El triángulo diabólico de las Bermudas

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.

Edward (John Huston...yes, that John Huston) charters the Black Whale III to take his family out to some Caribbean waters to search for what he believes is a sunken city. Naturally, they pass into the Bermuda Triangle and strange stuff starts happening (can you guess which actor disappears first, paycheck clenched tightly in hand?). It is up to Capt. Briggs (Hugo Stiglitz) to get everyone to safety. René Cardona Jr. was certainly getting his water freak on during this time period (this, TINTORERA, CYCLONE). The film is slim on thrills but somehow watchable. Cardona throws about every horror cliché at the screen and the crux of the plot rests on a young girl fishing a possessed doll (that may or may not be an old Triangle victim...don't ask) out of the ocean in order for the mayhem to start an hour in. He then throws in some other Triangle incidents randomly like some planes that go missing. There is also some nice underwater footage but Cardona ruins it all with some unnecessary real footage of two sharks being killed. Ugh. On a side note, did something drastically go wrong in John Huston's personal life in 1977? Divorce? Health bills? Loan sharks? Something? Because I can't explain his starring roles that year in this, TENTACLES, and Umberto Lenzi's BATTLE FORCE. We're talking three years removed from CHINATOWN here folks.

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.

Folks on a boat cruising around the Bermuda Triangle find an evil doll floating around in the ocean. The doll is given to a little girl on board and then a bunch of strange stuff starts happening. What a turd. John Huston must have needed money badly. It doesn't have much to say about the Bermuda Triangle, either. That's just a means to an end to get this evil doll story going. On the plus side, the bad dubbing and worse dialogue are good for laughs. There are also a few weirdos in the supporting cast who are fun. Beautiful Gloria Guida certainly gives us some nice eye candy. It's not a good movie but fans of badly-dubbed stinkers might like it more.

Bermuda Triangle, The (1978)

* (out of 4)

Incredibly bad film from Mexican director Rene Cardona, Jr. A family goes off to the Bermuda Triangle to see what the big deal is and guess what happens. This film tries to be mysterious and creepy but fails on both levels because the screenplay is all over the place and never really makes a bit of sense. Character enter and exit the film without any explanation and the "mystery" of the Bermuda Triangle is never resolved or even talked about much, although the film tries to play claim to a cursed doll, which causes all the problems. There's some wonderful underwater photography but this too get hampered by three real sharks being killed on the screen for no reason. John Huston, Andres Garcia, Gloria Guida and Claudine Auger star.