The Devil's Triangle

I still fondly remember a flurry of Devil's Triangle interest from my childhood during the 1970's in conjunction with the UFO / otherworldly phenomenon craze which led to such amusing cultural artifacts as IN SEARCH OF ... with Leonard Nimoy, PROJECT BLUE BOOK by Jack Webb, and various Bionic Man episodes involving ESP, space aliens, wolf boys, and Japanese soldiers who had held out since WW2. I probably encountered this TV special somewhere along the lines even if I don't specifically remember it -- the model boat footage has a familiar feel to it, and it's the kind of nonfiction G-rated harmless fluff that my folks would have allowed us 5 - 8 year olds to watch. Maybe on a Sunday night right after IN SEARCH OF ... which was weekly fare around our house.

The film is presented as a documentary about The Devil's Triangle, using stock footage, interviews with apparent survivors of ill-fated forays into the famed area of the Caribbean, a few model special effects shots, and tourist footage of the Bahamas & lower Florida. It's never boring though, with Vincent Price's deliciously voiced narration always tweaking your geek nerve whenever he allows the phrase "The Devil's Triangle" to roll off his tongue. Price's narration is priceless and in spite of the dramatic footage chosen for the special, his wording is by far the most interesting aspect of the production.

But the reason I sought this out as an adult is that it provides the only cinematic musical score credit to King Crimson, one of the great overbearing art-rock bands of the 60's/70's, 80's/90's, and still in operation today under the domineering fist of one Robert "Bob" Fripp, an accomplished guitarist, economics theorist, musical industry critic, and hero to legions of budding young musicians who have fallen sway to his mesmerizing Bournemouth spell. Fripp is the very embodiment of the rock musician as an intellectual: Short, bespeckled, usually dressed in a suit + tie since 1978 or so, he has confounded and intrigued three generations of acid eating art rockers who find his particular brand of electronic symphonics to be the best thing since sliced bread.

I count myself as part of that legion, and my favorite era of King Crimson music has always been the 1968 - 1972 Fripp With An Afro period of the band's history. After being familiar with Fripp's somewhat caustic view of the world for 25 years now it is no surprise to figure out *WHY* this particular project he may or may not have been directly involved in hasn't been an emphasized footnote from his resume. THE DEVIL'S TRIANGLE happens to be the same title as the name of a composition -- 11 minutes in length on album -- that Fripp penned for his 1970 King Crimson without Ian McDonald album "In the Wake of Poseidon" that he regards these days with some disdain. Essentially a spin off on Holst's "Mars: God of War" from the composer's "The Planets" suite (which Crimson famously covered as their show-stopper climactic number from a legendary 1969 tour of Britain & America), which was apparently so close to the original composition that Holst's estate sued Crimson for plagiarism. Or so the legend goes.

That in itself would be enough to give the always penny conscious Fripp a bellyache, but the producers of this TV special decided to use Crimson's "The Devil's Triangle" as the theme music for their movie. Mostly this amounts to the same 4 minutes or so of Mellotron heavy droning from the composition's middle segment -- we never hear it at full length, though the composition's (sic) flutey conclusion is used to good effect during the opening credits -- that most Crimsonites might be hard pressed to understand what the point of using it was. Other than cashing in on the title & using some of the music's atmospherics to add weightiness to cheaply staged model effects shots of a boat bobbing in some tank meant to represent the Caribbean Sea. And there are some anomalistic waftings of Mellotron-ish sounding noise/music here & there which just might be outtake reels from the "Poseidon" sessions, though nobody I have been able to ask seems to be able to identify them.

One pictures Fripp agreeing to allow ABC & the producers to use the section of music, depositing a royalties check, being provided with a video copy of the finished project to enjoy, and watching with resigned bemusement as the same two minutes of music are repeated over & over & over again, with Mr. Pice ominously narrating the events being depicted. It would have been the very definition of the term "underwhelming", and as such Mr. Fripp's decision not to trumpet this as the career breakthrough he had been waiting for is somewhat better understood now that I have seen it for myself. King Crimson would have been a perfect choice for a rock band to score a movie, but sadly it never happened (though Fripp & Crimson's music has been heard in a few films of exception, most notably BUFFALO '66, and "The Devil's Triangle" was also used apparently without permission in the 1970 Hong Kong snake horror epic DEVIL WOMAN) and to date this remains the only official "musical score credit" to perhaps the most cinematic thinking of all the British art rocker dinosaur gods. Curious.

The long and short of it is that if you really, really like "The Devil's Triangle" from King Crimson's "In the Wake of Poseidon", enjoy listening to Vincent Price talk, and have a thing for other worldly phenomenon studies, this movie was tailor made to your singular, unique and peculiar tastes. It's not a bad documentary either for what it's worth, coming in at under an hour in length and filled with offbeat footage, strange interviews with obscure individuals, and lots of groaning Mellotrons. You can do much worse for an hour of your time, actually.

6/10

This is a documentary narrated by Vincent Price and tells the history of the Bermuda Triangle AKA The Devil's Triangle which is one of these great mysteries of the modern era and always fascinated me as a schoolboy and has perhaps been solved in the meantime which I'll come to in a moment

In its favour it's not a documentary that doesn't make things up unlike a notorious spoof documentary called THE OUTER SPACE CONNECTION which claimed the last words from the ill fated Flight 19 was " Don't follow us they look like they're from outer space " but is slightly guilty of missing things out and leaving more scientific explanations as a short footnote

Take Flight 19 for example . The official report says the flight got lost and ditched in the sea and a plane involved in the search was lost having exploded . This documentary acknowledges this and makes a big play that flight 19 commander Lt Taylor mentions " white seas " which insinuates something . Add to this the dulcet tones of Vincent Price an actor best known - only known ? - for his horror roles and you think you know what's being insinuated - something supernatural . The truth is Lt Taylor a pilot with a reputation as being a bit of a maverick led the flight got slightly lost and in order to compensate for this tried to find his coordinates and get the flight even more lost . On the morning in question eye witnesses stated they thought Taylor was suffering from a bad hang over ( Not mentioned in the documentary ) which wouldn't have helped and could have been a major factor is the loss of the flight The plane that went missing during the search for Flight 19 was a Martin PBM Mariner . So what you ask ? It wasn't a plane that was very popular with crews who often referred to the as " flying gas tanks " In fact when the RAF bought them from the Americans during the war they ended up returning them asking for their money back and use their own flying boats . Eyewitnesses during the search said they saw bright lights in the area where the Mariner was searching ( Not mentioned ) and these lights would almost certainly have been an explosion

There was also an incident including two Strato Fortress planes in 1962 " The first jet age victims of the triangle " but the documentary fails to mention that wreckage was recovered and the board of enquiry concluded both planes collided with one another and that it was a tragic accident . They didn't disappear from the face of the Earth as suggested here

When this documentary was produced a phenomena little known in the mid 1970s - gas hydrates emitting from the sea . This means water loses all buoyancy and ship passing over it would quickly sink . It's interesting that during his domed flight Lt Taylor mentions " white seas " and if someone was to sails across a stretch of sea with gas hydrates it would sink . Planes in general and the Grumman Avenger bombers weren't known for their floating ability . Heaven anyone trying to land in a plane in this stretch of ocean . It also explains the other disappearances

As it stands THE DEVIL'S TRIANGLE isn't a total loss . It's not a documentary that doesn't make up myths of its own but does play up to the known myths and speculation while ignoring important facts . In other words it's a sensationalist documentary

I just wanted to add, that the King Crimson tune they used is, of the same title, on the In The Wake Of Poseidon Lp. Convenient, huh? When I rented the movie to see what cuts they used, all that was used was the same bit over and over. I think they used the the climactic section (for lack of better term, bridge perhaps?) bit too, although you really have to strain to hear it.Cool tune too. Reading the reviews makes me want to see it again, but it was nearly unbearable to watch because the sound was awful. You could barely hear Prices' voice! Everything was buried in a murky mix, and the quality of the photography was sub-par. I wonder if Fripp or the musicians he worked with at the time of recording the piece, got any royalties. I think otherwise, being an obscure number, the film company responsible for this, probably thought they could get away with it. The box the tape came in, stated on the front "original music by King Crimson", Vincent Price and King Crimson together sounds pretty cool though, which prompted me to check it out in the first place.

It was in released in the mid-1970s when everybody was coming out with movies trying to explain the Bermuda Triangle craze. Unlike most of those (which were mostly documentaries anyway), this one was a fictional explanation. It seems pretty straightforward in it's storytelling until the last ten minutes. It is this last ten minutes that actually frightened me. If you have the chance to see this one I'd recommend it.

Back in college I studied marketing and, even though I missed a whole lot of classes and never really paid any attention, I will always remember the main and most essential principle of marketing, namely: it's not what you sell; it's HOW you sell it! This principle fully applies to "The Devil's Triangle", as it's basically a beautifully wrapped and enticing yet empty package. Writer/director Richard Winer knew exactly that he had to divert the viewer's attention away from the major inaccuracies, so he threw in some elements that never fail when it comes to providing a creepy atmosphere, like the sinister voice of narrator Vincent Price and the oddball music of King Crimson. And I'm guessing Richard Winer's dirty little tricks worked very efficiently, as there was a huge Bermuda Triangle hype going on during the mid-70's and literally every movie production – whether it was an inaccurate documentary or a sleazy exploitation flick – covering the topic earned big money at the box office. "The Devil's Triangle" overwhelms you with data that is unstructured and often irrelevant, but the severe dramatization of the facts and of course the intimidating stark voice of the almighty Vincent Price generates an ambiance of fright and creepiness. The narration constantly jumps back and forward in time and covers a massive amount of "strange occurrences" and "mysterious vanishings" of ships and airplanes in the Bermuda Triangle throughout a period of nearly one whole century, but the reports remain extremely vague at all times and the eloquent Mr. Price invariably ends every chapter with the sinister words "… just another unsolved mystery of the Devil's Triangle…". After a couple of cases the whole formula simply becomes laughable and almost pathetic, but I guess it caused genuine mass hysteria back in 1974. The documentary expands a little more on the most notorious Bermuda Triangle mysteries, like the five planes of military Flight 19 that inexplicably disappeared all at once and the peculiar case of the vessel USS Cyclops, but still even in these chapters only a minimum of serviceable information is given. The cameras never at one point go underwater to explore the depths of the Bermuda area, for example, and the testimonies of the supposedly real-life witnesses of the dramas suspiciously look like staged acting scenes. If you're looking for an informative and objective documentary on the Bermuda Triangle, I certainly wouldn't recommend this movie, but in case you want to sit back and listen to Vincent Price's hypnotizing voice for nearly a full hour, this is your chance!