11 December 2024
The Bermuda Depths (1978)
98 min.
Directed by Tsugunobu Kotani.
With Lee H. Montgomery, Joseph Campanella, Meredith Baxter, Rosemary Murphy, Arthur O'Connell, Kaz Garaz, Paul Carr, Kenneth Tobey.
The Bermuda Depths isn't really a horror flick. Rather, it's a sci-fi/romance hybrid. Think Gamera meets Splash.

But there's such a serious, flickering, occult ambience to it - perhaps a result of the eastern influence of its director, mixed with the surreal flavors of Rankin Bass - that we felt compelled to review it here.

Traumatized by the death of his parents when he was a child, an adult Magnus (McCloskey) returns home to Bermuda in hopes of some emotional closure. But there, he meets mysterious Jennie (Sellecca), a lovely young woman who seems to have no home, no past, and who spends a LOT of time in the ocean. Could Jennie be a figment of Magnus' fragile psyche? If she's real, could she possibly be an immortal creature who resides in the ocean's depths? What does she want?

This odd TV flick is less about answers, and all about mood instead. Carl Weathers and Burl Ives provide some excellent support, the latter featuring in a great helicopter crash scene, one of the effort's standout moments. Ultimately, Bermuda Depths classifies as one of those "not for all tastes"; for some, its atmosphere will be too distant, its execution too dreamlike. But if you have the patience, give it a whirl. You might enjoy it. Aka It Came Up from the Depths.

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