The Bermuda Triangle (1978)

One of the most enduring mysteries of the 20th century, one of the greatest unsolved puzzles in aviation and maritime history has remained what exactly happened to all of those ships and aircraft that supposedly vanished in that area of the North Atlantic between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico known as the Bermuda Triangle. Explanations have ranged from the absurd (black holes, alien abductions, the influence of sunken Atlantis) to the prosaic (the effects of the Gulf Stream, extreme weather conditions) but it’s a subject that has exercised the minds of the curious since at least the 1950s, and more so since the 1970s following the publication of Charles Berlitz’s best-selling book The Bermuda Triangle (1974). But no-one has ever got to the bottom of the mystery. No-one that is except Mexican exploitation veteran René Cardona Jr who worked it all out for us in his 1978 film named after Berlitz’s book. Wonder no more for the answer to all those mysterious disappearances is – a killer doll. Of course, it all makes perfect sense…

We first meet the blanked-eyed killer in a short prologue showing a young girl falling victim of the Triangle aboard a sailing ship in the late 19th century before being introduced to a bickering 20th century family and various hangers on aboard the pleasure cruiser Black Whale III. One of them spots what at first seems to be a body floating in the sea but on examination turns out to be doll which is instantly adopted by young Diana (the singularly named Gretha). The adults around her are the usual collection of stereotypes (the drunk, the concerned mother, the grumpy captain et al, played incongruously by the likes of John Huston and Claudine Auger and perhaps more understandably by those seemingly permanent fixtures of Mexican low budget tat Hugo Stiglitz and Andrés García) with not a shred of actual personality between them so when the doll turns out to be evil and starts causing their deaths (and apparently eating birds) we really don’t care one jot about any of them.

At nearly two hours long it’s an endurance test, 112 minutes of not much happening – and what little does happen is all too often interrupted by interminable scenes of people swimming about underwater, beautifully photographed by Ramon Bravo, but utterly tedious. The pay-off is ridiculous too – the ship is reported to have been missing for 12 years before simply vanishing into thin air via a rubbish optical dissolve and an end crawl listing the various ships and aircraft that have gone missing in the area. There’s also a detour in search of Atlantis but by the time we get to that part, no-one cares.

The problems with The Bermuda Triangle are many and varied. Not only is it dull and frankly rather pointless. It never set out to solve anything but it leaves viewers more mystified than ever as to what might be going on. To its credit, no-one had previously guessed that it was the work of demonically possessed doll but that’s not enough to support a plodding and dreary film. More troubling is the extraordinary throwback to an earlier period of film-making when black characters – like Simon the cook, played here by Jorge Zamora “Zamorita” – were played by the likes of “Stepin Fetchit” (Lincoln Perry). Even in 1978 this would have been seen as lazy and offensive stereotyping.

Though Berlitz’s name is nowhere to be seen in the credits, it’s very obvious that the success of his book was the instigation for this sorry old rubbish. The book reputedly sold nearly 20 million copies in 30 languages and helped to raise the profile of the various mysteries surrounding the are though many of Berlitz’s assertions were later challenged – he stands accused of not doing any actual research into the supposed disappearances but simply regurgitating existing myths and legends about the area. The following year, Richard Friedenberg used the title again for his documentary about the Triangle which explored some of the more outre explanations for what might be going on on the area. But it doesn’t touch on the biggest mystery of them all – not the problem of what causes all those lives to be lost in the so-called “Devil’s Triangle” but how the hell John Huston managed to get suckered into this nonsense. Presumably it had something to do with him living in Mexico during the 70s so this was nice and local for him, but who knows? It’s one mystery that will, perhaps, have to remain unsolved…