Beyond the Bermuda Triangle

• Directed by William A. Graham
• November 6, 1975
• ABC

A retired businessman and his partner begin to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances.

Beyond the Bermuda Triangle is poorly made. I am really not sure what the whole point of the narrative was. It was kind of entertaining, but the story meandered around to get to the end as if things were changed on the fly. There was no focus until the last fifteen minutes or so and that focus made no sense given what they did in the beginning.

For starters the character of Jed Horn (Sam Groom) was the main character from the start and the focus of events was largely on him but by the end the focus was on businessman Harry Ballinger (Fred MacMurray) though all he did was go around to get exposition to expand upon the mystery. Horn and his tepid romance with Claudia (Donna Mills) were front and center for the first half or so with Ballinger being almost an afterthought and then they switched. The most consistent character in presentation is Wendy (Dana Plato) who just keeps going on about how her mommy who disappeared at the beginning of the movie isn’t dead.

The McGuffin for getting the story going is several disappearances within the Bermuda Triangle that Ballinger starts investigating and you go in expecting the mystery to be explained or in some fashion the people that the characters in the movie know rescued or simply an explanation of events at the minimum implied. The best we get is there is a mysterious doorway out there.

The implication with this doorway is that you can voluntarily step through it. But then are these people disappearing of their own volition? If so then why abandon children and loved ones? If not then why is there the thinking you can come and go as you please? What exactly is the nature of the doorway?

Not a lot happens in Beyond the Bermuda Triangle. There’s plenty set up and plenty implied but nothing much ever comes of any of it. They sure did love shots of the boats though. We the audience gets that this is set in Bermuda but all those loving pictures of speeding boats was not respond really necessary. It was fluff that should have been cut to build a story.

If you’re going to use the word ‘beyond’ in your title you better do something extra. There better be some weirdness or something. There’s no great mystery revealed. Just some weirdness implied.

The climax leaves a great deal to be desired. Jed going to save Claudia felt like nothing. It wasn’t climactic. It had all the intensity of making a right turn onto an empty street. Ballinger had found love with a younger woman and that relationship got absolutely no depth which made him going out to sea hoping to find her questionable. If a sacrifice is to have an emotional impact on the end of the film, then it should be built up. As it is I was a little unsure that he was even in a relationship with a woman really until she vanished.

Beyond the Bermuda Triangle came out at a time when the Bermuda triangle resonated strongly in pop culture. It was everywhere in books and television. This movie props itself up on that pop culture resonance and comes off as a bit of a dramatization of an episode of a story from In Search Of… rather than a story unto itself.

Beyond the Bermuda Triangle is a forgettable TV movie. It’s good to watch for nostalgia purposes but nothing else. Available on YouTube but I say skip it.