Lonely Water (1973)

Touches You

Simply Perfect

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Aired in 1973 as a British public service announcement against drowning, Dark and Lonely Water is modelled as supernatural horror in which a dark spirit oversees children drowning.A surprising amount of effort went into one and a half minutes of TV, with Donald Pleasence voicing the spirit. It is seen ominously in the background as children fall into the water through carelessness. Its narration is sinister and eerie; the Spirit shows no obvious joy in seeing children die, but appears to benefit from or even cause the accidents. It is remarkably cold. Of course, simply falling into water won't necessarily kill a child; also, swimming into a water for one child is foolish while others swimming into the same water is "sensible," and the difference isn't exactly spelled out. Still, the short is spooky, evocative of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973), and gets a point across.

This small film, to inform about the dangers of playing near water, swimming in the wrong place, slipping down muddy banks, etc., is raised from the usual preachy style by a really chilling evocation of the Grim Reaper with a voice-over by Donald Pleasance.Shot by Jeff Grant in the style of a horror classic, this film stays in the memory for a long time. It gets its message across in an original way - public information films of the time were usually far more mundane (although not uninteresting).A fondly remembered film - or one which has traumatised children for life ...?

I used to love Public Information Films when I was a kid. Some of them were masterpieces of tension and scares. Always filmed on 16mm, always stark and to-the-point and mostly always featuring children as the victims. You were glued to the screen. There's just something so hauntingly brilliant about them and The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water is no exception.Directed by Jeff Grant, the film had Donald Pleasance play the voice of The Spirit-a sinister, robed apparition who would always be present when some foolish person ended up in a lake/pond/etc when they couldn't swim or when no one else could help.Of course the Spirit was powerless against sensible children but the echoing warning of 'I'll be back-ack-ack-ack' reminded you that going for a dip in a flooded quarry would probably be dumb thing to do.