The giant turtle and the mystical mermaid

In this age of streaming video and countless outlets for movies, I have been enjoying more access to the Golden Age of TV-movies, back when the range was wider than just romance or true crime or Sharknado. Best were the genre entries (horror, fantasy, sci-fi), some of which were as good as any B-movie of the time--see my review of 1971's Black Noon. Warner Archive Instant has a nice selection of these films, and I recently watched one called The Bermuda Depths (1978). It's no masterpiece, as it has the usual limits of the TV-movie--low production budget, indifferent acting and directing--but it also has an unusual plot and atmosphere which one viewer aptly described as a "weird cross between Gamera and Portrait of Jennie," to which I would add the Dennis Hopper cult film Night Tide, with touches of Jaws.

Leigh McCloskey (below) returns to his family home on an island near the Bermuda Triangle years after his marine biologist father died in a mysterious accident. He reconnects with his childhood buddy Carl Weathers who is working on an advanced degree under the tutelage of crusty but nice scientist Burl Ives. McCloskey, who seems a bit like a lost soul, is trying to find out what happened to his father, and also trying to piece together memories he has of a girl with whom he shared walks on the beach; in flashbacks, we see them together as he writes their initials on the back of a sea turtle.

All the pieces of the plot are present, but how they fit is a little strange: the grown-up girl (Connie Sellecca) returns and says her name is Jenny Haniver--which is also the name given to odd, monstrous figures carved out of the carcasses of rays. He only ever sees her coming in or out of the ocean, and no one else sees her at all. There's also a legendary gigantic sea turtle that Ives and Weathers are trying to find. And, of course, they are near the Bermuda Triangle, where people and things are always mysteriously disappearing.

On the plus side: the tone (creepy fantasy), the pace (slow and, at times, a little dreamlike), and the relatively complex story. Selleca is mostly called upon to just look lovely and mysterious, and she's very good at that. Weathers (Apollo Creed from Rocky) is also quite good. On the minus side: the special effects which are only occasionally effective (it's a Rankin-Bass production, BTW) and McCloskey, who seems to be almost literally sleepwalking his way through the movie; sometimes this approach works, giving his character a damaged, distant feel, but more often, he just seems a little slow, physically and mentally.

Ultimately, it's Gamera, ...err, the giant sea turtle that's the biggest problem. Is it good? Bad? The spirit of Nature? Sellecca's brother/father? A Moby Dick comparison is half-heartedly set up between Weathers and the turtle, but it doesn't resonate emotionally. A little more fleshing out of the plot points and a more consistent leading performance would have helped, but as it is, it's still worth a look. People who saw this in their youth seem to remember it as the movie about the girl with the glowing green eyes (Sellecca, pictured at top) but that's a very brief shot, and they looked more bluish to me than green.