Bermude: la fossa maledetta aka Cave of the sharks (1978)

As many horrormoviefans out there, I was a proud owner of Phil Hardys giant tome of snobby moviereviews, The Encyclopedia of horror movies. Many days were spent memorizing the damn thing and still today there are movies in it that I have never seen, longing for a nice dvd. One of those movies were Tonino Riccis Bermude: la fossa maledetta aka Cave of the sharks, a rather odd movie that has a fun and intriguing concept, but a low budget that hampers the fun a bit. Still, as corny exploitation this works just fine.

Hunky Andrés Garcia plays Andres montoya, a fisherman that was lost at sea for six months, not even having any recollection of where he has been. He gets together with his old girlfriend (Janet Ågren), causing friction with his brother who is in love with her but really, this doesnt have anything to do with the plot. Andres is hired by an american businessman (Arthur Kennedy)to recover valuables from an airplane that supposedly sunk in the bermuda triangle and when he and a friend goes on a dive they discover a mysterious cave full of sleeping sharks and Andres starts to get flashbacks to what may have happened to him earlier. When the american doublecrosses them, even weirder things start to happen. His friend is sucked into some sort of underwater portal for starters, there is a shitload of really poor underwater miniatures and the sleeping sharks awake, where we get a rather cool sequence when our hero tries to make it back to his boat by feeding the sharks with the bodies of the americans henchmen.

No, nothing really makes any sense. The bermudatriangle seems to be about a kilometer outside whatever tourist resort Tonino Ricci chose to film this at (you see the shore all the time), there is a long sequence where a bunch of hippies on a boat stare at a weird doll that starts to ooze blood through its mouth, upon which all of them commit suicide by drowning (a rather atmospheric sequence that really doesnt have anything to do with the rest of the movie) and then there are those fishtank miniatures... But the story in itself is fairly intriguing, the dreamlike visuals are atmospheric (a lot thanks to Stelvio Ciprianis bleeps and bloops) and although the miniatures are awful, they do bring a certain weird something into the story as long as you are in the right mood. This isnt a Jaws clone, it is a weird scifimovie with sharks and although nothing really gels into a coherent experience, it is still weird enough to warrant a watch.