Figure 1.-- There have been many films set in Scotland, although the location shots for this movie were filmed acrosed the globed in New Zealand. “The Water Horse” is based on a story by Dick King Smith and tells of a young Scottish boy called Angus McMorrow played by Alex Etel. While out looking through the rock-pools at low tide, Angus happens to find a barnacle encrusted object which he takes home. He doesn’t know it yet, but what he has found is in fact, the protective covering of an egg, which will later hatch and from it will emerge a baby water horse, who Angus Christens Crusoe.

There have been many films set in Scotland, although the location shots for this movie were filmed acrosed the globed in New Zealand. “The Water Horse” is based on a story by Dick King Smith and tells of a young Scottish boy called Angus McMorrow played by Alex Etel. While out looking through the rock-pools at low tide, Angus happens to find a barnacle encrusted object which he takes home. He doesn’t know it yet, but what he has found is in fact, the protective covering of an egg, which will later hatch and from it will emerge a baby water horse, who Angus Christens Crusoe. He raises Crusoe who quickly grows from something the size of a cat when he is hatched from the egg into a full grown Loch Ness monster. It is the 1940s and Angus lives in a castle like building with his widowed mother and sister. The building and grounds is soon commandeered by the Army as a base for the troops who will be on the lookout for German submarines sailing below the surface of the Loch. Angus meets Capt. Hamilton (David Morrissey) who thinks the boy is lacking in discipline and Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin) who is hired by Angus’s mother as an odd job man. Hamilton is convinced Mowbray is a deserter, but in point of fact has been invalided out of the navy as a hero. As Crusoe grows it becomes obvious that he is getting too big to live in the house, so Angus and Mowbray take him on the back of a lorry and release him into the Loch and so begins a new life for Crusoe. Here he has to battle against the might of the British Army who frequently use the Loch for target practice, yet they never get to see Crusoe, but two of the villagers who are fishing in the Loch have an encounter with him, and so begins the legend of the Loch Ness monster. Angus wears the clothes a boy would wear in the 1940s, we first see him wearing a checked shirt. Slipover, grey corduroy shorts, grey knee-length stockings and brown shoes. He also wears grey flannel shorts and long sleeved pullover at one point in the film.

Created: 9:44 AM 5/20/2010
Last updated: 9:44 AM 5/20/2010