Bermude: la fossa maledetta

Italian director Tonino Ricci's CAVE OF THE SHARKS seems like a JAWS-clone by the title, but most of the sharks here can't move, hypnotically inactive on the sea floor as Stelvio Cipriani's eerie music almost hits its haunting peak...

Only getting weirder in a scene where a group of suddenly possessed young boaters passively jump into the ocean along with a floating, blood-vomiting doll, making SHARKS more a freakish underwater hybrid of THE DEEP, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and THE EXORCIST...

And it's also a treasure-seeking crime thriller, occurring mostly above water where imported American veteran Arthur Kennedy seeks a lucrative black box from an airplane that crashed since, after all, the original titled BERMUDE: LA FOSSA MELEDETTA involves the famously enigmatic Bermuda Triangle...

Where Spanish actor Andrés García, starring in this Mexican-shot Italian-backed production, had originally vanished and then reappeared, reunited with the director's future NIGHT OF THE SHARKS ingenue Janet Agren, busy in a rather complicated cuckolding romance...

So when those sharks wake up and finally become deadly, there's only ten minutes left in an oceanic fantasy with just about every offbeat exploitation genre covered, and then some.

This is one strange shark movie. It's basically a movie about some kind of superior underwater race who for unknown reasons uses mind controlled sharks and the Bermuda triangle to kidnap fishermen... or something like that, I've seen it twice and still ain't sure. Although long parts of the movie is pretty dull (the Italians never seem to get the dramatic part working, but who cares?), parts of it has a surreal feel and is actually pretty damn scary. The ultra low budget really shows in the action scenes. Cardboard boats sinking in an aquarium gets to symbolize the Bermuda triangles devastating force, and there's even a cardboard sunken city. Hey, it works for me. There's one fantastic scene in the movie - it will haunt me forever: A bunch of people hang out at a yacht and a bearded guy sets the mood by playing a creepy song on his acoustic guitar. It goes something like "The sun is shining - on the beautiful ocean". A girl is walking around with a deformed doll in her hand. For no reason at all she suddenly throws the doll in the sea and then jumps after it. People start throwing themselves in the sea, one by one, and for no given reason. Blood starts coming out of the deformed doll and sharks appear, but they never attack...

Shark's Cave tries to be a Jaws clone with a twist (it even copies the "dead-guy-popping-out-of-the-sunken-ship" - scene from Spielberg's masterpiece), but ends up being something completely different: a solid work of Italian madness. To this day, it remains director Tonino Ricci's only decent effort; he's bad even by Italian standards. Well, Shark's Cave must have done something right - against better judgment I've just started my search for his 1987 follow-up: Night of The Sharks...

Bermuda: Cave of the Sharks is just one of many Italian shark-themed movies to follow in the wake of Jaws, but I wouldn't class it as a rip-off of Spielberg's film; I certainly wouldn't call it a horror. In fact, I'm not sure how to label the film, as it spans several genres, including crime, thriller, adventure, and sci-fi/fantasy. It doesn't do any of them very well.

Andrés García plays diver Andres Montoya, who, together with his friend Enrique (Pino Colizzi), is hired by criminal Mr. Jackson (Arthur Kennedy) to salvage a box from a plane that has crashed somewhere in the Bermuda triangle. The men successfully locate the box, but they also find a mysterious cave guarded by sharks, which may hold the key to unlocking Andres's amnesia.

Directed with little energy by Tonino Ricci, shoddily edited and boasting some of the most laughable miniature effects shots I have ever seen (the airplane scene is terrible), the film is a failure on almost every level. The story is all over the place, the film never more baffling than when a group of young people on a boat - who we haven't been introduced to - jump into the sea and drown (one of them definitely deserves his watery fate for singing a truly terrible song to his friends).

Only in the final five minutes or so does the film provide anything else of note, as Andres's girlfriend Angelica (Janet Agren) dives to the cave, with the double-crossing Mr. Jackson sending his henchmen in hot pursuit. Andres rescues Angelica by shooting the other divers and feeding them to the sharks, resulting in shredded torsos and severed limbs; unfortunately for Andres, he isn't fast enough out of the water and has his leg torn off before disappearing under the waves.

We never learn what is in the box or the secret of the cave (although we do get to see the silhouette of some strange being - possibly Dipsy from the Teletubbies).

I have watched this movie when I was pretty young - about the age of 10 or so. Back then I was pretty fascinated with divers, sunken treasures, sharks. Although I was very scared of supernatural phenomenons, such as the stories I have heard of the Bermuda Triangle, I felt compelled to learn what I could of the subject. I was also terrified of sharks - possibly due to viewing Jaws, and another movie called "The Last Shark", where the gore gave me real nightmares. But still, I felt drawn to such films, I don't know; call it masochism. Thus, it was no exception that I rented this movie from the local VHS store and watched it with my younger brother and our babysitter in a night when our parents went out. This movie was damn scary and gave me nightmares I remember to this day: The strange doll the small girl had which sprouted blood from its mouth, the scene which a rather modern ship is desperately trying to menouver a whirlpool in the triangle, and the scene which a shark chews the leg of one of the heroes....... This last scene made me so scared that my nerves yielded and I was forced to stop the tape from running......without knowing the end of the movie...... I never stopped thinking about this movie and how it ended, and I never forgave myself for not watching it to the end - mainly because I couldn't find this movie anywhere else when I grew old and felt ready to face the horrors which once shook me when I viewed it as a child.

Have you always been fascinated by the Bermuda Triangle mystery? Would you also like to know more about the mystical forces or possible extraterrestrial activities that are at large on the ocean's floor? Well, then I suggest you watch National Geographic or dive into the relevant Wikipedia pages, because you most certainly won't find any answers in this largely goofy & low-budgeted Spanish/Italian co-production! It does, on the other hand, provide a good hour and half of brainless (albeit utterly senseless) exploitation entertainment for fans of sharks, demented plots, underwater footage and the ravishingly beautiful Janet Agren.

The beginning of the film is admittedly very intriguing, as it starts with the sudden return of professional diver/adventurer Andres Montoya after he, and an entire ship with crew, inexplicably vanished at sea more than six months ago. Andres doesn't have any recollection of where he spent the past half year, but it doesn't bother him too much. He gets back together with his fiance Angelica, even though she hooked up with his brother in the meantime, and cheerfully visits illegal cock-fight events. Andres is then hired by the despicable Arthur Kennedy to dive up a valuable box that got lost during a plane crash, and he realizes that he's drawn back to the mysterious bottom of the Bermuda area.

It must be highlighted that, even though completely random and disconnected from the rest of the film, "Cave of the Sharks" contains one very atmospheric and uncanny sequence. In a sort of flashback, a bunch of people on a yacht suddenly all become hypnotized and stoically step into the sea. One of the group's member is a little girl with the world's ugliest and creepiest doll, which is a cheap horror trick, I reckon, but still very effective. Furthermore, there also are sleeping (!) sharks, bare-knuckle fights and lots of nasty back-stabbing acts from Kennedy's character. The finale is extremely violent and doesn't solve anything, but that's exactly how we like our Italian cult!