SOS-SOS-SOS... Bermuda-Dreieck

I stumbled upon the 1978 movie "The Bermuda Triangle" in 2021. I had never heard about the movie before. But as I had the chance to sit down and watch it, of course I did. And I must say that I was initially intrigued, because the mystery that surrounds the area of the Bermuda Triangle is very interesting in itself.

However, "The Bermuda Triangle" felt more like a series of randomly filmed segments filmed at the demand of director René Cardona Jr. As he came up with ideas as the filming progressed. There weren't really any real red thread to the course of the movie, which made for a less than mediocre movie experience actually.

Sure, the movie was showing signs of being from 1978, but it was actually sort of charming and fun to watch. The sound felt like it had been restored on the version I watched, and especially the dialogue felt like they had recorded new voice-over, because it sounded very atrocious and felt sort of out of tune with the characters on the screen.

I found little enjoyment in "The Bermuda Triangle", and it was a shame, because I had initially hoped for a bit more from the movie, truth be told.

I am rating this 1978 movie a mere three out of ten stars, mostly because the movie didn't really feel like a proper movie, but more like a random collection of filmed events put together to form a movie of sorts.

Cheese and ham, uniquely baked into a mess but somehow watchable. Completely overdubbed and bizarrely so. There are two young children in this. Their overdubbed voices sound like non-actors 10 years older with English as their second language, while dictating a script they are unfamiliar with. Crazy film making. The story is simple and linear but the acting and dialogue, OMG.

The characters are dumb in this. It's strikingly obvious to most characters what the problem is but no one takes the easy step to solve it. Geeez.

Rene Cardona, Jnr was arguably the most recognisable Latin exploitation film maker in the late seventies through mid eighties, and his brand was easily identifiable through his use of fading American character actors and gory special effects. Disappointingly, that brand is conspicuously absent here, with John Huston in a relatively brief supporting role, the only 'marquee' import, and little to none of the gory special effects usually synonymous with a Cardona picture.

The plot concerns the usual spate of mysterious disappearances converging on the Bermuda Triangle, while research vessel inadvertently sails into a maelstrom of intrigue and bizarre occult activity that seems to centre on a creepy-looking doll that is found floating in the ocean. It soon possesses the youngest child and in turn manages to wreak havoc amongst the rest of the crew, until, mysteriously, just a handful of weary survivors remain.

Perennial Cardona leading-men Stiglitz and Garcia make an amiable cinema coupling, and they continue their reliable presence here, with the once-sultry Marina Vlady and former bombshell Claudine Auger largely wasted in shallow supporting roles. Miguel Fuentes as a chiselled, Neanderthal looking mechanic is unintentionally hilarious at times, as he randomly emerges from the small engine room door to taunt the spooked passengers with doomsday prophecies, before returning to the ship's bowels to inhale more petrol fumes and envisage even more facile tales of terror for his next appearance.

While not totally inept - some unsettling suspense, good sets, colour and sound in particular - the special effects are profoundly amateurish and the dialogue is at times, painfully puerile. The possessed doll on which the story centres however does convey a certain Argento 'esque feel which is plainly scary (watch for those unnerving close-ups of the doll's face - creepy). Not your typical Cardona-style picture, and probably more accessible as a result. Average, but worth a look.

This movie was poorly directed. For example, there's the scene with the pillars falling - instead of swimming away from them, or over the pillars that had already fallen, they swim in between those that haven't fallen yet, putting themselves in more danger as they fall.

Was the killing of the sharks and actual beheading the small birds necessary? I wasn't expecting to see the killing of sharks for no reason other than some kind of cruel entertainment.

Some of the acting was very bad too. Even John Huston did not perform well.

There was, however something I liked about this movie, namely Gloria Guida, who was as beautiful as any actress in the world at that time.

Before I forget, I'd like to point out how that John Huston's two sons in this film are dubbed in a hilariously camp way that just adds to the general weird atmosphere of this one.

The title says it all - It's a film about the Bermuda Triangle. Kind of. It takes place almost entirely on a boat called The Black Whale III, owned by explorer John Huston and filled with his relatives - his two daughters (one a small child, the other played by definitely not a small child Gloria Guida), his two, campy-voiced sons, his drunken ex-doctor brother-in-law and his put-upon wife (Claudine Auger). There's also a crew consisting of permanently rough looking Hugo Stiglitz, skipper Andres Garcia, a token black chef, and some others peeps.

Huston is out looking for a lost city, but before he finds anything, they fish a creepy doll out of the sea which is adopted by his youngest daughter. The next thing you know the daughter is asking the chef for raw meat for the doll (!), they keep receiving mayday signals from boats that vanished years before and that's just the start of the weirdness.

I had a look at the running time of this one and at nearly two hours I thought I was going to be bored. It's cheaply made and all over the place, there's random footage of shark hunting thrown in and the film is full of wooden actors, but there's a few times where the creepiness factor in this film is turned all the way up to ten. The little girl is randomly attacked by parrots and it's implied that the doll bit a few of their throats out. Worse still, some of the cutaway shots to the doll reveal the doll being played by a human child. That caught me off guard and is by far the creepiest part of the film.

And it's rated 'U'! Did anyone watch this thing? One character gets her legs crushed and we get to see it in glory close-up. Another falls onto broken glass and bleeds out, then there's the bit that had me rewinding in disbelief - a character is under the boat doing a bit of spot-welding when a propellor starts up and the guy explodes! A U, how?

This film is cheap, oddly acted at times and overlong, but i'll be damned if it didn't work for me!