User Reviews

I'm finding Satan's Triangle a difficult one to summarize without giving too much away. The story involves a botched rescue attempt on a yacht in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. The sole survivor, Eva (Kim Novak), spends the night relaying the mystery and horror of what happened to her fellow passengers to Coast Guardsman Lt Haig (Doug McClure). Haig believes he has a rational explanation for everything, but is he right or are there evil forces at work?

Man, do I ever love these 70s made-for-TV movies! Satan's Triangle might not be the best of the bunch, but it's a good one. It's one of those movies, though, that you have to stick with. The middle part can get a bit dry. I was half-tempted to turn it off, but decided to stick it out. And what a good choice that was! The payoff at the end is fantastic. The twist in the final few minutes completely caught me off guard and made the whole thing a memorable and rewarding experience. It's a haunting, surprising, and amazing finale that sticks with you long after you've finished watching.

Even though I've described much of Satan's Triangle as "dry", Kim Novak really does a good job in these scenes with what she has to work with. Her somber recollections are chilling. When she says, "there's no way off this damn boat", you believe her. It's just so delightfully creepy. I also very much enjoyed Alehandro Rey as the priest in Eva's story. Rey's acting range throughout the film is impressive.

6/10

The latter-day, 40-something beauty of Kim Novak--striking and yet sinister--is milked for all its worth in this effective TV-made occult suspenser about a Coast Guard pilot investigating a doomed private yacht adrift on the waters, finding a sole survivor who seems to know the ship's many mysteries. The film builds suspense through tension and an atmosphere full of unseen dread. Although I was initially chilled by the well-handled twist ending, I was somewhat disappointed to see the film throw out all its mystery to instead become a battle between good and evil. I don't mean to suggest that's a bad thing, it's just that "Satan's Triangle" was doing such a fabulous job of being scary without being too specific that it's a bit of a letdown to see the story slip into formula. Nevertheless, a creepy, cunning item to jangle the nerves.

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"...

Positively terrifying supernatural mystery is set in the foreboding waters of the Bermuda Triangle, where a small pleasure craft is found adrift with its crew dead, save for one female. She educes the details of the seemingly impossible situation which gave rise to this tragedy, but there may be a ring of deceit to her story. Is Satan himself a Bermuda Triangle resident, possessing the bodies of the dead in an evil quest to lure more and more fresh souls to their watery graves?

Good performances by Novak and McClure, a highly effective score, and a terrifying story propel this one above the average for its type. Too, the at-sea setting effects an eerie atmosphere of helplessness and impending doom.

A spine-tingling gem that is recalled fondly by those that saw it in the day(many still have nightmares of the closing moment's ghastly freeze-frame image), but it now seems sadly lost to oblivion along with a great many other "Movie of the Week" entries. Perhaps a smart-thinking' distributor will start turning out these forgotten little jewels on DVD. Anyone listening?

7/10

Getting an emergency call the Us Coast Guard scramble a helicopter crewed by Lt Commander Pagnolini and Lt Haig . Arriving at the scene of the emergency Haig abseils down on to a boat and finds a young woman called Eva . After the winch breaks Pagnolini returns to base to fix a repair leaving Haig on the boat with Eva who tells him of the events that killed everyone else on board

Amazing to think nowadays after seeing countless made for television films on the SyFy and Hallmark channels that once upon a time in the 1970s TVMs were relatively good . We even saw a TVM directed by an unknown movie brat called Steven Spielberg called DUEL . This was a time when American networks seemed to have a genuine concern about quality and this film is amongst the very best that American television companies produced even though it perhaps cheats the memory somewhat

What helps is that ST has a relatively large cast of well known names attached to it who despite not giving Oscar worthy performances aren't exactly slumming it either . Doug McClure perhaps best known in Britain for playing square jawed hunky heroes fighting against rubber monsters plays his usual smoothy type character . Kim Novak forever known as her lead role in VERTIGO brings a smouldering sexuality befitting of her character and we get actors like Ed Lauter and Jim Davis be better known in later roles

To be honest not a lot happens in the film . Haig listens to Eva's story of the fate of the other occupants on the boat and she insinuates demonic forces are at work only for Haig to come up with rational explanations . What this TVM does superbly and why it's so remembered is that it lulls the viewers in to believing there is a rational explanation for all this only to pull the rug out from under the audiences feet with a twist in the tale . Okay it's rather corny and probably is nowhere as smart or as scary as you remember it from all these years ago but as someone who's watched far too many SyFy channel productions with CGI monsters running amok it still makes me nostalgic for an era where TVMs at least tried to spook the audience

Satan's Triangle is a made-for-TV horror/thriller that takes the best part of its 74 minute run-time going nowhere (much like the yacht on which it is set), before throwing in a supernatural twist ending that makes it feel like an extended episode of Tales of the Unexpected.

'70s hunk Doug McClure plays Haig, a US Coast Guard who investigates a yacht adrift in the mysterious area known as Satan's Triangle. After finding three dead bodies, Haig finally locates a survivor, Eva (Kim Novak), but as they are being winched onto the chopper by pilot Pagnolini (Michael Conrad), the cable snaps and they are ditched into the ocean. Dragging themselves back to the yacht, the pair must wait while Pagnolini goes for help; in the meantime, Eva recounts the events leading up to the deaths of her boat-mates.

Despite two fine performers in the lead roles, Satan's Triangle never really builds up a decent rate of knots, and is awash with dull scenes of chit-chat that tend to drag. The creepy payoff is pretty neat, and no doubt affected many a young viewer back in the day (I suspect that the movie's biggest fans are the ones who, as children, caught it on TV when originally aired), but as a middle-aged first-time viewer I can't say that I'll be losing much sleep over this one.

Forget that this is a TV movie filmed on a small budget, and that it doesn't have a gigantic ocean-liner like "Ghost Ship" or "Lost Voyage". This is definitely the scariest "derelict ship" movie that Hollywood has ever made. (So naturally, you almost NEVER see this movie on TV. But that's another issue, for another time.)

Rescue pilot Doug McClure and his companion, Michael Conrad, are sent to answer an SOS call from a small yacht at sea. Conrad is leery because the location is at the center of the Bermuda Triangle, but McClure dismisses his fears.

However, when McClure gets to the ship, he finds a lone woman survivor, Kim Novak. Malfunctions force Conrad to return to base, leaving McClure and Novak on board the yacht. She tells him of a mysterious force in the triangle that killed everyone else on board. However, McClure's practical nature allows him to look for, and find, plausible explanations for everything that happened.

When Conrad comes back to pick them up the next morning, the movie takes an entirely different turn. I won't tell you what it is, but it's one of the most terrific shockers I've ever seen in a film. What a great ending! It still creeps me out thinking about it.

God bless the late William Read Woodfield, who penned the script. He was one of Hollywood's most prolific -- and QUALITY -- TV writers. Director Sutton Roley was also used to filming Things That Go Bump In The Night, having lensed such shows as "The Sixth Sense", "Lost in Space" and "The Invaders", so he's clearly in his element here. Leonard South's beautiful yet disorienting camera work and Johnny Pate's eerie music add to the atmosphere. The only "bad" part of this movie is the first thirty seconds, which contain a rather cheesy opening title and narrative defining what the Bermuda Triangle is for the audience. After that, the movie generates plenty of creeps and scares.

This movie is extremely hard to find, so if you see it scheduled on TV, CATCH IT. It has a beauty and simplicity that's lacking in the bigger-budget features that followed, and it's got a helluva surprise at the end.

Before I get to the film itself, I'd like to point out that the whole 'Devil's Triangle' idea is pretty ridiculous. Despite a lot of hubbub (which didn't even start until the 1950s), this is not some mysterious part of the Earth that just swallows up planes and boat. Really. So if you are headed that way, relax.

As for the film, "Satan's Triangle" is a very odd film...much like combining a horror movie with a soap opera! And, the results are terrible...so terrible it made me feel sorry for its star, Kim Novak. She's simply better than the material she's given. I'm not sure I'd say that about the rest of the cast.

The story is about a boat that is adrift in this famous region and three folks make up most of the acting in the film. It's all very silly and boring. As for the ending, it's anything but boring...it's more bat**** crazy--so weird, silly and goofy that it had me in stitches. To know why it was so hilarious, you just have to see it for yourself!

Let's cut to the chase...the script is just terrible...completely stupid and embarrassing to watch. If you do end up seeing it, don't say I didn't warn you!!!

I seen this on tv when I was about 12 years old and it's the only film that has really scared the living daylights out of me! It starts off with a boat being stranded in the middle of the bermuda triangle and a rescue helicopter going in to assist the boat. When the helicopter reaches the boat they find a girl( Kim Novak) cowering in fear inside the boat. As one of the rescue team( Doug McClure) attempts to take the girl up to the helicopter the rope snaps and the weather forces the helicopter to return for more help leaving the girl and Doug McClure behind. It's from here on the girl tells her version of how her crew had been hunting a sword fish and ended up in the triangle. Whilst in the triangle they picked up a stranded priest ( Alejandro Rey). She believed this to be a bad omen which infuriated the devil causing the unexplained deaths of her fellow crew members. But after the girl's version Doug McClure explains how he doesn't believe in the devil and starts about investigating the boat and giving an explanation on how the crew died eventually calming the girl then charming her into bed! It then gets interesting when the rescue ship comes in to tow the boat away and examine what bodies are on the boat. This is where the ending takes a massive twist and gives an unexpected ending which'll send a shiver down your spine. It's a good film well worth watching just for the end sequence alone!

The seventies was probably the best time for made for TV horror and many of the horror films made for TV during the decade are excellent films; Scream Pretty Peggy, Summer of Fear and Dying Room Only being among the best that I've seen. Satan's Triangle is a spooky little thriller that focuses on one of the world's greatest wonders; that being the Bermuda Triangle. The plot focuses on the only female survivor of a shipwreck and two helicopter pilots who go out to rescue her and find themselves stranded inside the dreaded triangle. The film creates a good atmosphere and this is complimented by the mysterious plot that never really reveals itself until the ending. Director Sutton Roley succeeds in creating suspense throughout and the movie always has enough to keep the viewer interested. Kim Novak is the lead actress and stands out among a small but talented cast. The film is only short, running at just over sixty minutes, and as such; there isn't really time for it to build into anything too spectacular, but Satan's Triangle provides the mystery and suspense for the duration and it's worth seeing if you can get hold of it.

This is a pretty cool movie. It shows a rescue helicopter finding a boat inside the Devil's Triangle that is putting out an SOS. When the rescue medic goes aboard he finds three men dead & one woman alive. There's a priest hanging upside down from the mast, a man sliced up & full of glass at the wheel & a man floating in the air, dead. The woman tells the rescuer what happened & as she does the movie goes back into the past & shows you a Devil's Triangle spooky story. The woman is traumatized & believes that everyone died because they're inside the Devil's Triangle. The rescue medic doesn't believe that & figures out what really happened. So you get two different versions- one is a spooky Devil's Triangle story, & one is from a level-headed recuer's point of view. I thought it was interesting. There's a great twist at the end that throws a loop in the rescuer's deduction of what happened. So instead of the movie ending with everything explained it ends with an air of spooky mystery. I recommend this movie to people who like solving mysteries & spooky stories. There's no nudity, sex, or gory violence.

Two Coast Guardsmen (Doug McClure and Michael Conrad) fly out to investigate a derelict schooner in the Bermuda Triangle. The former finds a survivor (Kim Novak) wherein the truth of the ghastly scenario is explained. Alejandro Rey is on hand as a minister while Ed Lauter plays a sailor.

"Satan's Triangle" (1975) debuted on TV as a Movie of the Week. The 70s produced some really good or even great television films, like "Tribes" (1970), "Duel" (1971), "The Night Stalker" (1972), "Kung Fu" (1972), "Short Walk to Daylight" (1972), "Go Ask Alice" (1973), "Pray for the Wildcats" (1974), "Scream of the Wolf" (1974,) "Dracula" with Jack Palance (1974), "Trilogy of Terror" (1975) and many more. You can add this to the list.

I honestly wasn't expecting much and was only interested because I wanted to see how a TV flick from the 70s with its limited budget could possibly tackle the topic of the infamous 'Devil's Triangle' and be remotely effective. All I can say is it won me over by the end.

McClure always makes for a likable protagonist and Novak was still beautiful at the age of 41 during shooting (her eyes & face are sublime). The bulk of the movie logically explains the extraordinary tragedy through flashbacks and you think the story's over. Everything comes down to the last act, which cleverly delivers the 'goods.'

Sure, it's not on the level of "Dead Calm" (1989) but, if you're in the mood for a chilling sailing drama/adventure that's short 'n' sweet, look no further.

The film runs about 1 hour, 12 minutes, and was shot at Channel Islands, California (the yacht scenes), with aerial shots of Oxnard, California (helicopter flying out to sea) and Nauset Beach Light, Eastham, Massachusetts (lighthouse).

GRADE B/B- (6.5/10)

I didn't know what to expect from this,it sounded like a good TV movie.

I think it started off OK.

As the movie went on, I was getting a bit bored now and again

Liked how they explained, how the people died, and the twist or what ever you want call it.

I thought that twist was really good. it did cross my mind during the movie but I dismissed it.

Cool ending , decent TV movie

Not scary or anything but still somd- what enjoyable

With some decent acting for a TV movie. 5 out of 10

This film is not about a very poor musical instrument owned by the Devil himself but instead is about the good old Bermuda Triangle. I was inspired to watch this after hosting a 70's games night, with the highlight board game being, yes.... Bermuda Triangle! I needed to know more about this subject and so thought the best way to do so was to watch this TV movie starring Kim Novak and Doug McClure. So, was it true that ships went missing in this infamous waterway in the 70's due to giant magnets? Well, disappointingly, this film suggests not but the answer is pleasingly insane. In it the coastguard discovers a ship sailing in the sea with three dead bodies and one surviving woman; we flash-back and forward and discover what happened. This is actually a pretty good little movie - much better than the same years Beyond the Bermuda Triangle, which was a bit of a wash-out. This one on the other hand has some neat twists and turns and a pretty cool ending. And you know a Bermuda Triangle film has succeeded when you get to the end of it and you realise you didn't need Barry Manilow in a cameo. It's not as good as the game though.

I remember when this was second run (it was part of some weekly TV-movie series, similar to the NBC Mystery Movie but without the recurring characters). I missed the original running, but a lot of kids at school were talking about it the next morning, so when reruns came around (maybe 6 months later), I made sure to watch it.

I remember that it was eerie (not really frightening, but more suspenseful), especially the twist at the end (won't give it away). Probably not the best movie for a nine-year-or-so-old kid to see on his own (thanks to my parents having friends over to play bridge or something, I got to see it on colour TV instead of my dad's old b/w) but at least I had something to talk about the next day at school, with all the other kids who missed it the first time! Had no idea who the actors were at the time, but Doug McClure's acting was the best. Everyone else's wasn't terrific, but good enough for TV, and the writing was stellar - too bad they churn out such junk and charge you $8 or whatever it is now, when you used to see good stuff for "free" (you just had to put up with commercials).

Would like to see it again, because the rerun (1976?) was the last time I saw it.

I saw this TV movie when I was just a kid still, and remarkably, I still remember the ending to this day. Just goes to show what an impression the twist ending must have made on me...

I'm so happy that I was able to find this again after so many years - thanks to streaming services. (Would have loved to obtain this on DVD or even Blu Ray!). The film sees coast guards Pagnolini (Michael Conrad) and Haig (Doug McClure) responding to a distress call coming from the centre of the Bermuda Triangle - or Devil's Triangle or Satan's Triangle, as it is also known.

Arriving there, they find a yacht, seemingly abandoned and visibly battered from a severe storm. When Haig goes on board, he discovers bodies, and a lone survivor. The film then follows the survivor's telling of what happened. I found it compelling from beginning to end. The film has a simple premise, and is set almost entirely on the yacht.

The performances are good, and Alejandro Rey delivered a creepy performance as Father Peter Martin. Oh, and I absolutely love that twist ending I so fondly remembers!!

Would I watch it again? Yes, for sure.

This movie had quite an impact on me when I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, watching all those made for TV horror movies emblematic of American television of that period. Like a lot of people, adults and kids alike, I was obsessed with UFOa, ESP, and The Bermuda Triangle, our collective fascination with the latter having been stoked by Charles Berlitz's best-selling 1974 book of that title. It was a pseudo-journalistic, pseudo-historical, pseudo-scientific collection of exaggerated, easily debunked, and outright invented tales of lost ships, boats, and airplanes, and the missing people who had been aboard them. Despite being near absolute BS, Berlitz's writing and storytelling was undeniably compelling and entertaining, and the book utterly enthralling.

Enter movies like Satan's Triangle, during a period of fBermuda Triangle craze in which Berlitz's book sold tens of millions of copies. The movie scared me and and kept me as enraptured as Leonard Nimoy's speculative fringe series, In Search Of. (Tangent: Nimoy's hosting a bad series is one of the reasons is casting in JJ Abrams' Fringe was so brilliant. But I digress...)

Unfortunately, upon re-viewing, Satan's Triangle is 90% plodding and pedestrian, and 10% okay ending, which, with a few hours of half-hearted effort, a pen, and a notepad, could have been attached to a much better script. The director seems bored with the task of wrenching performances from his equally bored cast of B-listers and C-listers, who, to be fair, only have that dull script to work with. To make matters worse, the score is mostly uninspired an inappropriate to a horror movie, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity to create suspense or creepiness. It's laden with that oh-so-'70s Muzaky, flute-cursed, made-to-be-ignored, light junk jazz which was often thrown into the background behind really boring scenes of sex/romance melodrama...just like the kind we are subjected to halfway through this movie. Another hallmark of the lower end of made for TV horror fair of that era is the use of padding to try to eke out a movie-length time slot. One of the most common and most boring forms of such padding was to repeat in slow motion scenes from earlier in a movie as a character is remembering, dreaming about, or recounting the event to another character. Naturally, we must sit through that in this movie as well.

A lot of people are attached to this movie out of nostalgia, which I completely understand. I myself am attached to other movies made for American television during that time, such as The Night Stalker, The Norliss Tapes, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Sole Survivor, Dark Night of Scarecrow (from early the next decade), and even The Horror at 37,000 Feet. These movies and a host of others are in a completely different class and much more worth your time than Satan's Triangle.