ENCOUNTERS IN THE DEEP (1979) * ½

Encounters in the Deep gets off to a sluggish start with a longwinded narrator talking endlessly about the Bermuda Triangle while lots of stock footage is shown.  Finally, some glowing lights appear in the water emitting a strange sound that makes people disappear.  A distraught billionaire funds an expedition to go to the Bermuda Triangle to find his missing daughter and gets more than he bargained for along the way.

If you can’t already guess by the title, they were going for a Close Encounters riff on your typical Bermuda Triangle movie with a little bit of Peter Benchley’s The Deep thrown in there for good measure.  It has a lot in common with the other Bermuda Triangle movie I saw this week, The Bermuda Triangle.  Both films feature a creepy doll as a harbinger of doom, needlessly drawn out scuba diving sequences, and long scenes of people sitting around on boats.  Although it can’t boast the presence of Hugo Stiglitz, there is a guy who LOOKS a lot like Hugo Stiglitz, so there’s that.  I can honestly say it’s only slightly better than The Bermuda Triangle.  Like that film, it’s boring as shit, but at least with Encounters in the Deep there’s annoying high-pitched ringing every time the aliens appear, which prevents you from falling asleep.  

Speaking of aliens, they are good for a laugh although you’ve got to wait a long time to finally get a look at them.  I must give director Tony (Night of the Sharks) Richmond props for recreating the ending of Close Encounters on a shoestring budget.  I admire not only the brazenness in which Richmond unabashedly steals from Spielberg, but also for the way he cannily manages to replicate his style. I’m not saying it saves the movie or anything.  It’s just that he mimicked Spielberg’s style in this scene about as well as J.J. Abrams did for the entirety of Super 8.  For that and that alone, I can’t completely hate it.