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Turtles in Movies
 
The Bermuda Depths (1978)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot
Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot
Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot
Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot Turtle Screen Shot
This is a fantasy mystery TV movie about scientists investigating large sea creatures in the Bermuda triangle. It begins with a scene on the beach with a sleeping man named Magnus (Leigh McCloskey) approached by a woman (Connie Sellecca) who seems to recognize him. He's dreaming of his childhood on the beach with his young friend Jennie Hanniver when they discovered a large turtle egg in the sand. We see the egg turn into a full-grown adult turtle that was hatched out of it, which must have been years earlier, though the kids don't appear to be any older when we see them with the turtle on the beach. Magnus, writes their initials on its shell inside a heart "J + M" for Jennie + Magnus. Then we see the turtle swim away with Jennie riding it. That's the last time Jennie was seen as a young girl.

We see Magnus as an adult, coming back to the place after drifting for a few years after his father, a marine biologist, was killed by a large sea creature. He gets a job on the boat of some marine biologists he knew from his childhood. He keeps seeing a young woman swimming in the water. She's Jennie grown up, though he doesn't know that. Eventually he meets her on land. When he tells the biologists about her they tell him that Jennie Haniver is a creature of local folklore. She was a beautiful woman who sold her soul to a mysterious god in order to survive a storm at sea and was granted eternal life, but forced to become a creature of the sea, unable to live on land. (We see a grave stone in the cemetery at the end with her name on it.)

The scientists are brought in to examine some enormous tracks on the beach. They go out to sea and catch the giant turtle in a net, but it starts to tear out of the net. One of the men shoots at the net to save it but ends up injuring Jennie. She comes to Magnus and begs him to free the giant turtle. We see the giant turtle in the water from the vantage of a helicopter, then the turtle leaps out of the water and crashes it, then capsizes the boat. We finally see the giant turtle swimming away with the initials "J + M" written on its shell.

We never get a clear explanation of who Jennie and the turtle are, but the turtle appears to be a physical manifestation of the mysterious god that saved her life, and she's its protector, forced to live with it in the ocean. They both have the same glowing green eyes.

I've read that the adult turtle we see on the beach is a Green Sea Turtle. But the giant turtle egg is not real. Sea turtles bury their eggs in the sand, so it would never be poking out as this one is.


You can read a full review of the movie and watch it over at TheSilverScream.com.