The Bermuda Triangle definitely was a hot topic in the horror/cult film industry during the second half of the 1970s! Especially lesser talented writers and directors found inspiration in the stories and rumors about the enigmatic Atlantic Ocean region where - allegedly - more planes crashed, more ships sunk, and altogether more people vanished than in any other watery region on this planet. Logically, I'd say, because there were all kind of theories going around about paranormal forces at the bottom of the ocean and even extraterrestrial involvement.
Being a fan of weird and cheesy 70s cinema, I've seen lousy pseudo-intelligent documentaries, like "Devil's Triangle" (narrated by Vincent Price) and Richard Friedenberg's dead-boring The Bermuda Triangle". I've seen horrible exploitation flicks, like "Bermude: la Fossa Maledetta" by Tonino Ricci and "El Triangolo delle Bermude" by René Cardona Jr. There even was an attempt to incorporate the Bermuda-mystery in a big-budgeted disaster franchise with "Airport '77", and some of my personal guilty pleasures include the imaginative efforts to blend Bermuda myths with other horror themes, like evil mermaids in "The Bermuda Depths", inbred pirates in "The Island", and good-hearted aliens in "Starship Invasions".
The modest and inconspicuous TV-production "Satan's Triangle", on the other hand, is not a lousy film by far. It's tremendously overestimated, yes, but I'm convinced that's because the vast majority of fans saw it on television in 1975 and were so overwhelmed by the unexpected ending that they always remembered it as a great movie. More than forty years after its release, it's still a fairly effective drama/thriller, albeit heavily dated due to the slow pacing and uncommon narrative structure. My favorite scene of the film comes quite early, namely when one of two coast guards deliberately delays a rescue mission by ordering his colleague to fly the helicopter down so that he can admire a girl in a bikini! Classic Doug McLure. After that, it's serious business, as they stumble upon a sailing yacht where a couple of sinister deaths occurred. Dougie stays behind on the ship, together with a hysterical female survivor, and tries to find a rational explanation for the events.
All my respect for the multi-acclaimed and widely praised climax. It's well built up, tense and atmospherically shot and largely unexpected. Still, mostly I love how the prologue sternly and stoically states: "Within the last thirty years just off the East coast of the United States more than a thousand men, women and children have vanished from the face of the Earth. No one knows how. Or Why. This is one explanation...". When juxtaposing this prologue sentence to the actual ending, it's difficult to remain straight-faced, though. Sure, it's "one explanation"...
