Disturbing yet enthralling

Best movie of this year hands down!

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

After an engaged couple mysteriously disappears in the Bermuda Triangle, her father organizes an expedition to get to the truth. And the truth? Extraterrestrials are carrying out studies on the human race!The best part of this movie is the opening, where a monologue starts us off, quoting from several books over UFO footage. This has nothing to do with the rest of the film, which makes it even more awesome.People get possessed by the Bermuda Triangle, ghost ships show up and the ending is a lot like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, if you also added in a giant Moai from Easter Island. Yes, it's the second best part of the film. And oh look - Mike is played by Gianni Garko, who you'd probably know better for playing the character Sartana and being in Devil Fish.Director Tonino Ricci also directed A Man Called Rage and Cave of the Sharks. Hopefully, those movies are much better than this one, which is very talky and every time it aspires to be something interesting, it runs as hard as it can away from it. But the beginning and the ending? Worth watching.

ENCOUNTERS IN THE DEEP is a poor and fumbled attempt to cash-in on two separate and popular Hollywood sub-genres of the era: the underwater exploration movie inspired by THE DEEP (and JAWS before it), and the alien encounter flick stemming from Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. Sadly, in the hands of Italian trash director Tonino Ricci, this film is a hopeless mess for fans of either genre, and that comes from somebody who's a fan of some of the director's output, like RUSH: THE ASSASSIN and its sequel. The fumbled premise has a diver hunting for extraterrestrials beneath the waves, but the story is alternatively muddled and dragged out and made little sense to me. Andres Garcia parades around in his swimwear a lot but has little acting talent while the clumsy special effects are quite pitiful. I can't imagine anyone enjoying this turgid enterprise.

To say this film is a fantastic piece of filmography would be an understatement. Made in 1979, the practical effects still stand up to this day. The storyline of finding an underwater world inhabited by aliens in the Bermuda Triangle is quite simply inspired! I watched the English dub of the film and the actors used conveyed the emotions shown by the characters in the film perfectly. I can't believe "Mike" didn't gain more recognition for his portrayal of "Crazy Eyes".This film is quite simply one of the best films I've seen of late and it would be great to see it rebooted, possibly with Jean Claude Van Damme.10/10

Ever wanted to watch a movie about a bunch of guys in boat doing absolutely nothing for an hour and a half? Just admit it, we all have. Tonino Ricci (director of Night of the Sharks and Days of Hell) brings us what we've always yearned for in the form of Encounters in the Deep! It's kind of some sort of rip-off of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, set on the sea (Tonino is a bit obsessed with the sea), without the special effects, but with the added bonus of not having Richard whats-his-face in it. Boats and such like keep going missing in the Bermuda Triangle, and once a rich guy's daughter goes missing, it's up to our heroes to head out to the sea and find her! Well, they do a lot of swimming at least. And I suppose they do sort of find her, but not after dodging sharks and dodgy lights set to bizarre moogs outbursts. And…one of them turns a bit strange, which riles their dog…and erm…there's an old man…and…um… Look, this is THE most uneventful Italian film I've ever sat through. Apart from the various boat disappearances at the beginning of the film (a toy boat in a tub, no less), nothing of any consequence happens until the last ten minutes, and even then you'll be thinking 'is that it?'. The film does have a slight naive charm and the effects are pretty funny, but it's lacking in any elements that make for a great Italian genre movie (no action, no gore, no nudity, no style). Tonino Ricci, sadly, doesn't do anything here but waste time. If you want to see something decent (i.e hilarious) from him, watch his action movie Days of Hell.Unnervingly, this isn't the worst Italian movie I've watched – That would have to be War of the Robots, which was so bad it actually caused me physical pain.