FAQ

The movie is basically told in flashback--in a pub story told by old Angus MacMorrow (Brian Cox) to two tourists. At the start of the story, which takes place in 1942, young Angus (Alex Etel) finds an egg lying on the beach of Loch Ness, near where he lives in a large manor with his housekeeper mother Anne (Emily Watson), sister Kirstie (Pri Xi), handyman Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin), maid Gracie (Geraldine Brophy), and old gamekeeper Clyde (William Johnson). When the egg hatches into a cute little creature, Angus tries to hide it from everyone, especially from the soldiers who are camped around the manor to defend the loch against possible German attack. But the cute little creature soon begins to grow and grow and grow.

The Water Horse is a 1990 children's novel by English author Dick King-Smith. It was adapted for the screen by American screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs.

Water horse is a name that is applied to various creatures said to inhabit the depths of rivers and lochs (lakes) in Celtic mythology. In some tales, it is the same as the kelpie; in other tales, such as this one, water horse refers to such lake monsters as Nessie of Loch Ness fame. In the context of this movie and according to Lewis Mowbray, there can be but one water horse in the world at a time. It lays only one egg in its life and then dies before the new one hatches.

Yes. Young Angus names him "Crusoe" after Robinson Crusoe.

The flashback ends with Angus and his family watching Crusoe swim out to sea. The movie then returns to present time. The two travelers and old Angus are still seated at the pub. Old Angus says that he never saw Crusoe again, although he adds that some people say the water horse occasionally returns to the loch looking for his friend. As the two travelers leave the Bonnie Piper, a young mother comes down the street calling for her son William. William (William Russell) can be seen walking along the shore, looking for rocks and seashells. He notices a large, barnacle-encrusted egg and picks it up.

It's strongly hinted that Crusoe is to be taken as Nessie, evidenced by a scene in a pub where some older gents are talking about the sightings and the photograph taken of the monster (Crusoe) in the loch. "This could put our Loch Ness on the map," one of the gents says. "If there's a monster in Loch Ness, the world has a right to know." However, many liberties have been taken with the depiction of "Loch Ness". In the movie, the loch has clear water and direct access to the ocean. In reality, Loch Ness is a freshwater lake connected to the ocean by the 12-kilometer-long River Ness. Although wide, the river is very shallow in places, and nothing the size of Crusoe could swim all the way through to the ocean. In addition, the real Loch Ness is full of black peat moss. The water is so black that, once you're more than five feet down, you can't see anything at all. Finally, modern day Nessie sightings started in 1933 after a new road was built around the shore of the Loch, not in 1942 as the movie suggests. The photo taken of the Loch Ness monster (see here), which has been dubbed "the surgeon's photograph" and pronounced a hoax, was taken in 1934, well before World War II. Some fans of the movie who enjoy expanding upon the fantasy have explained that away by suggesting that the pre-1942 sightings of "Nessie" were actually those of Crusoe's parent.