Neil Arnold recently sent me some DVDs of cryptozoological documentories. Amongst these was a 1976 film called 'The Legend of Loch Ness'. It was produced by Richard Martin and narrated by Auther Franz.
The list of errors and downright lies in this programe beggers belief. There are numerous shots of a yellow submarine (not the famous Viperfish) and divers whom we are told are on an expedition diving in Loch Ness. The waters are crystal clear, not peat-soaked like the waters of the Loch. On top of this there are marine fish, sea urchins, and giant kelp found only in the Pacific Ocean.
We are shown film of a blue shark and told it is a bull shark. The narrator cheefuly tells us that bull sharks have a snake-like head and long thin body. Actualy they have a broad head and squat body. He then goes on to tell us that they grow to 25 feet long. In fact the biggest bull shark ever recirded was about 11 feet long. The reson for all this?
...The Loch Ness Monster might be a shark!
Later we are show film of brown bears eating salmon, and told that the monster might hibernate like a bear. The narrator goes on to tell us that the last bear in Scotland was killed in the 1800s! Bears were hunted out in the UK around 800 years ago.
Finally, they boast that their diving crew got exclusive film of the monster swimming past their cameras. We see the close up of a fishes eye then an extreme close-up of what looks like an ordinary-sized eel swimming very close to the camera.
Once again this is in clear water.
It's not so much the zoological inacuracies that get my back up, but the barefaced lies - like claiming to have filmed in the Loch when the footage comes from the Pacific coast of North America, and claiming they have filmed the monster when all they have is a close up of a marine eel.
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One of the best documentaries on Loch Ness is actually a 25-minute Walt Disney production called "Man Monster and Mysteries" — Made in 1969-70, it features the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau and includes interview sequences with Hugh Ayton, Lady Maud Baillie, Alex Campbell, Isobel Cameron, Freddy Cary, Tim Dinsdale, David James, Ted Holiday, Roy Mackal, Ivor Newby, Dan Taylor and non-speaking glimpses of Holly Arnold, Peter Davies, Rip Hepple, Clem Skelton, Ken Wallis, a whole crew of LNI volunteers, and lots of Drumnadrochit school-children. The film is available as a Special Feature on the curent DVD release of "Pete's Dragon" (1977).
Clearly, it was much easier to lie in 1976 when information - such as the peat-soaked water - wasn't at the public's fingertips as it is today via Internet. That documentary would be fun for laughs now.
I still love the creaky inaccuracies of the 1976 documentary. I think back then theyr elied heavily on atmosphere but forgot about the facts ha!
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