Mystics In Bali (1981)

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Director: H. Tjut Djalil

Screenplay: Putra Mada (novel), Jimmy Atmaja (scenario)

Cast: Ilona Agathe Bastian (as Catherine 'Cathy' Kean); Yos Santo (as Mahendra); Sofia W.D. (as Old Leák Queen); W.D. Mochtar (as Machesse); Debbie Cinthya Dewi (as Young Leák Queen)

Synopsis: Travelling to Indonesia, an American woman Cathy (Bastian) is assisted by a local who is her boyfriend, Mahendra (Santo), in finding a witch who can teach her black magic for a research paper on the subject. Her training however turns her into a puppet for the witch who can transform her at will into a Penanggalan, a vampire whose head detaches from the body leaving a trail of entrails hanging off the severed neck, the head sent off to feed on the blood of pregnant women and devour their still unborn children so the witch can vicariously gain immortality and youth. Can Mahendra and his religiously pious uncle stop the deaths and what will become of Cathy?

One of my biggest compulsions is to see horror and fantasy stories from around the world. Mythology is an obsession which fits my other obsession, cinema, like a hand in a silk glove, bleeding into genre storytelling greatly and allowing one the curiosity of seeing how legends and bogeymen are depicted. With Mystics in Bali you have a representation of the Penanggalan, a completely unique figure not found in Western mythology as it's shown; floating heads and skulls are common, but the details of the entrails dangling from the neck and the connection back the body, not to mention the vampiric detail involving pregnant women, makes the mythological creature stand out greatly as something idiosyncratic to its country of origins. It's as much seeing another country's culture onscreen, even if liberties have been taken for the transition, as much as seeing genre tropes filter through the introduction of such a peculiar monster to the wide audience.

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Mystics In Bali as a film turned out to be disappointing in some ways after hearing of it years ago - one of the many curiosities from around the world I learnt of and became desperate to see including its fellow Indonesian films like The Queen of Black Magic (1981) - only to find out viewing it that it's more of a garden variety horror film than one which lets the mythology take the plot into some interesting directions. This could turn out to be like another Indonesian film called The Devil's Sword (1984) where it took more viewings to appreciate it, but it's a surprise how truncated and minimal Mystics In Bali in terms of an actual narrative. Effectively a low budget horror film, it has a repetitive narrative once Cathy is turned into a Penanggalan where her head is sent off to terrorise the populous repeatedly. With only a few sets, only a few main characters and background faces, and a very tight plot  it has the presentation of an old American b-movie from the fifties or from someone like William Beaudine in style.

One of the potential issues with the delights of pulp cinema - psychotronic, weird, intercontinental - is that there's a huge balancing act that need to take place where just sticking to filming the plot will leave a film being a dull, plain viewing experience. The ones that have stood out for me, even if by accident, have had style or a personality to them. In Mystics In Bali's favour it does have an odd air around some of its scenes. Shot in what can vary between on-location places and sets, especially on a battered print, it looks less like real life than a purely fantastical environment onscreen with strong eighties lighting and bold colours. With an English dub that evokes having watched too many Godfrey Ho movies in my life, the world onscreen is caught between the individual edits of each frame than the film as recorded on the camera during the production.

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The problem with Mystics In Bali is that for me beyond this there are so many of the cardinal flaws of genre films regardless of their country of origin inherent in it. Where the film drags and, without relishing incredibly silly dialogue, characters don't know when to be quiet. Films like this are cursed with actors merely standing around and explaining the most rudimentary and disinteresting dialogue possible, a lack of pleasure in it that is matched by the unwillingness the opposite way to make the "action" scenes have a spice and fun to them. It also unfortunately has a nasty taste to it in how conservative it is. For a film infamous for its special effects - Cathy turning into the Penanggalan or into a pig by way of a rubber pig person suit, or puking up mice in the bathroom - the film is pretty restrained than lurid and devotes more of its time to the good guys against the evil women with the least interesting consequences as a result. This terminology is apt as it has a real discrepancy between the good religious men and the evil women in the witch and eventually Cathy, without kitsch or a strange vicarious joy in the villains' behaviour to soften this. Putting up with bland male leads is an issue in any genre work, but it can be argued some of the worst cases of sexism is when you cannot go against the original message and cheer on the villains. At least if the hero was memorable or if the film was more entertaining there would be a balance, even if it wasn't the filmmaker's intentions, where you could secretly cheer on both sides of the square jawed hero and the fatale. Especially when the boyfriend in Mystics In Bali is guilty of both being tedious to see and in bringing Cathy to the witch in the first place, and is pardoned of any guilt by his uncle, you wish the both of them were turned into frogs by the witch. If it wasn't for the fact that the Penanggalan feds off pregnant women, I'd wish the villainess won. If any virtue is to be found in this film for me of great substance in terms of this, I see now why people rooted for the Christian Satanists in the likes of Hammer horror films and why with more morally sympathetic figures, like the Universal horror monsters, you get figures of global popular iconography.

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Technical Details:

Like a lot of pulp genre cinema, unless one encounters a very artistic or radical change in cinematography and visuals, this type of cinema is based on there being a standard structure and presentation, emphasising instead the quirks. An innate issue covering this film on this site, with the blog title being "Cinema of the Abstract", is that I could easily slip into an accidental xenophobia by calling it "alien" because it's not like a western genre movie in presentation. Thankfully as I've seen plenty of low budget films from this era from other countries, Western and Eastern, that share similar production techniques, the issue is less about Mystics In Bali as a representation of an Indonesian film culture in general but what this particular production had access to in terms of technical resources and time.

The special effects are going to be the most memorable aspects of anyone's first viewing of the film, and barring the poor mice dunked in goo meant to represent them being vomited on a tiled bathroom flaw, you couldn't argue that the results are entertaining and a virtue in spite of the film's flaws. Basic blue screen is used especially in bringing the Penanggalan to life, a drastic change in the visual look of the shots when Cathy's head casually floats off the torso; in lieu to what the production could pull off, I actually admire them attempting this even though it might have been wiser to use more model heads and implied reference to show the creature. It would mean less of the shock of the head popping off or floating down an Indonesian motorway which would've deprived the fun from it.  When Cathy learns to turn into a snake and than a pig respectively during her training with the witch and subsequent transformation into an evil minion, I'm glad of the lo-fi prosthetics used as they are. Utterly strange to witness regardless - seeing an actress become graphically distorted to the point she becomes a mix of Pigsy from the Monkey King stories and a kaiju - it's why the term "psychotronic film"  was coined by Michael J. Weldon in describing the entertainingly bizarre in genre cinema. The texture of the rubber prosthetics, their inherent fakeness, is as important to how odd the moments are helping against the dreary material outside these scenes.

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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Again, there is the issue for a blog that calls itself "Cinema of the Abstract" that I could accidentally espouse a racist viewpoint by saying this film is "abstract" (i.e. weird) because of its cultural heritage and that it speaks a different language even if dubbed in English. I've always had an immense concern with "weird [insert name of country]" rhetoric for pop culture; the use of "Weird Japan" has also always, for example, been undeniably racist for me as a term even as an outsider who has never set foot in the country, painting an entire culture let alone pop culture as weird, even if the examples are legitimately bizarre, when it could be seen as strange to those born in the country too and different from regular Japanese life. Likewise, depicting another country or continent's religious and mythological beliefs as alien is problematic; as Christianity to another land, especially the uncensored version where Cherubs are actually four faced multiple winged entities, would be just as strange to an Indonesian, than a Penanggalan would be weird to a Westerner. Instead if there's anything strange about these beliefs, it's that they belong to the general weirdness of the human concept of spirituality and folklore across the entire species, a head popping off a human body and carrying its entrails with it strange in any language. Depicting these legends and stories on camera leads to them developing dreamlike airs to them where you have to figure out what to do to depict them and whether you have the technical resources to even show a floating head.

Unfortunately Mystics In Bali is conventional in plot and style to the point it deadens a great deal of its potential strangeness. Despite having a final straight out of the aforementioned Godfrey Ho films, an inexplicable fight with added laser effects, I still can't put it on the Abstract List. You have to compare it to something like The Devil's Sword, an Indonesian film that starts with a man surfing a boulder in the air and keeps piling on moments one after another, and you realise Mystics In Bali neuters a lot of its strangest moments (puking mike, detached heads threatening traffic) with constant dull dialogue from unlikable male heroes. Also, with black magic its central theme, there's a white elephant in the room called The Boxer's Omen (1983), a Hong Kong horror film hybrid from the Shaw Brothers that lives up to its reputation as one of the strangest, disgusting and artistically inspired films about Asian black magic you could see. A film like Mystics in Bali doesn't need to be like it, but you see how plain and ordinary it is in comparison to such a film, especially as The Boxer's Omen amongst its other fits of madness includes a scene involving a Penanggalan that's done significantly better than in the Indonesian film.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic

Abstract Tropes: Mythological figures and Black Magic; floating heads; obvious blue screen; unexpected puking up of animals;

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Personal Opinion:

Fun can be found in Mystics In Bali, but personally this turned out to be a disappointment in how ordinary it turned out to be. I've become softer and more amused by aspects of the film since starting to write this review, but especially as it's one of the most well known Indonesian films with horror tropes to it, it doesn't hold a candle to something like The Devil's Sword which I would recommend readers to check out first instead.

Evolution (2015)

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Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Screenwriter: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Alante Kavaite and Geoff Cox

Cast: Max Brebant (as Nicolas); Roxane Duran (as Stella); Julie-Marie Parmentier (as La mère); Mathieu Goldfeld (as Victor); Nissim Renard (as Franck)

Synopsis: In an isolated coastal community, consisting of only adult women and young boys, one "son" Nicolas (Brebant) starts to question his environment and those of their "mothers", whether his own mother (Parmentier) is actually his mother, and witnessing strange sights around him.

Evolution is naturally going to be difficult to talk about because to discuss the plot, it will invoke spoiling a lot of the first viewing of it. I went into Evolution with only two small pieces of knowledge about it. One - it's director/co-writer Lucile Hadzihalilovic is the wife of Gaspar Noe, who worked on the production of his early films and eventually came to directing her own film in 2004 with Innocence, making the eleven year sabbatical whether intended or not to her second feature film Evolution an incredible wait. Two - that it's about a young boy in a mysterious community where there are no adult men or young girls, mother and son families which in the trailer immediately suggested a potential body horror or sci-fi plot; (thankfully) it never spoilt a single thing within its few minutes, instead leaving the enticing air to view the film you rarely find in other film's trailers. To read even further into this review, even without reading parts marked as spoilers, could be too much information for some though. This type of storytelling on display in the film, elusiveness and vague answers, has immense danger both of being mired in obscurity without a deliberate point to it and, when you know what the secret is, the rewatches being marred by a lack of rewatchability and mystery after. The real goal of such a plot structure - be it a film, a book, a comic - is to create an unsettled mood, where the lasting effect is not answering a mystery only but the metaphorical meaning, creating an alien reality and/or inducing emotions perturbed by what you witness alongside answering the mystery.

Nautical symbolism stands out as a unique trait of Evolution, the serenity of the coastal environment by the sea, populated by pure white buildings, undercut by how cold the film's tone is, beginning with Nicolas' obsession with a bright red starfish that he discovers during the first scene of the film, it's beauty as a creature alarming and as appropriately alien as many things you witness in the film, especially with how Nicolas comes to find said starfish originally. The creatures that occupy the oceans of the world are amongst some of the most alien to us, reflecting images of our greatest nightmares as much as they can be stunning to witness, their tentacles and mollusc limbs startling to see alive and move. Aspects of this filter in vague glimpses in Evolution between the tranquil underwater photography, suckers of a squid and outright body horror, when seen, offering an alarming connection.

The "normal" human interactions as well are strange to the viewer. Baring one of the younger nurses (Duran), red haired and youthful, who develops sympathy with Nicolas and starts showing concern for him in either an motherly or compassioned way, every other woman that Nicolas interacts with including his "mother" almost looks identical, brown dresses or nurses clothes, with similar shaped faced and slicked back brown-blonde hair, looking like clones of each other. The symbolic nature of the medical equipment - as the boys are subjected to unknown surgery, injections, being fed on drips - brings an immediate clinical nature, a hospital despite any attempt at being warm and friendly evoking the baseness of human bodies being medicated and opened with scalpels.

[Spoiler Warning]

The women are revealed to be possible half aquatic, half human figures who may be using the boys as surrogate mothers to breed further children, subverting gender as the boys "birth" others instead of women. The film is very oblique to what is exactly happening, but as it becomes immediately clear in the first ten minutes that a ritual or form of experimentation is taking place - the exact green mass of watery substances fed to Nicolas at every meal, the checkups with the female doctors and nurses, the instructions of his mother stern. Instead it becomes more of a film from the perspective of a young boy who will not know exactly what is going on to the events, the result leaving the viewing having to accept this obliqueness to the structure. Everything as a result is felt through the information that is not available to the viewer, that all he can learn as we do following him is from the most visceral images that startle him and the viewer likewise, more so as like him we are in his perspective as a young boy without any context for the sights and having to accept them as they are.

Within a film that doesn't pull punches, and hints at things that would people would hesitate in depicting in a mainstream English language film, this includes issues such as sexuality, within a fifteen rated film for its UK release the unexpected sight of a ritualistic combination of an orgy and dance chorography by the mothers witnessed from afar by Nicolas on a nearby sand dune, their nude bodies in a starfish formation writhing and smearing an unknown slime on themselves which evokes incestuous trains of thought as well as the boundary between human and other species. Without context to why such an act is carried out by the women, the mystery is the underlying power of the scene as it is with every other discovery Nicolas finds. When he is freed from the island by the kind nurse, whose name is revealed to be Stella, he is freed of their alien coastal world but that doesn't mean the questions of who he is will not appear especially as he grows older and rumination on his life takes place.

[Spoiler Warning Ends]

Technical Detail:

Following a lot of current, European cinema Evolution uses static camera shots with limited movement, adding to the eerie stillness of the environments and the performances. The problem I have with this common aesthetic style,  a two dimensional lifelessness, is negated here as its as much part of the cold atmosphere; within the clinical medical and bare homes, with no decoration in Nicolas' bedroom baring a fish bowl with the red starfish in it, there is intentionally disconnected visual that make the choice of cinematography logical. That the underwater and beach shots are still beautiful and colourful with the aquatic life on display also means that in limiting the camera's ability to move across screen, that doesn't mean the cardinal sin of making a film drab for the sake of realism is on display either, showing a better use of this style especially as the setting is shown in its fullest. There is an uncomfortable sensuality to the film as well, a dark sensual tone due to the use of light and the lack of it in night scenes. A golden hue of light becomes both unbelievably atmospheric but also is used for some of the most explicit material of a sombre, minimalist work, be it shocking to Nicolas or to us.

The almost complete lack of music furthers this. Baring a few strands of unconventional notes - including a Cyclobe track - the rest of the film is mostly silence and is given a suffocating air as a result. Emphasis on sound effects instead makes up the tension of the film, especially that which is implied, the gristliness of the some of the scenes because of what is only implied than rather seen.

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Evolution follows the plot structure of an innocent existing within a community that, when the veneer is peeled back by them, reveals a conspiracy or horror that they struggle to escape from. Stories like this allow for speculation - I was continually thinking of any specific biological aspects of aquatic life that could be symbolically referenced - but they are as much dependant less on a plot reveal but their pervasive mood.

Significant to Evolution is that as a film created by a woman, there is an entirely different perspective of gender that should be considered than if the film was made and co-written by a man. While the mothers and nurses are "others" to Nicolas and the viewers, the film explicitly deals with gender especially in themes of birth and pregnancy. One of the most visceral scenes is what looks like real footage of a caesarean birth, at first not revealed but eventually witnessed in graphic detail, the reality of a human belly being open and the fat layer under the skin being peeled back evoking more Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (1971) than a splatter horror film, leading to a new life being birthed from the incision. While the film is placed in body horror, the female figures are not stereotyped as monstrous, which could've made the film entertaining in a more open way but would've compromised this film's specific tone completely, more so as with the presence of the red haired nurse who befriends Nicolas and becomes a sympathetic figure, even one with a presence of a fairytale figure in a later scene underwater together.

The fact that the film is not necessarily a horror movie in terms of the stereotypes of the genre and yet is quantifiably part of the genre is a significant factor to its abstract tone alongside it's content, from the inherently eeriness of the aquatic imagery to the medical content. This type of story structure is greatly helped by the blurring of what exact genre it is, undermining expectations of the genre usually seen and leading to an unpredictable tone. It also means, for the sake of the film's deeper meaning and artistry, fluxuations to the genre are liable to inherently happen but also whilst still retaining plot stylistics becoming incredibly unreal in mood.

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Weird

Abstract Tropes: Nautical/Aquatic Symbolism; Child Protagonist; Medical Symbology; Psychosexual References; Gender Subversion; Body Horror; Pregnancy Metaphors; Lack of Music Score; Static Cinematography;

Personal Opinion:

A rewarding surprise for the year 2016. More so as someone who has yet to see Innocence, her critically acclaimed debut, the absence from directing for over eleven years is hopefully one that will be corrected if Lucile Hadzihalilovic is able to get more films made from this one on. This means a great deal as this film is the kind of horror film that I gasp for as a man thirsts for water, rather than the clichés being wrung out something that feels like stepping into an alien environment that forces you to re-examine concepts such as the human body. At nearly eighty minutes only, its elusive tone makes it an outsider to other, more conventional horror films that would get more publicity, but in this exhibits all the potential over more viewings to compensate for its short feature length with so many emotions and images it will leave in my mind. 

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1000 Anime Crossover: April 2016

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#22: Gyo - Tokyo Fish Attack (2012)

Director: Takayuki Hirao

Screenplay: Akihiro Yoshida, Takayuki Hirao

Based on a manga by Junji Ito

(Voice) Cast: Mirai Kataoka (as Kaori); Ami Taniguchi (as Erika); Hideki Abe (as Shirakawa); Hiroshi Okazaki (as Professor Koyanagi); Masami Saeki (as Aki); Takuma Negishi (as Tadashi)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

The manga of Junji Ito deserves a cinematic adaption, live action or manga, that does justice to its weird, sometimes disgusting content, firmly making his reputation as a horror manga author through idiosyncratically strange, comic horror stories. His reputation for strangeness, from drawing himself in Uzumaki (1998-9) as a spiral obsessed shell of a  man to writing a manga about raising two pet cats with the same art style of his horror tales begs for an appropriately abstract movie from the work. Gyo the anime does its best, but it just misses out of being as strange aesthetically as the manga itself. It replicates the gross weirdness of the material but in style and structure it's pretty conventional, while doing very well in getting the tone right, an adaptation like the live action take of Uzumaki from 2000 having a better chance at scrapping into the Abstract List.

For the full review, following the link HERE.

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#23: Dead Leaves (2004)

Director: Hiroyuki Imaishi

Screenplay: Takeichi Honda

(Voice) Cast: Kappei Yamaguchi (as Retro); Takako Honda (as Pandy); Yuko Mizutani (as Galactica); 666 (as Mitsuo Iwata); 777 (as Kiyoyuki Yanada); Chinko (as Nobuo Tobita)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

The first of (hopefully) many tie-in to the 1000 Anime blog and this one, I won't spoil any of the opinions I had and just provide the link to the review HERE.

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#24: Yuki Terai - Secrets (2000)

Based on a original premise

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Abstract Spectrum: Weird

Abstract Rating  (High/Medium/Low/None): None

One of the more obscurer things I've covered for the 1000 Anime blog, the only segment of this animated short compilation that is unconventional is The Mirror, about the titular protagonist being menaced by her mirror reflections, the sort of thing that could've gotten into the Abstract List for its tone and style but misses out just because of its dated visual appearance, without any distinct character to it more significantly, and missing out of using the premise fully. The rest, which you can read about HERE, is far from abstract and a curiosity only.

1000 Anime Crossover: March 2016

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#20: Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (2001)

Director: Hironobu Sakaguchi

Screenplay: Al Reinert and Jeff Vintar

Inspired by the videogame series produced by Square Enix

(Voice) Cast: Ming-Na Wen (as Doctor Aki Ross); Alec Baldwin (as Captain Gray Edwards); Ving Rhames (as Ryan); Steve Buscemi (as Neil); Peri Gilpin (as Jane); Donald Sutherland (as Dr. Sid); James Woods (as General Hein)

Viewed with English Dub

Abstract Spectrum: None

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Inexplicably the amount of early anime of the early 2000s to be animated with 3D animation and models I've covered has been large on 1000 Anime, and in every case everyone has been tedious, only Malice@Doll (2001) which I've yet to cover an exception to the rule. Having been old enough to know the hype that was surrounding The Spirits Within before its release, its comical in hindsight just how much it failed in both being entertaining and avoiding tanking at the box office. It could be seen as tragic, but if you follow the link HERE to my full review, it's not a surprise why a new animation company collapsed immediately after making this their first production.

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#21: Elfen Lied (2004)

Director: Mamoru Kanbe

Screenplay: Takao Yoshioka

Based on a manga by Lynn Okamoto

(Voice) Cast: Chihiro Suzuki (as Kouta); Sanae Kobayashi (as Lucy / Nyuu); Emiko Hagiwara (as Mayu); Hiroaki Hirata (as Professor Kakuzawa Yu); Mamiko Noto (as Yuka); Maria Yamamoto (as Kanae); Yuki Matsuoka (as Nana)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

One of the more notorious, divisive and yet incredibly popular anime series of the early 2000s, Elfen Lied is one that I first saw getting into anime and for all its clear flaws I cannot help as my review will attest to, which you can read HERE, to still see so many virtues to counter balance the problems. A grim yet brightly coloured work which schizophrenic tonal shifts, it also however is one of the few series to really wallow in ideas of trauma and adolescent violence fully even if it can be utterly tasteless at points.