“I’ve got a head full of weird images. Mysterious, powerful beings that held me prisoner; men and beasts dominated by a will apart from their own. I keep thinking of those sharks…”

 

[Original title:  Bermude: La Fossa Maledetta / Bermudas: La Cueva de los Tiburones]
[Also known as: The Shark’s Cave, Shark Cave, Bermuda Mystery]

Director:  Anthony Richmond (Tonino Ricci)

Starring:  Andrés García, Janet Agren, Arthur Kennedy, Pino Colizzi, Máximo Valverde, Cinzia Monreale, Adriana Falco, Nino Segurini

Screenplay:  Fernando Galiana, Mauricio Melchiorre and Tonino Ricci

 

Synopsis:  Six months after going missing, presumed dead in the same tragedy that saw a boat mysteriously lost with all hands, Andres Montoya (Andrés García) is found floating unconscious in the water. His inexplicable return causes consternation as well as joy for his fiancée, Angelica Costa Martinez (Janet Agren), and his brother, Dr Ricardo Montoya (Máximo Valverde), who have become close; however, although he makes no bones about his feelings for her, Ricardo assures Angelica that she is free to do as she wishes with respect to Andres. As he recovers in the hospital, Andres is sternly questioned by a police detective, but insists he has no memory of what happened to the boat or its crew, how he survived, or where he has been. Preparing him to be discharged, Andres’ doctor (Nino Segurini) tells him that his memory will probably return one day—but that he might be better off not remembering what was obviously a traumatic event; he advises him not to try and force it, but rather to relax and recover. Andres takes this advice: he, Angelica and Ricardo spend time as tourists, enjoying Bermuda; although the situation becomes hard on Ricardo, as Andres and Angelica reconnect. Meanwhile, an American called Jackson (Arthur Kennedy) makes a drop at the airport, delivering a metal lock-box and paying the man who is to carry it to its destination. The mule and his pilot take off in their small plane, but soon run into trouble: their instruments first go crazy, then cut out; while below them in the water they see strange, glowing lights. Even as the two men send a frantic mayday, the plane plunges into the water… In the wake of the crash, Jackson makes contact with one of his co-conspirators. Though Jackson is worried that the plane might have been sabotaged by their competitors, his colleague insists that salvaging the lock-box is all that matters. Subsequently, Jackson approaches Andres and his partner, Enrique (Pino Colizzi), about the job. They soon realise that the salvage job is illegal, and neither of them trusts Jackson, but they agree to take the job on in exchange for a significant sum. By using a helicopter, the two locate the downed plane; however, Enrique becomes worried when he realises where the crash happened, knowing that the stretch of water in question has a bad reputation with the locals and a long history of tragedy. Nevertheless, he and Andres go ahead with the salvage dive. As they search for the wrecked plane, the two are stunned by the sight of an underwater cave that seems to be guarded by sharks, which lie motionless upon the ocean floor…

Comments:  We’re here chiefly out of exasperation.

When Cave Of The Sharks made its way to the top of my list of shark-related films, I tried to find the English-dubbed print of it that I knew I had watched years ago, but was unable to locate it again. I spent a ridiculous amount of time searching for it, using every variant of the film’s title and every language relevant, but to no avail—and finally assumed that it had been taken down. I was left to try and make sense of a poor quality, Spanish-dubbed print with Italian credits—which, given that the film makes little sense anyway, saw it demoted to an Et Al. paragraph.

   

Then the other night, when I was poking around the film known (exceedingly inaccurately) as “Turkish Jaws”, what should I stumble across out of the blue but that elusive print? Evidently there was one title variant I didn’t have on the list: I did search for The Shark’s Cave and Shark Cave, but not, alas, for The Sharks Cave…and the implication that I had missed the film during my previous abortive hunt for it because I placed the apostrophe correctly made me clench my teeth and scream at the same time.

It’s quite likely that, had I found this print in the first place, Cave Of The Sharks would have been left at an Et Al. review anyway. I was hesitant at the outset, having been burned before by films of this vintage and pedigree; and though there is nothing here quite as vomitous as the material served up by Tintorera, there are a few nasty and depressing touches including a shark caught and killed on camera (a fishing scene that may not have been staged for the film), and the fact that a couple of the sharks with which the characters interact have clearly had their teeth removed.

Furthermore, the film’s advertising art makes it look much more like my kind of film than it turns out to be—besides implying a far greater in-film explicitness about what’s going on than ever eventuates.

But the discovery that the English-dubbed print was of a far superior visual quality to the Spanish-language one I had struggled through, so that you can actually see what’s going on, along with my (frequently self-defeating) dislike of wasted effort, finally pushed me over the edge line.

I should note that better visual clarity does not equal better plot clarity: the film still doesn’t make much sense—and that’s being generous. It is also, despite a running-time of only 82 minutes, long on padding and other dead-time—most of it in the dreaded form of scuba-diving scenes.

 

Cave Of The Sharks was an Italian-Spanish co-production, shot on location in the Caribbean; in-film information suggests the Dominican Republic. While itself displaying certain probably-not-coincidental similarities to Tintorera, the film opens with a sequence that might in turn have inspired Enzo G. Castellari when he was making The Last Shark: namely, its credits play over a rather artistic display of windsurfing. Occasionally we cut away to a man floating unconscious in the water; and the film proper opens with the man, Andres Montoya, being rushed to hospital, while his business partner, Enrique, listens to the incredible news on the radio.

We learn that, six months earlier, the boat on which Andres was working, the White Shark, disappeared with all hands. As soon as he is up for it, Andres is questioned by the police, who have grave suspicions of his improbable return. However, Andres can only insist that he remembers nothing: not what happened to the boat, not where he has been, not how he survived.

In spite of their joy as his survival, Andres’ return poses a problem for his fiancée, Angelica, and his brother, Ricardo, who in the interim have become close—though only to the point of being aware of their feelings, not to doing anything about them. Ricardo is more serious than Angelica, and he starts by telling her that she can’t, “Live in the past” (six months?); but this gives way to his assuring her that she should do whatever she wants—and that will be what he wants, too.

No good deed goes unpunished, of course; so before long, what starts out as Angelica’s guilty sense that she must stand by Andres regardless becomes the two of them reunited for real, while Ricardo tags along as third wheel and makes puppy-dog eyes at Angelica. However, he bears no ill-will towards his brother.

 

Before being discharged from the hospital, Andres has a conversation with his doctor about his memory loss. The doctor assures him it will probably all come back some day—but adds that he might be better off not remembering, as he has evidently suffered some great trauma, from which his mind is protecting him. The doctor urges Andres not to try and force things, but to concentrate on his recovery: to relax, and maybe take a holiday.

Andres takes his advice, with the result that we next see him, Angelica and Ricardo attending a cockfight.

Jeezum crow.

A lot of boring travelogue stuff follows, during which Andres and Angelica get closer and closer, Ricardo gets sadder and sadder, and a lobster gets tormented.

We finally get some relief from this guff in the form of Name Guest Star (or at least, Embarrassed Actor), Arthur Kennedy, as an American criminal called Jackson. We follow him through a dialogue-less scene at an airport. He hands a metal lock-box to a courier, and pays him off with what is apparently an inadequate sum, as the courier is inclined to argue the point. He finally shrugs acceptingly, though, and departs on a small plane with its pilot.

The lock-box is the film’s MacGuffin: we never find out what’s in it, with the courier using the euphemism, “the cargo”, and Jackson and his associate referring primly to “the merchandise”. And it doesn’t matter, plot-wise: the box is simply the excuse that drives the underwater scenes which make up the bulk of the film’s running-time, along with a few half-hearted “action” scenes on land.

 

We then cut to a charmingly wobbly model plane, and from there to strange glowing lights in the water below. The pilot notices that the plane is off-course and, when he tries to correct, his instruments malfunction. Given the nature of the flight, the courier objects to the pilot trying to contact the ground, but he insists and radios San (Santo?) Domingo. However, he cannot give the plane’s route or position—and really, there’s nothing air-traffic control can do to help anyway. Despite the pilot’s efforts the plane begins to drop—finally plunging into the sea, in the midst of those strange lights and bubbling waters…

At least in its English-language version, Cave Of The Sharks never uses the expression “Bermuda Triangle”. Of course, by 1978 it was hardly necessary—not only because the alleged phenomenon was one of the decade’s great “signifiers”, but because – possibly also-not-coincidentally – René Cardona Jr’s The Bermuda Triangle was released only five months before this (and also starred Andrés García, and reunited him with Hugo Stiglitz after Tintorera the previous year).

(Afterthought: this isn’t mentioned either, but a few later touches make me wonder if we’re supposed to be dealing with Atlantis? – another distinctly 70s possibility.)

And speaking of great 70s signifiers, the following scene, in which news of the plane’s crash reaches Jackson via a phone-call from the associate who was supposed to receive the merchandise, amusingly features not one but two bottles of J&B (preferred booze of criminals everywhere, we gather). The two men briefly debate whether the plane could have been sabotaged by “the competition”, but agree it doesn’t really matter: they simply have to get the merchandise back. Jackson tells the other that he will hire some frogmen for the salvage operation, men who won’t “get nosy”.

 

It is soon clear to Andres and Enrique that Jackson’s job is illegal, but the price is right. They hire a helicopter (spoiler alert: the helicopter is just fine; hmmph); though for some reason it is Ricardo doing the spotting from the air while Andres pilots a boat. They find the downed plane, after which Jackson joins the divers on their boat. When they arrive at the crash site, a disturbed Enrique recognises the place as one “the natives steer clear of” (although it appears to be a stretch of open ocean, so what’s to steer clear of? – for that matter, what’s to recognise?), but Andres talks over his partner’s fear and the two get ready for their dive.

Now the scuba-diving starts in earnest; again, I’ll spare you—at least until Andres and Enrique discover an enclosed rocky area with a sandy bottom, in which a number of sharks are, apparently, sleeping…

In another quasi-incestuous touch here, it was Ramón Bravo who followed up anecdotal evidence and first documented the “sleeping sharks” of Isla Mujeres, an island in the Caribbean off the coast of Mexico; though it was some time before he could get anyone to believe him, with the dogma then insisting that all sharks must keep moving constantly or drown; he was even accused of faking his evidence. Bravo finally sent his work to the Smithsonian Institute, which in turn contacted marine biologist Dr Eugenie Clark, who travelled to Isla Mujeres to investigate. She studied and documented what we now know were Caribbean reef sharks, vindicating Ramón Bravo in the process: her subsequent article on the subject, “Into The Lairs Of The ‘Sleeping Sharks’”, was the National Geographic cover-story in April 1975.

What Dr Clark contended, however, was not that certain species of shark “sleep”, but that many different species can do it if the conditions are right. Her theory was that, in areas where salt water mixes with fresh, and where the current is sufficiently strong, sharks can absorb sufficient oxygen through their gills to negate the need to swim. They can therefore rest on the bottom (that the sharks were awake was one of the first things Dr Clark noticed) and stay alive and oxygenated—in fact, almost becoming “drugged” by the prevailing conditions; with those conditions also acting as a natural de-wormer, as a bonus.

 

Dr Clark’s study also supported the further reports of Ramón Bravo, who had witnessed tiger sharks, whitetips, makos and bull sharks “sleeping” at different times, in addition to the Caribbean reef sharks of the Yucatan. While my reading did not make this explicit, I would deduce that species that can osmoregulate are best able to take advantage of the more oxygenated fresh water.

(We should note that “sleeping sharks” are not the same as sleeper sharks, which are members of the genus Somniosus.)

All this notwithstanding, Cave Of The Sharks treats its sleeping sharks as evidence of something unnatural – or supernatural – although what that is, it never actually gets around to saying. Consequently, Andres and Enrique are stunned by the sight of numerous sharks apparently sleeping on the sandy bottom. They do not react to the men’s presence, and even allow themselves to be touched.

In their shock, the two cut their dive short and return to the boat. Jackson is unimpressed by their story, even less so when an unnerved Enrique wants to bail on the salvage job; but he gives in when, first, Jackson offers a sweetener and then Andres threatens to go back down alone.

We now cut to a different boat on those same waters, carrying a vaguely hippie-ish group of friends—all of whom, I may say, look suicidally depressed before anything happens. A young woman, played by Adriana Falco, I guess, inasmuch as she is not played by Cinzia Monreale, who is also there, has with her a doll so fricking creepy that, were this film to be made today, I guarantee it would have its own spin-off franchise before you could say, That doll is fricking creepy.

 
 

Another of the women is laying out a tarot reading, and – surprise! – she turns up the Death Card. She and Doll Girl eye each other. Silently, the latter rises to her feet and makes her way up and out on deck—where a strange light can be seen glowing in the water. Still silent, she then climbs over the railing and right down into the water…

Then, one after the other, everyone else on board – also without a word – follows her. They all begin swimming away, as their boat raises its own anchor, sets its own sails, and moves away in the other direction…

(The effectiveness of this sequence – and for the most part it is very effective – is somewhat undermined by the fact that at least two of the doomed party stop to pinch their nose before jumping into the water.)

The camera shifts around, picking out this person and that. It then picks out the doll—which suddenly spews a gout of blood from its mouth…

(Part of Creepy Doll’s creepiness lies in the fact that it looks like it’s poking its tongue out…but now we realise that the tube by which the “blood” is expelled was in place during the earlier scene.)

Lights glow in the water. The sleeping sharks awaken—and attack…

The next day, Andres and Enrique get back to business. This time they pass by the sharks – without incident – and do locate the wrecked plane. (Why they couldn’t have positioned the boat directly over the plane, negating the need for all this back-and-forth through, ahem, the cave of the sharks, is left to our imaginations.) Enrique goes into the cabin, and we get an amusing post-Jaws jolt when the mutilated body of one of the crash victims lurches into shot. An appalled Enrique exits post-haste, making frantic gestures at Andres, but he enters the wreck anyway, and locates the notorious lock-box.

     

Nearby, a light glows—and a shark wakes up. It glides towards the wreck. Andres and Enrique see it coming, and Enrique lifts his spear-gun—but Andres stops him from firing it.

You heard me.

Yes, I was staggered too—enough to let myself hope that perhaps we’d get through this film without any animal being killed; though alas, that proved to be a bridge too far.

Anyway, Andres ends up slipping off his wetsuit jacket and pushing it through the water as a decoy. The shark takes the bait, literally, and swims off with the jacket, while the divers slip away in the other direction.

When at length the two find themselves back at the boat, they wave the lock-box triumphantly at the impatient Jackson. They then climb onboard, divest themselves of their scuba-gear—and find themselves staring down the barrel of Jackson’s gun.

Hey, bright boy—how about you get your hands on the box before you double-cross your partners, hmm? – because Andres and Enrique do what anyone would: they throw themselves and the box right back in the water; duh.

The lock-box sinks to the ocean floor, never to be seen again (although we will hear far too much of it); while Andres makes use of a spare tank lowered by a rope at the outset of the dive—quickly detaching it from its tether as Jackson starts up the boat. He then goes looking for Enrique, who has disappeared—and has no supply of oxygen. Nearby, a light glows. Andres doesn’t notice, instead staring at the wreck of a ship while he searches. Then a light glows directly overhead, and this time he stares up at it. The water explodes into foam and bubbles, and Andres catches a quick glimpse of a helpless Enrique being rapidly drawn away—apparently straight into the light.

 

This key moment is followed by one of the film’s most tediously drawn-out scenes, as Jackson alternates between shooting at Andres and trying to run him over with the boat, after Andres throws away what I presume is now an empty tank. Eventually one of the bullets hits, and Andres lies dead or unconscious as his blood spreads in the water (but not, we notice, attracting any sharks).

Chortling delightedly, Jackson closes in to make sure of his handiwork, but is stopped when another boat appears on the scene. He turns his own vessel and speeds away, as – as it turns out – Ricardo is left to rescue his injured brother.

So it’s back to hospital for Andres, this time around wracked with guilt over the mysterious fate of Enrique. Behind that, however, is the fact that, based on his own experience, there is just a chance that Enrique is still alive somewhere. He is determined to make a search for him—and since he can’t physically do it himself, he recruits / guilts Angelica and Ricardo into helping. Ricardo has no belief in Enrique’s survival – mind you, it is never clear how thinks Andres survived – but is willing to help his brother; while Angelica is swayed by Andres’ conviction.

Ricardo gets Andres released from the hospital, though he needs a wheelchair and/or crutches to get around. Apparently he is starting to get his memory back; and for the first and only time he speaks of the “weird images” in his head, and of “mysterious, powerful beings”, who held him prisoner…

He also speaks of a certain boat captain with a reputation for being “willing to do anything”, and sends Angelica to get him; so he is home alone when Jackson comes calling with his goon.

 

This isn’t as stupid as the lock-box scene on the boat, but it’s pretty dumb: Jackson has been following Andres around and knows very well that he has no more knowledge of the box’s whereabouts than he ever did, but nevertheless starts trying to beat the knowledge he doesn’t have out of him.

(To be charitable, perhaps he doesn’t think he can find the location again without Andres, but that’s not how their “conversation” plays.)

Andres is being threatened with a straight-razor when a car pulls up. He waits to be certain that it is Anjelica and the captain, then shouts a warning. Fisticuffs and gunplay follow, and – long story short – the captain gets shot by a goon, so much for him, the goon gets shot by Andres, and Jackson gets away. None of which has any consequences, or is even acknowledged.

Earlier, Andres told Anjelica about a fisherman who once told a story like his, and became a recluse after being mocked. This is where the real shark killing comes in. As I say, it may not have been staged for the film, but it’s all too real, and the conversation between Andres, Angelica and the fisherman takes place with a dead shark strung up behind them and still bleeding.

The fisherman’s story – punctuated by another wobbly model, this time a boat, and some delightfully obvious dry-ice bubbles and fog – is about how his boat was pulled into a strange, disturbed patch of water, and dragged underwater; and how he, despite being underwater, could still breathe; and how he found himself on a path that found between wrecked ships, being drawn on to discover where it led; and then he saw the sharks… He blacked out—and recovered to find that he had been rescued from the water by a fishing-boat, and that he had been missing for two months…

 

Oddly enough, it is the fisherman, not Andres, who offers the clearest interpretation of their strange experiences, though I guess he has had a lot longer to think about it; and this, along with Andres’ comment about “mysterious beings”, is all the film ever provides by way of an explanation—of things in general, and of why certain individuals are permitted to survive; although with no hint or who, or why, or why that situation might change:

Fisherman:  “Andres, you and me, we know there’s something down there. Another world. Another form of life. Maybe it’s something left over from the past, a city that disappeared into the sea. But whatever it is, I know they need us…”

He adds that his one regret is that he never went back, and now he’s too old, but Andres must go…

But Andres isn’t fit for it yet, and it’s Anjelica who goes, in one of this film’s genuinely interesting touches. There’s no suggestion at all that she’s not fully competent to undertake the exploration, although (as so often) I think that nevertheless we’re supposed to interpret this situation negatively, in terms of the couple’s relationship, with Andres putting his obsession ahead of her safety. (Ricardo later expresses exactly this view.) Andres does warn Anjelica about a feeling of being “drawn in”, of wanting to “let go”: if she begins to feel this, she must get out as quickly as possible.

So, the earlier travelogue footage having established Anjelica as a diver and a photographer (and a lobster-botherer), she gets the next tedious scuba-diving sequence. Things liven up when several sharks make their presence felt, and one of them clocks her over the back of the head with its tail by way of a warning—which she takes.

We then watch Anjelica at work in her darkroom: it’s an old-fashioned photo-developing scene, by gar! Anjelica later tells Ricardo that her Rorschach-y shots show, “Weird shapes that appear and then fade.” It also turns out that she knew the owner of the boat involved in the mass suicide, though it has only been reported as another disappearance. (“Maria” – Cinzia Monreale?)

 

By this time, Anjelica has recommitted to Andres, while Andres has picked up the vibe between his fiancée and his brother, so there is plenty of tension when Ricardo insists on joining the party to return to the site of Enrique’s disappearance—the crew consisting of a trustworthy local, Paco, and someone we saw being bought by Jackson…

More scuba-diving, as Anjelica goes in again. She is barely overboard when another boat shows up—guess who? All sorts of threats and feints follow, plus more of Jackson’s annoying braying laughter; so we’re hardly sorry when both he and his latest hire end up dead, shot by Ricardo and Paco, respectively.

Before the fatal confrontation, Jackson sent two wet-suited goons down after Anjelica, presumably on the assumption that she would lead them to the lock-box. Andres likewise bails, with his wheelchair as a weight, and using a spare tank and a spear-gun which he lowered earlier he goes after all three of them. When he finds the goons, he doesn’t muck around, taking out both with his spear-gun.

Anjelica, meanwhile, has inspected a wreck (Maria’s boat?), and caught a glimpse of something that might be a ruined city, as per the fisherman’s theory. Now she takes cover as – I think – a localised undersea quake begins. Lights begin to show through the openings, while as the soundtrack makes eerie sci-fi-ish noises, we also get a glimpse of—

Aw, hell, I don’t know: you tell me…

Suddenly, Anjelica is assailed by the Sucky Bubbles, as was Enrique; but she manages to tear free. Andres has caught up with her, sees what she has seen, sees the ocean floor opening, and glowing, and starts to relive his earlier experience—I think. He too pulls away but, presumably galvanised by flashing images of whatever the hell it is the mysterious being, and by the pew-pew noises on the soundtrack, the sharks spring into action; and Andres can save himself only by—

 

—feeding them the dead goons, piece by piece.

This is the point where the influence of Tintorera makes itself most felt, as Cave Of The Sharks likewise resorts to the dummy-stuffed-with-meat style of shark victim. There’s even a moment when one of the sharks swims by with a goon’s head in its mouth! It’s very gross, and rather sickly funny.

What’s more—unless that’s Andres making that noise, we might have a roaring shark here! – three years before the overt example in The Last Shark! It’s only a little roar, though. There are also other noises rather like someone pretending to be a cat yowling. (Again, don’t ask me.)

By this time Anjelica has fled to the surface and is safe on the boat. Andres, rapidly running out of goon, now tries to follow her. From the deck, Anjelica and Ricardo can only look on helplessly as he breaks the surface, and then strikes out for the boat. There’s a shark after him, though, and it’s clearly going to be a photo-finish, but—he’s gunna make it, he’s gunna make it, heeee—

—eeee’s not gunna make it.

And while I didn’t react to Andrés García’s death here with a fist in the air and a cry of, “YES!!”, I must admit that the prosaic one-word Italian-language end-title which followed his gruesome demise – FINE – did get a laugh out of me. Too true, film!

So what was that all about? And once again—beats the hell out of me.

Don’t get me wrong: an alien (?) civilisation in the Bermuda Triangle, wrecking boats and planes, causing inexplicable disappearances and controlling sharks, is a perfectly respectable 70s film plot; but having set all this up, Cave Of The Sharks doesn’t really do anything with it.

 

The film doesn’t even confirm its alien civilisation. Call me crazy, but I’d really rather be dealing with that than Andres’ angst, Jackson’s annoying cackling, and scuba-diving scenes that go on for-fricking-ever.

You could almost recommend Cave Of The Sharks for its shark footage, which is copious, except of course that they ruin everything by killing one for real—WHY????

But despite all this, and despite the human body-count (which refreshingly hugely outscores the reverse for once), you can’t really call this a killer-shark film; while its classification as science-fiction is only nominal. We never know how or why this—let’s call it “force”—is exerted; how or why amongst all the carnage it occasionally saves certain individuals; whether (as the fisherman suggests) it “needs” those individuals…and again, if so, why. All this being the case, you could reasonably go even softer and call this film “fantasy”, a term which covers a multitude of sins. An even better term would be “WTF-film”, but not in a good way.

Honestly—if you just watch the mass-suicide-by-creepy-doll scene (starting at the 30 minute mark), and the final ten minutes of the film, I think you’ll have taken away the best that Cave Of The Sharks has to offer.

Footnote:  As noted in the Et Al. piece, there is a tiny bit more on this film over at Spinning Newspaper Injures Printer.

 
 
Ehh, they’ll get over it.