Mystics In Bali

A colourful and crazy example of whacky horror cinema from Indonesia starring (Australian) Ilona Agathe Bastian as Cathy, an American student in Bali who wants to learn the secret of Leak (’Lee-Ack’) black magic so she can scribble a dull book about it. With the help of her effeminate boyfriend (Yos Santo) and some stock footage of genuine ritual shows, Ilona is soon shaking hands with a mental witch in a field where she’s quickly cursed, possessed, hexed and up to her 1980’s fringe in trouble.
 
When she kisses her Bo’ in a graveyard, lightning strikes and by short bursts, the movie steps on the cheeze pedal and serves up a splattery mess of ridiculous, gratuitous FX, giant tongues, severed limbs, rotting flesh and some bizarre body shock scenes where Ilona turns into a pig and a snake and even coughs up a handful of live mice.
 
Indonesian film icon W.D Mochtar (Special Silencers -78) turns up as a helpful witch doctor and there’s a brilliantly bad severed head that flies around with its internal organs still attached and dangling from the neck! Cut price, hammy and basically shot, it’s also blessed with terrifically trite English dubbing - making it a loud, funny, slick, sick and totally endearing party flik you’ll view more than once.
 
Double bill (or triple bill it) with the equally astounding Hong Kong classic Witch With Flying Head (77) or the Thai shocker Filth Eating Spirit Bites Ogre (90) for a fine twin-header of blood soaked flying faces.