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.

"The Bermuda Triangle" is mostly a corny movie. But it's also a fun movie. The plot is pretty routine - a tour boat begins experiencing unexplainable things - I like the set of characters that it depicts: the kindly old man who has wise words about everything, the indigenous steerer who warns the passengers about interfering with the ocean, the bikini-clad babe, the girl whose cuteness is hiding something, and some others. These 1970s European horror flicks are the sorts of movies that you just gotta love. And this one is enough to make anyone want to go scuba diving...maybe in the Bermuda Triangle. As for René Cardona Jr., the only other movie of his that I've seen is "Beaks", a hilariously bad ripoff of "The Birds".

Since this movie stars John Huston (the director of "The Maltese Falcon") and Hugo Stiglitz (to whom Quentin Tarantino paid homage in "Inglourious Basterds"),I now picture Brad Pitt's redneck telling the ocean something like: "I need me two million square kaɪ̯lometers*. We're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only: disappearin' taʊ̯rists**!"

*kilometers

**tourists

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.