Time for an oldie, and no, i don’t mean Gertie The Dinosaur (though eventually we’ll cover it), we’re “only” going back to the 1930’s with The Secret Of The Loch, released in the very same year the infamous “Surgeon’s Photo” depicting an unknown, plesiosaur-esque creature peaking out of the Loch Ness lake in Scotland, which in turn made more rumors and sightings of strange creatures around and about the lake go around, so jumping on the bandwagon was thing back then too.
As the infamous aforementioned photo allegedly depicting “Nessie” wasn’t 100 % proven to be a hoax until decades later, it helped set up what would become the entire thing of cryptozoology, but filmakers didn’t care to wait, gotta strike fast, so the British-based Ealing Studios did, with Milton Rosmer directing this comedy adventure film about the Loch Ness creature.
The first movie ever made about the cryptid in question, which nowadays it’s a rarely used subject, but eventually we had films about it like The Water Horse in 2007 or the more recent b-horror movie The Loch Ness Horror. As in, the one from 2023, not the one from 1981 also called that.
In terms of plot, The Secret Of The Loch is exactly what you’d think it would be, and displays some irony, because it’s about a nutty Scottish professor trying to prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster, in spite of everyone else calling him cuckoo for that, followed by a zany reporter that wants to get the scoop on the story.
There are some sequences where it almost feels like it could be a straight up serious monster film from the early talkies era, but it’s not, it’s a silly comedy where museum professors are ready to throw down fists and canes on each other but politely so, because we gotta keep the Scottish stereotypes in good company with the old UK comedy stereotypes from the age, and lots of overacting from Seymore Hicks as the cranky and batty professor that believes the creature to be real.
His overacting is quite fierce and honestly entertaining enough to have this thing move at a decent pace, alongside the very dated but still enjoyable at a base level comedy… and the newspaper reporter being a fuckin annoying creep that honestly i’d wish it would get eaten by the monster (or that the Scotsman that promised him a burial deep in the loch would honor his verbal threat), but i know damn well he ain’t gonna because the movies frames him as the actual protagonist, and for some reason the woman he accidentally spies on tries to vouch for him… the 30s, i guess.
That about explains why there is a romance subplot, but honestly, i’d just shot him if i were any character that has the misfortune to deal with him. After all, “the loch never gives back its dead”.
Pity, but aside from the protagonist being a douche, there’s the other issue, as in the reveal of the monster, which i would like to say it’sactually perfect, as in it’s obviously a cheaper solution, kinda needed for comedies that were quickly made to ride on a trend or fad, but it also plays into the overall farcical tone… or so i would say if the reveal made any sense, even going by the rumors spread at the time, because the Loch Ness monster here is actually a friggin’ lizard.
An iguana, to be precise. Not a plesiosaur as the more common accepted idea goes, just an iguana that somehow is able to walk on the lake’s bottom.
I’m not saying that this needed the budget of the original King Kong, because its clear they needed /wanted this out the door ASAP before the Loch Ness rumors were circulating as the new hotness, but it feels a bit “dirty” not only to reveal the creature in the very last 5 minutes, but also to hit you with a rear projected lizard and effects that remind one too much of the very ones used at the beginning of cinema 2/3 decades earlier. It feels like a joke, but one at the expense of audiences.
And yes, it was reasonable for the time to expect stop motion instead, but you know, if they wanted to take the piss out of the Nessie believers, they still could have done better than this even for cheap, i dunno, a twist revealing it was actually all a marionette play or something.
Instead with the iguana it feels like they’ve run out of time or budget before hand, and i’ll be frank, even at just 72 minutes it feels like it’s 20 minutes too long, as after any scene that might move or suggest to move the plot forward, we’re usually back at the pub again, time to drink the 50th beer and dance at the sound of bagpipes and have stupid guys yap on the telephone.
Not that the underwater shots are anything amazing to witness in the final act, they ain’t.
Overall, The Secret Of The Loch it’s not great, but it’s also not that bad of a film, it’s a mild curiosity that you found while cleaning your grandfather’s old dusty house, and one that – for the sake of history and cinema preservation – has been restored and released in various forms, and can also be found at the Internet Archive.
It’s more important as a relic of the time and one of the earlier works where editor David Lean (whom later also directed something called Lawrence Of Arabia) started out, and also the writer, Charles Benneth, whom later wrote many scripts for Hitchcock and then Irvin Allen.
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