MCBASTARD'S MAUSOLEUM: THE BERMUDA DEPTHS (1978) (Warner Archive Blu-ray Review)

THE BERMUDA DEPTHS (1978)

Label: Warner Archive
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated

Duration: 97 Minutes

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD (1.33:1) Full Frame, (1.85:1) Widescreen

Director: Tsugunobu Kotani

Cast: Leigh McCloskey, Carl Weathers, Connie Sellecca, Julie Woodson, Ruth Attaway, Burl Ives

Hypnotic TV terror The Bermuda Depths (1978) was a co-production between Rankin/Bass (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) and the Japanese studio Tsuburaya (Ultraman), it was the second of three live-action films they made together, which included The Last Dinosaur (1977) and The Ivory Ape (1980). In it a young man named Magnus Dens (Leigh McCloskey, Inferno) returns to the the sleepy Bermuda beach front community where his marine biologist father mysteriously died twenty years earlier. While sleeping on the beach Magnus is approached by the gorgeous Jennie Haniver (Connie Selleca, TV's The Greatest American Hero), whom he remembers meeting when they were both children. He dreams of their first encounter playing on a beach, and we see a flashback of her making a seashell necklace for him, which he still wears. We also see him carve their initials inside a heart right into the back of a shell of a living sea turtle, which seems all sorts of wrong watching it now, but back in the 70's I guess scarring a living animal with your initials was considered "sweet".

While in town Magnus also reconnects with his friend Eric (Carl Weathers, Predator), seen wearing some eyebrow raising short shorts and a half shirt, who is now working on a research vessel (a.k.a. a tugboat) with a former peer of Magnus' father, Dr. Paulis (Burl Ives, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). The pair seem to be trawling the sea looking for an enormous creature, a turtle of unusual size, which is somehow connected with the research of Magnus' father.

Dr. Pulais and Eric get pretty excited when something large nearly capsizes their boat before shredding their trawling nets, and by evidence that something rather large has left distinctive tracks along the beach, leaving behind a trail that appears to be that of a gigantic turtle. Eric is so obsessed with capturing the creature that he has developed a silly looking bazooka-harpoon gun, which he has dubbed the "horror", that you know from start will come back into play later in the film.

While Magnus searches for answers about the death of his father he also spends a lot of time with Jennie, the pair develop a romance, but she is a mystery unto herself. She never reveals where she lives and she always seems to be emerging from the sea, hmm...

Eventually the topic of Jennie comes up over dinner, and when Magnus tells Dr. Paulis her name the doc says that someone must be pulling his leg, that a "Jennie Hanover" is a sea creature of local folklore, which is later further explained by Paulis' housekeeper Delia (Ruth Attaway, Being There), who tells Magnus the tale of a young girl who sold her soul to an undersea God in exchange for her eternal youth and immortality, with that story we get a cool flashback to her story during a nasty sea storm. While Magnus refuses to believe that Jennie is a supernatural being or some sort of myth, there's definitely something strange about her, she always seems coming and going by sea, and she seems to have an empathic connection with a giant sea turtle whose appearance is a harbinger of doom.

The Bermuda Depths is a bit goofy in a lot of ways, but I still find it an unsettling watch, it melds elements of the Bermuda Triangle mystery, the supernatural, fantasy, a doomed love story, and the giant creature shenanigans of a kaiju, stirs it all up into a made-for-TV gumbo and the end result is an oddly engaging bit of 70's TV cinema. It has a strangely hypnotic pace with a dreamy half-remembered atmosphere that I adore. The creature effects of the giant turtle are not too shabby for a late-70's TV movie, these were created by Tsuburaya Productions who produced the Japanese Ultraman series. While I thought the design of the giant turtle looked good the optical effects that combine the special effects and film elements are not so hot, and look very soft when the turtle appears, but the design is cool. Not all the special effects are grade-a though, some of the miniature work like that of a R/C helicopter crashing into the seas before exploding, and a boat being bashed around by waves and sinking are of the classic toys in bathtub variety, if you've seen The Ghost Galleon (1974) you will know what I speak of. That said, I sort of love these retro-shabby practical effects, perhaps because I grew up with them.

I must have seen this in '78 when it aired as part of the ABC Friday Night Movie line-up, or perhaps later when it was re-run, either way, when I was still a kiddo in the single-digits. I do not remembering it scaring me, but it certainly fascinated and enthralled me. Funnily, I actually did not actually remember watching it until I was viewing this Blu-ray and then it all came flooding back to me. I think I must have thought that the giant turtle from my memories had been a dream of some sort, and not an actual movie that I had seen when I was five. This coming in '78 it is most certainly a Jaws knock-off to varying degrees, certain scenes out on the ocean bare witness to this, but it's not a straight knock-off, it just has a few brief similarities.

The Bermuda Depths (1978) is a cool TV film from the seventies, your mileage may vary based on your level of nostalgia and appreciation of vintage, somewhat ropey-looking optical effects, but if your a die-hard made-for-TV film fan this is a kindertrauma treasure. As a kid who grew up watching In Search Off... (1977-1982), Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World (1980) and reading stuff like the Time Life book series Mysteries of the Unknown, this is total supernatural 70's catnip.

Audio/Video: Made-For-TV terror The Bermuda Depths (1976) arrives on Blu-ray from Warner Archive with a brand new 2021 1080p master sourced from 4K scan of original camera negative, and it looks phenomenal. I saw this on TV when I was still in the single digits, and while my memory of it might not be razor-sharp these days I know it did not look anywhere near as glorious as this new HD presentation. Warner Archive offers two versions of the film, we get both the 1.33:1 US original TV broadcast television version and the international theatrical version that is cropped to 1.85:1 widescreen, the way it played in theaters in foreign territories, both versions have identical run times and look identical, aside from the cropped widescreen framing. The cropped framing actually looks very nice and does not feel squeezed. Grain looks lovely, the colors are nicely saturated and look splendid, and the black levels are deep with plenty of shadow detail. The film was shot in Bermuda and the locations look wonderful, we get attractive white sands, the translucent turquoise water, gorgeous coastlines views, and it is all well-shot my cinematographer Jeri Sopanen (My Dinner With Andre), who also does some great looking underwater camerawork.

Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono with optional English subtitles. Dialogue is clean and delivered with a vintage 70's directness, and the wonderful score from Maury Laws (The Last Dinosaur, The Ivory Ape) adds to the charm of the film, including the theme song "Jennie", with lyrics penned by Jules Bass!

The sole extra a new commentary track from author/film historian Amanda Reyes (Are You in the House Alone? A TV Movie Compendium: 1964-1999) and Kindertrauma co-founder Lance Vaughan. It's a well-informed mix of facts, the anecdotal and nostalgic memories of watching the film, Reyes and Vaughan deliver the goods once again.

The single-disc release arrives in a Viva keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original key artwork that was used for both the U.S. TV advertising and for theatrical posters abroad, the Blu-ray disc features the same artwork.

Special Features:

- Includes Both the 1.33:1 US Broadcast Television Version and the 1.85:1 International Theatrical Version

- Audio Commentary by Author/ Film Historian Amanda Reyes (Are You in the House Alone? A TV Movie Compendium: 1964-1999) and Kindertrauma co-founder Lance Vaughan.

Call me nuts, but even more than their restorations for vintage classics like Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) or the selected works of Alfred Hitchcock, it's these Warner Archive restorations of made-for-TV films and series that give me such a swell of nostalgic excitement, it seriously gets by blood pumping, and this presentation of the hypnotic TV terror from 70's has me plenty excited. I say it more and more, while I keep hearing about the decline of physical media, releases like this are keeping the physical media movie collecting fires burning bright!

Screenshots from the Blu-ray: