THE CARDONA COLLECTION VOLUME 1: TREASURE OF THE AMAZON (1985)/THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (1977)/CYCLONE (1977) Blu-ray
Director: Rene Cardona Jr.
Vinegar Syndrome

Vinegar Syndrome dips into South of the Border exploitation with their three film Blu-ray set of THE RENE CARDONA JR. COLLECTION VOLUME 1.

The son of Mexican filmmaking maverick René Cardona – who helmed nearly one-hundred-and-fifty films in all genres between 1930 and 1982 – René Cardona Jr. also toiled in several genres during his own forty-year career but made his mark internationally with a string of internationally-targeted exploitation films in the seventies and eighties starting with NIGHT OF A THOUSAND CATS in 1972 before largely vanishing from the international scene with the demise of the home video boom after 1987's BIRDS OF PREY (released on VHS stateside as BEAKS: THE MOVIE) and focusing on the domestic and South American theatrical and television market in his last fifteen years. With Cardona Jr.'s JAWS meets JULES ET JIM epic TINTORERA already out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, Vinegar Syndrome's first volume features two of his other better-known "topical" productions from 1977 and a lesser-known eighties adventure.

TREASURE OF THE AMAZON (1985): Years ago, Gringo (Stuart Whitman, SHATTER) and five friends went into the jungle in search of gold and came back insane with the five shrunken heads of his expedition mates. Now he scrapes by trading with the local native tribes. On a ferry boat traveling down the Amazon, he is approached by miners Pablo (Pedro Armendáriz Jr., LICENCE TO KILL) and Jairo (Jorge Luke, SALVADOR) who ask him to guide them into the jungle to find the gold. Gringo is reluctant to lead them on fool's errand until he learns that the boat is carrying mining equipment that has been ordered by former Nazi Klaus von Blantz (Donald Pleasance, THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS). Klaus warns Gringo off following him, however, he has more to worry about from local chief Tacho (Emilio Fernández, THE WILD BUNCH) who threatens death to anyone who tries to deprive him of his share of the government's tax levy on anything of value found in the jungles. While Klaus and his faithful Morimba (Sonia Infante, DOCTOR OF DOOM) travel along the river, Gringo and the two miners hope to head him off by trekking through the most dangerous parts of the jungle where headhunting Jivaro Indians lurk. Also caught up in the treasure hunt are oil prospectors Clark (Bradford Dillman, PIRANHA), Dick (Clark Jarrett, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS), and Dick's girlfriend Barbara (Ann Sidney, PERFORMANCE) who have discovered a mass grave littered with uncut diamonds who become stranded when their hydroplane experiences engine trouble.

Less of a Mexican take on the Italian cannibal film than a gory update of forties or fifties jungle film, TREASURE OF THE AMAZON is picturesque but feels rather thrown together. Although teeming with incident, it drags along at just over one hundred minutes. While there are some decapitations and a grizzly bit featuring fishhook-impaled tongue, the gory highlight of the film is an attack on a bound victim by small crabs that is pattered shot-for-shot on the tarantula attack from Lucio Fulci's THE BEYOND. The sudden light tone change of the ending after the brutal killings of four major characters is bewildering but strangely fitting. Performances range from bad – Sidney seems like she is doing a bad Southern accent and reverts to British for the remainder – or passable to sometimes better than the film deserves. Cardona mainstay Hugo Stiglitz (CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD) appears briefly as the boat captain and John Ireland (HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES) is also on hand as a local padre.

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (1977): Amidst a sudden spike in mysterious phenomena in the Bermuda Triangle including the disappearances of a squadron of Navy planes on a test flight and a chartered flight to Turks, Edward (John Huston, THE AFRICAN QUEEN) is traveling on a yacht with his family – wife Kim (Marina Vlady, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT), nubile daughter Michelle (Gloria Guida, TO BE TWENTY), teenage son Dave (Cardona's son René Cardona III, VACATION OF TERROR), and younger children Billy (Andrés Garcia Jr., CEMETERY OF TERROR) and Diane (Gretha) along with his alcoholic doctor half-brother Peter (Carlos East, THE FEAR CHAMBER) and his wife Sybil (Claudine Auger, BAY OF BLOOD) – hoping to explore the remains of a submerged ancient city that may be the ruins of Atlantis. Strange things start happening on board as soon as Diane rescues a creepy-looking Victorian doll from the waters. As the family and the crew – among them Captain Briggs (Hugo Stiglitz), navigator Alan (Andrés Garcia, HOUSE OF EVIL), cook Simon (Jorge Zamora, ROMANCING THE STONE), first mate Tony (Mario Arévalo, FIREWALKER), and engineer Gordon (Miguel Ángel Fuentes, THE PUMA MAN) – Diane claim that her new friend not only has an appetite for raw meat, but also has told her the order in which the forces in the triangle will claim them all.

Amidst the Cardona family run of late seventies topical exploitation that included the Cardona Jr.'s Jim Jones film GUYANA: CULT OF THE DAMNED and Cardona Sr.'s SURVIVE! about the Uruguayan rugby team who had to resort to cannibalism after their flight crashed in the Andes, THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE came at a particularly fertile period of fiction and "nonfiction" writing, documentaries, and films about the phenomenon including THE BERMUDA DEPTHS, the made-for-TV SATAN'S TRIANGLE and BEYOND THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, as well as a couple sensationalistic documentaries including a Sunn Classics pic. The film cannot seem to decide whether to attribute the phenomena to aliens or ghosts, but the novel addition of the creepy doll keeps things interesting for a time in the near-two hour film, along with some cutaways to artwork in the yacht of sea monsters that suggest a human attempt to visualize feelings of dread evoked by the setting. The idea of the Bermuda Triangle existing out of time is not new, and it has persisted in subsequent films on the phenomena. The mix of sync-sound and post-dubbed English performances is incredibly uneven – just because East can speak English does not mean he should not have been dubbed since his attempt to speak his lines clearly seems to have flattened his performance – but the rich scoring of Stelvio Cipriani (BARON BLOOD) and some stunning underwater photography by Ramon Bravo (JAWS, ZOMBIE) give the film a bit of production value.

CYCLONE (1977): When a sudden hurricane barrels across the Caribbean at alarming speed, the twelve occupants of a glass-bottomed boat exploring the coral reefs – among them skipper Andrés (Andrés Garcia), a priest (Arthur Kennedy, LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE), socialite Sheila (Carroll Baker, PARANOIA) and her dog Christmas, pregnant Monica (Olga Karlatos, ZOMBIE) and her physician husband Daniel, boy Thomas (René Cardona III) and his father, among others – are carried away from land by the current into shark-infested waters. Already low on rationed water, their resources are strained when they take on the survivors of a fishing boat and a crashed plane including the pilot (Hugo Stiglitz), skipper (Mario Almada), ruthless businessman Taylor (Lionel Stander, THE SQUEEZE), stewardess Linda (Stefania D'Amario, THE SISTER OF URSULA), and child Tiersa (Edith González, HELL'S TRAP) among others. When one of the fishermen dies, the survivors are revolted at the thought of using a piece of his flesh as bait to catch fish to survive. When another of them dies, however, the question of what they will do to survive becomes less academic.

Returning to the cannibalism theme of his father's SURVIVE!, Cardona Jr. went one better by turning his variation into a disaster movie with CYLCONE, shot back-to-back with THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE with the same crew and supporting cast. CYCLONE is a relentlessly grim experience – dogs never fare well in genre films – but Cardona Jr. dwells more on the desperation and debate, with one character noting how easy it would be for them to get used to eating human flesh that they would find themselves waiting like vultures for the next one of them to die. Although the birth of Monica's baby is one of two brief respites of joy in the film, Cardona knows exactly what he is doing when he lingers on faces as the baby cries offscreen (even if he thankfully never crosses that line). The climax has one more sting-in-the-tail that does not even spare some of the most innocent of the characters. While the cutaways to real storm footage inserts and some rotor-powered damage does not quite feel organically-integrated into the disaster footage involving the actors, it does indeed feel like the shoot was a grimmer experience than the extras reveal. The score by Riz Ortolani (CASTLE OF BLOOD) is more bombastic and sometimes tonally inappropriate than Cipriani's work on THE BERMUDA TRAINGLE.

Released direct-to-video by Vestron Video, TREASURE OF THE AMAZON got its first non-anamorphic letterboxed, barebones release on DVD from VCI who put out a handful of Cardona productions in 2005. Transferred from a new 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative, TREASURE OF THE AMAZON is the best-looking film in the set due to the film's relative age, with rich jungle greens and blood reds, and the real locations well-served by the HD resolution. All is not perfect, however, since the original audio elements for the film have gone missing, necessitating the use of a VHS source for the entirety of the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono audio track. Dialogue is clear for the most part, the highs of the score can be a little crunchy, but it is in the sounds of rushing water and airplane propellers that the digitization of the source seems a bit "waterlogged." Optional English SDH subtitle are provided. The only extra is a still gallery (2:40). Reportedly this one-hundred-and-five minute version is missing material found on a German DVD which as an English version in the extras that runs two hours; however, the listed cut material appears to be present.

Following its VidAmerica VHS release, THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE was another non-anamorphic, barebones release on DVD from VCI. While the VCI disc had THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE as the onscreen title, Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray bears the alternate title TRIANGLE: THE BERMUDA MYSTERY and looks virtually spotless. While the underwater blues are brilliant and the color palette is restrained primarily by the color scheme, the sharper image does rob some of the film's meagre onscreen special effects of their mysteriousness (including a reverse motion shot of a pilot flung up from the deep that was obviously shot in a pool or studio water tank). The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clear enough to effectively render the score while also making evident the patchwork live audio/post-dubbed mix of dialogue. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.

Extras include a pair of new interviews. In "Escaping the Triangle" (18:45), René Cardona III – who died just a few weeks ago – who recalls the film as one of their first Italian co-productions, noting the international cast and the use of a mobile ADR unit so that dialogue could be dubbed on the set to produce separate English, Spanish, and Italian dialogue tracks. He also reveals that his father had discovered Charles Berlitz's book on the subject and that his contribution to the screenplay by Carlos Valdemar (VACATION OF TERROR) was the addition of the doll. He notes that the yacht belonged to his grandfather, and it along with some of the film's other resources – including underwater photographer Ramon Bravo and the sharks – were also used for CYCLONE. In "Triangle of Fear" (22:09), producer Angelo Iacono (PHENOMENA) recalls feeling guilty that the film had such a big opening in Italy because a plane crashed in the Bermuda on the day of the premiere. He also recalls how cheaply he got most of the actors, including Huston who played checkers and gin rummy by himself on his free time, singing Gina Lollobrigida (DEATH LAID AN EGG) who had to pull out because she had a contract to do a film in Spain that had its production delayed, and winding up with both Vlady and Auger when he had approached both of them to replace her.

Also included is a still gallery (2:11) and a collection of foreign titles and credits (5:30) including the theatrical Italian opening credits sequence which uses an old timey map as the background, alternate Italian video credits that place the title card after all of the actors, the Italian DVD credits which uses the Spanish-language credits and live action backdrop with a cutaway to a computer-generated Italian title card, and the DVD's Spanish end crawl which is identical to the feature presentation (whose credits are otherwise in English) but with the addition of some untranslated Italian narration.

Like THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, CYCLONE was simultaneously produced in English, Spanish, and Italian. While an English-language version was produced in Mexico that ran nearly the two-hour length of the Spanish-language version, the U.S. initially got the export version prepared in Italy which ran only a hundred minutes and was released to VHS under the title TERROR STORM. When CYCLONE was released on non-anamorphic DVD by VCI, the box had the one hundred minute running time but it turned out to be the full-length English version. Unlike the other films in this set, CYCLONE was remastered in high definition when Synapse put out a DVD the same year. Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray presents two versions of the film; neither of which is the one hundred minute version. The English version (118:47) has been mastered in 4K from a 35mm archival print, and it shows with constant though faint scratching along the edges of the frame that is only really visible during the underwater scenes since much of the boat scenes are darker along the edges. The Spanish version (119:39) comes from a 4K scan of the original camera negative that reveals richer colors and textures and a slightly brighter image. The DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mixes do reveal their ADR patchwork in the dialogue while the music and effects fare better (particularly the use of synthesizer during the grimmer passages). Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the English version and English subtitles are available for the Spanish version.

Cardona III appears again in "Surviving the Cyclone" (18:28) in which he recalls learning as much about acting from Baker as he did about editing and directing from longtime family friend Alfredo Rosas Priego (THE CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN). He notes that the shoot was actually very pleasant, with rotors used to whip up a storm, and the weather actually quite pleasant at the Cozumel location. In "The Eye of the Cyclone" (32:36), producer Angelo reveals that he quit Italy for Mexico when he lost a lot of money on the comedy VAI COL LISCIO. He asked around for filmmakers at Churubusco studios and was introduced to Cardona Jr. (who he likens to Dario Argento) and his father who would direct Iacono's production UNA NOCHE EMBARAZOSA starring Italian comedian Lando Buzzanca with whom Iacono had a contract. When they went into production on THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, Iacono had the idea of making a second film using the same crew and some of the cast, extending the production schedule, and returning to Europe to put together a cast.

Retired actress Baker appears in the Zoom interview "Beware of Sharks" (16:26) recalling that she had just returned from Europe and was staying on Fire Island researching material for a book when she was told that Mexico's most famous director wanted her for a film. She also recalls it being a pleasant experience, staying at resort on the beach, going for morning swims, eating breakfast, and then jogging to the set. The only bad thing she recalls is her refusal to get into the water with live sharks for the climax. She also discusses her reasons for retiring from acting and her latter day career as a novelist. The disc also includes a still gallery (2:29). The cover is reversible and a limited run available directly from Vinegar Syndrome comes with a slipcover. (Eric Cotenas)

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