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THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

I always found the Bermuda Triangle to be an interesting story. Fact is a lot of people have. Ever since five bombers went missing in the mysterious patch of ocean (bounded by an imaginary triangle that connects Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida) in 1945, books, magazine articles, documentaries and television shows have covered the legend extensively and wild theories involving UFOs, time portals and the lost city of Atlantis have been put forward as an explanation for why so many crafts, airplanes and ships alike, have just upped and vanished into thin air (though the actual number is nothing extraordinary). Now whether or not you buy into any of the tall tales is your own business (I don't), but you have to admit the story lends itself to fiction incredibly well. Remarkably, the Triangle features in very few films. The most recent was Christopher Smith's TRIANGLE in 2009, a strange little film that deals with murder and displacement within the space/time continuum. It's a slick, heady film that plays a neat little cinematic game. This film, directed by Rene Cardona Jr.in 1978, has none of those grand ambitions and it largely fails to deliver on its far-fetched and ultra-convoluted promises.

John Huston (yes, THAT John Huston) plays an age improbable father of four named Edward who heads off aboard a cruise ship to explore some underground ruins in the Caribbean. Along for the ride are his family (his wife Kim, his teenage son and daughter, Dave and Michelle, and their two young children, Billy and Diane; his brother, an alcoholic doctor named Peter, who is suffering the effects of a guilty conscience ever since a patient died on his operating table, and Peter's wife, Sybil) and a crew full of seamen including Captain Brigs, First Mate Alan, the ships engineer named Gordon, some random guy named Tony, and a cook named Simon (an African American man who seems to have stepped right out of a 1950s plantation drama). Everything is going smoothly onboard until someone spots a creepy doll floating in the water. They bring it onto the ship and hand it to Diane. Soon enough, Diane becomes convinced her doll is alive and all manner of weird things start to happen.

Diane is attacked by a flock of birds. Peter notices that all the birds seem to have their throats torn out. Diane's doll meanwhile has blood all over her lips. The ship loses radio contact with land, their devices begin to malfunction, and Michelle is terribly injured during a scuba expedition by a freak earthquake underwater. Storms appear out of nowhere. People disappear and are swept overboard. Something is definitely going on. Diane begins making predictions about how and when people will die and what's worse, those predictions begin to come true

All of this sounds quite interesting and it is to an extent, but this is a film without a soul. It is terribly lifeless and stiff. It feels like one of those ABC Movies of the Week that were so popular at the time. The cast list is bloated, no one seems to have any problems whatsoever that go beyond the surface level (Peter's drinking, for example; or his wife's nagging), and things randomly happen for no good reason other than to happen. It's kind of pointless to comment on the acting (Andres Garcia and Hugo Stiglitz seem to be the only two that have a pulse; Huston and Claudine Auger both just wander around aimlessly and Gloria Guida does little more than provide eye candy, something she does oh so well) but one thing that did surprise me was how well Cardona stages the many action pieces in the film. Cardona was by no means a good director but he acquits himself rather well a few times during the piece, crafting something moderately exciting out of a whole load of nothing.

If only the story were interesting, none of this would have been a big problem. At just a few minutes shy of two hours, the film just seems to go on forever. And when we finally reach the end of the film, it doesn't even bother with presenting anything close to a conclusion. It just ends. Cardona and his writers offer a twist ending, but it's just a throwaway couple of lines that don't really add up to anything. Once the final twist is presented, it's hard not to think to yourself "now why wasn't THAT idea played around with more?" Of course, the whole screenplay is filled with throwaway bits of storyline. For instance, you have a weird little cursed doll that seems to be alive (it even grows closer to a human in appearance as the story progresses) but it doesn't ever seem to be a part of the story. It's just there and from time to time we see its eyes move or someone remarks about how they should throw it overboard. It serves no real narrative purpose at all. Most of the characters didn't need to be aboard the ship either. The film would have gone a lot smoother without a literal boatload of characters to keep track of. Peter, for instance, is completely useless. He wanders around the ship drinking all day. There's a plot point later on in the film where a character is severely injured and that's the only time Peter is given anything to do. Of course, all he does is say, "she needs to go to a hospital or she'll die". Well, anyone could have figured that out. Why do we need a character to muddy up the narrative if they're not going to do anything but get in the way of the story and spout common sense statements like "someone with mangled legs should go to the hospital"?

In a lot of ways, THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE is Cardona's best film, or at least the best Cardona I've ever seen. It's one of those films that is competent enough to not fall apart completely, but is just severely lacking in narrative direction and cohesion. There were so many moments during its running time that I thought "OK, this is where it all comes together", but it doesn't. Near the beginning of the film, we see the characters sitting around discussing the Bermuda Triangle and all the various explanations people have given for the tragedies that occurred (and occur) in it. Aliens, energy forces, sea monsters, and natural phenomenon are all mentioned. Any of those things could have featured in this film but none of them do. Instead, we get a non answer. The film presents a situation so schizophrenic that it becomes impossible to for Cardona to work his way out of it. So he just gives up.

And an hour and half into THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, I gave up with him.

Not recommended.