Leofwine_draca
THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE is a low key, low budget science fiction thriller by Mexican director Rene Cardona, Jr. It's set on a boat stranded at sea in the Bermuda Triangle, where the assembled passengers and crew are assailed by constant strange events and mysteries: a doll is washed up and a little girl feeds it raw meat; they receive constant transmissions from vessels and planes that aren't around; an underwater earthquake threatens a diving expedition; people begin to die in strange accidents. Truth be told, it's a slimly-plotted film that feels more than a little dragged out at times; there's little actual 'meat' to the story, just one thing following another. The lack of a decent budget precludes any big effects but you do get turns from Mexican film star Hugo Stiglitz alongside a slumming-it John Huston and former Bond girl Claudine Auger. It's a film you watch to experience the mildly spooky atmosphere more than anything else.
udar55
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.
Chase_Witherspoon
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.
MARIO GAUCI
I know I've watched some film about the mysterious and notorious titular area in my childhood but I can't, for the life of me, recall if this was the one - hence my considering it as a first viewing! The subject matter is handled in the low-brow fashion which prevailed during the last gasp of "Euro-Cult" - even to the point of ludicrously ripping off Mario Bava's KILL, BABY...KILL! (1966) in the figure of the sinister girl, with a devil-doll in tow, 'causing' the various deaths; the silly revelation at the finale, then, takes it into "Outward Bound" territory! The 'star' cast looks embarrassed (an absurdly over-age John Huston, above all, must have been hard-up for cash - though, in all probability, he was financing WISE BLOOD [1979], one of his least commercial films, during this time) tackling their respective stereotyped characters, which include a perennially soused ex-doctor and a scaredy-cat of a black chef (the kind that was already passé forty years previously)! Stelvio Cipriani's efficient score is utterly wasted on this drivel.
AD
