She sold her soul to possess the secrets of black magic...
Mystics in Bali is a 1981 Indonesian Folk Horror film.
Catherine Kean is an Australian woman who comes to Bali, Indonesia to research folk magic for a book. An old woman offers to train her in the mystic arts, which she accepts. However, the woman turns out to be the Queen of Leak, a sadistic madwoman seeking immortality. Cathy is turned into a penanggalan, a vampire that resembles a disembodied human head with its organs trailing behind it, and local holy men led by her boyfriend have to stop the terror.
This film contains examples of:
- Adaptational Nationality: Catherine is referred to as an American in the English dub.
- The Apprentice: The whole mess starts because Cathy agrees to become apprentice to the Queen of Leak.
- Big Bad: The Queen of Leak, the Wicked Witch who turns Cathy into a vampire.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Queen of Leak is destroyed but Cathy dies as well.
- Black Magic: Cathy is an academic who specializes in folk curses. She mentions having done a book on voodoo in the past.
- Deus ex Machina: The Queen kills Mehendra's uncle, and nearly kills Mehendra himself when his other, more powerful uncle shows up out of the blue to defeat her.
- Eats Babies: The Queen has Cathy drink the blood of either newborns or very late term fetuses so she can absorb the most life energy.
- Evil Laugh: The Queen of Leak has a maniacal cackle, which is said to be common among leak sorcerors.
- Evil Mentor: The Queen of Leak takes Cathy under her wing and teaches her the ways of leak magic, but this is all part of a plan to make her a vampire who drains babies to bring the Queen their life force.
- Femme Fatalons: The Queen's fingernails are longer than the rest of her hand, fingers and all.
- Flying Face: The Queen turns Cathy into a penanggalan, which are vampires flying heads with their organs trailing behind them.
- Greater-Scope Villain: It's strongly implied that the power of leak is supplied by Satan himself, but he never shows up onscreen nor is it confirmed.
- Hollywood Voodoo: Cathy outright calls voodoo "the Black Magic of Africa."
- Immortality Immorality: The Queen of Leak turns Cathy into a horrible vampire so she can absorb the Life Energy she steals from infants and become young forever.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: Catherine's penanggalan form devours the life force of a child as it's being born in her first scene, which kills the mother in the process.
- Intimate Marks: The Queen of Leak scribes a Power Tattoo on Catherine's thigh that marks her as the Queen's student.
- Job Title: There are two groups of mystics in the film: the Queen of Leak and Catherine, who use Black Magic, and Mehendra and his uncles, who use a different, counterbalancing form.
- Our Vampires Are Different: This movie uses the penanggalan, who are flying heads with their organs trailing behind them. Here they are slaves of powerful mages, tasked with bringing their victims' life force so the mages can absorb it for themselves. However, if the mage dies they die too.
- Overly-Long Tongue: The Queen has an incredibly long, forked tongue that she can even do magic through.
- Pig Man: The Queen transforms into one during the final battle.
- Power Tattoo: To gain the powers of leak, one must get a special tattoo on their skin in a place nobody will see. If the tattoos are destroyed somehow, the power goes away.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: This is the first thing the Queen teaches Cathy. They turn into pigs.
- Weakened by the Light: The Queen of Leak is killed when she's distracted by a Wizard Duel and doesn't notice the sunrise, which burns her up.
- What Happened to Mommy?: Mehendra tries to be a loving and supportive boyfriend to Cathy throughout her whole ordeal. However, eventually his uncle convinces him that she has been completely subsumed by the Queen of Leak, and has to die to destroy her master.
- Wicked Witch: The Queen of Leak is an Indonesian twist on the old tropes, being an old hag who constantly cackles and uses dark sorcery to control her apprentices and make them steal Life Energy from infants for her youth. In the English dub she even sounds like the Wicked Witch of the West.
