the film essentially puts itself into park for a while.  And you guessed it, the dance goes on even longer in the extended cut.  But more importantly, the extended version also includes a pair of cutaways to Mahandra pointing out the meaning and relevance of the proceedings.  "This Barong dance depicts a battle between the good and the evil.  Barong represents the good while Rangda the evil."  We don’t even know that this is a Barong dance in the US version (unless you’re familiar enough with Indonesian culture to recognize one on sight), so it just seems like shameless padding, filming a superfluous street performance with zero relevance to the story.  But in the full version, it's not a frustrating detour; we’re actually seeing the whole story play out in microcosm.  These characters are unwittingly being shown their destinies.  "There is no winner or loser in this battle,” Mahandra explains, "because the battle between good and evil always continues." That new character isn’t just a ridiculous deus ex machina, but the leak’s fated rival who must always returns to do battle and restore balance.

Admittedly, most of the additional footage isn't too mind-blowing; we don't get any more splashy effects gags.  Some might even be glad to see the sappy romantic montage set to a pidgin English love song excised.  But the subtractions really are responsible for a lot of problems audiences have had with this film, like the awkward jump cuts from one scene to the next, or just the continuity of Mahandra’s already distracting T-shirts.  There’s also a funny scene where Cathy powders her neck in the morning after the witch had her head floating around.  She doesn’t remember the incident, and is puzzled by these lingering sensations she feels.  Mahandra suggests, "maybe the water you used to shower was not clean.”  And in another scene, Cathy complains that her research is rapidly chewing through her savings. Mahandra suggests she move in with his friend, which is why they switch houses mid-movie ...one more continuity error explained away.

One last example, that may appear minor at first, is a second, brief montage of Cathy and Mahandra cheerfully holding hands and shopping around town.  It sets up the falsely idyllic daytime life they’re leading, carelessly indulging the pleasures of the local village they'll later betray.  But if you’re following the story closely, there’s a creepier underpinning when you realize this must be the time they’re collecting the jewels and animal blood that the leak demanded as payment.  And the scene ends ominously with the camera panning off of them and onto a storefront mask.  It’s the same mask from the opening titles and the one Sofia WD wears when she transforms in the final battle.  Western audiences wouldn’t make the connection, but it’s the traditional mask of Rangda, the leak queen, worn in Barong dance (the other masks shown in the opening credits seem to represent each of the animal forms the leak takes). There’s even a great monkey mask, which I like to think could be a small homage to the novel’s original ending.  Oh, and remember that moment where Mahandra and Cathy are interrupted by a man who hands them a note, which is never explained or referenced again?  In the extended cut, we learn it’s a telegram for Mahandra, telling him that his ship’s holiday is over and he must return to the navy and leave Cathy on her own.  But human interest was clearly not a high priority for whoever made the American edit.

"Original ending?"  Oh yeah.  There's one thing even the original full-length cut doesn't have (and was presumably never shot).  The plot of the film sync with the book almost beat for beat until the final showdown.  But in Liak Ngakak, Mahandra kills both Cathy and the queen, who are unable to return to their human forms because their shrines (not depicted in the film, but key to their transformative powers in the book) have been washed into the sea.  He stabs the queen with the mystic dagger; and Cathy, who’s turned into a monkey at this point, dies with both master and disciple turning to ash under the rising of the sun.  It's an interesting change, because the novel follows a more Syd Fieldian story structure, with the protagonist defeating the antagonists, while the film goes back to Barong legend, actually making the more traditional choice.

It's also only via the book that we know that in the clashing fireball sequence, they're meant to be battling a leak from another village.  But okay, okay, I know: "shut up and get back to the discs, already!"

1) 2003 UK DVD; 2) 2007 US DVD; 3) 2026 US BD 4) 2026 US BD (extended).

So the original DVD was a nice start (and a huge improvement on the super fuzzy 4:3 VCDs that came before it, but it's still pretty rough.  The aspect ratio keeps shifting, for one thing.  In the first shot, it's 1.99:1, and in the second, it's 2.24:1.  And compared to the versions that come later, it's consistently cutting a good chunk off of the left side in particular.  So the NTSC "remastered and restored" disc was a welcome double-dip, re-framing the film at 2.32:1, fixing a rather severe vertical pinch and correcting the slightly vinegar colors.  You can see that film damage has been cleaned up.  Oh, and that second set of shots is one of the film's optical effects shots.  They sent the footage to Australia and the team there made them with video tapes, so they'll always look substantially dodgier in any version.  But you can still see how much the reframing and color correction done in 2007 improved on Mondo's first pass.

Then the blu-ray comes along, which we're told has been restored from the original camera negatives.  Given the similarity to the latter and distinction of the former, I'm guessing the US DVD was also taken from the negs, but not the UK.  Regardless, the new blu tweaks the AR to a more precise 2.35:1, and the boost to HD clearly sharpens up the image.  You can read Mahandra's shirt on the blu, but not the DVDs, in that second set of shots above.  And this goes for both cuts, though there are some slight differences.  The extended cut shows a couple pixels more around the edges, and noticeably, has a weaker encode.  And the file sizes bear it out: the short cut is 24GB, while the longer one is also in HD, but at a mere 13GB.  And in that second set of shots, you can see some white flecks that had been cleaned up since the UK DVD have returned.  Personally, I wish they'd given the extended cut the more deluxe treatment, since that's the one I'll really be treasuring in the long run, but we're getting the best we've ever had of both versions, so I really can't complain.

2026 US BD (extended).

But at least for the footage the two versions have in common, they're almost the same.  We still have to talk about the composite footage.  Going by the flashing Casa Vision (Indonesian television) watermark, they've taken it from an old broadcast rip, though it looks better than the ones I've seen floating around the 'net over the years at least.  It's window-boxed to 1.48:1 and you absolutely see the seams.  The colors are washed, and it's just clearly taken from a much, much weaker duped source.  But as someone who spent a longtime making his own homemade composite cut, I'm impressed with how well they topped what I was ever able to throw together with the low res stuff that's proliferated online.

Both DVDs just have the English mono track with no subtitle options.  But the blu-ray has both the English and original Indonesian audio tracks in DTS-HD with optional English subtitles.  For the extended cut, there is only a lossy version of the Indonesian track with removable English subs.  And for the record, I strongly recommend the original audio if you care at all to take this film seriously.  The English dub may amp up the camp appeal, but when you watch with the Indonesian track, it turns out a lot of the terrible acting is actually fairly respectable.  Even the leak queen’s exaggerated cackle sounds less Wicked Witch of the West-ish.  And the score is also quite different.  Where the American edit has very dramatic, synth-heavy suspense music, the original is more varied, going from sparse piano notes to rich Thai music.

The 2003 DVD just had one extra, but it's pretty good.  It's an episode of Mondo Macabro called Thrillers From Manilla, and is all about Indonesian fantasy films.  There's a bunch of clips and talking heads, but best of all they've secured on camera interviews with a bunch of filmmakers, including Mystics In Bali director Tjut Djalil.  But Mystics is just a small part of what they're covering, so we get talks with people like Barry Prima and a bunch of other Indonesian filmmakers talking about their own projects - all quite interesting, but possibly frustrating if you're only here for this movie.

Disappointingly, they dropped the episode from the American DVD (which they included on their 2004 US DVD of Lady Terminator), rendering that disc essentially barebones except for their trailer, which was a nice find, and a few bonus trailers.  But they did a better job with their blu.  It still doesn't have Thrillers From Manilla, but they have an extended version of that interview with Djalil, who speaks more about Mystics as well as some of his other films.  There's also a brief video essay where an expert puts Mystics in context with other Indonesian horror films of the period.  And there's an introduction by Joko Anwar, who wrote the (in name only) remake of Queen Of Black Magic.  So his intro makes more sense on that disc, but he's pretty familiar with Mystics, so it's nice to hear from him about this movie, too.  And the trailer's here, too.  So it's not exactly a loaded special edition, but it's nice to have something to go along with the film, especially this one, which tends to leave viewers with a myriad of questions.

Now, Liliek Sudjio's Queen of Black Magic was released in the same year.  It isn't quite as over the top, though it still has some pretty outrageous sequences and wild special effects scenes, including an extremely memorable decapitation.  This time the story's a little more straight-forward, though it proves to be richer and more complicated than the fundamental tale of supernatural revenge they set up at the onset.  Again, it turns out to be more than just the exploitation film it first appears to be.  It stars Indonesia's #1 scream queen Suzzanna (Severin is putting out a big box set of her films at the end of this month), as well as cult favorite couple W.D. Mochtar and Sofia W.D., who both also appear in Mystics.  And seeing it now, restored in lush HD, it looks really impressive.

1) 2026 US BD.

Queen looks just as good, if not better, than Mystics does.  Also restored from the original negatives and framed at 2.35:1, it's surprising how good this looks.  The lush colors of the nature footage and the distinct details of the more cluttered scenes look better than I ever would have guessed this movie could look.  Admittedly, the grain could be better captured.  It's a bit patchy and sporadic, looking like the superior shorter Mystics transfer, but neither are on par with the impressive encodes Fidelity In Motion has done for Arrow and other labels.  So I can't rate this an A+, but it's pretty gorg'.  And unlike Mystics, it doesn't have any wonkily processed effects shots or lower quality composite footage edited into the mix.

Mondo's blu has DTS-HD tracks of both the original Indonesian mono track and the English dub (though in this case, the music is the same in both versions), with optional English subs.

For special features, Queen has its own Anwar introduction, which is about the same length as his Mystics intro.  Again, he has some insight into this movie, this time with his own work to add to the discussion.  And the only other extra is "a visit to El Badrun's sfx studio in Sakarta."  This is another extended version of a clip from Thrillers From Manilla.  Badrun only says a few (subtitled) sentences, and the rest is silent footage of his studio, occasionally interspersed with clips from related films.  He did the effects for both films here, but it suits this disc better because he demonstrates how a specific effect from Queen of Black Magic was done.  And you've probably never seen a studio quite like Badrun's, so both are easily worth the small time investment to watch.  It would've been nice if they'd slapped Thrillers on here for us, too; but we've got the better versions of the pertinent segments, so no big deal.

The limited edition also included a full-color 18-page booklet, reversible artwork and an exclusive slipcover.

Many fans will probably be quite happy to stick with the fast-paced, senselessly campy cult flick they remember, and that's here in its best presentation yet.  But us exotic film lovers should appreciate how much more there is under Mystics’ crazy, baby-slurping surface.  And we also get a gorgeous release of the great Queen Of Black Magic.  This truly feels like Mondo Macabro's flagship release.  And if you missed it, don't trade your home to the scalpers, because single disc releases of both films are due to be released later this year.