Dir: Alberto Cavalcanti | UK Thriller
Reviewed by Richard Chatten
Like Michael Powell, Cavalcanti ended his illustrious career in British films following a sojourn abroad with a fantasy for the Children’s Film Foundation. Inspired by the surge in interest the Loch Ness Monster was currently enjoying, it features Rachel Clay – who shortly afterwards played a child that was cold to the touch in Losey’s ‘The Damned’ – as one of the kids presented with an enormous Malayan reptile’s egg of otherwise mysterious provenance that’s still warm.
It demonstrates the film’s casual approach to science that although he’s supposed to be a scientist himself, uncle Ronald Howard is neither surprised nor curious when a reptile’s egg proves to be warm in the first place. All continue to take it in their stride when the egg then hatches into a cute little stop-motion dinosaur chick – this is a Halas & Bachelor production, after all and none of the members of the public who see the fully-grown monster driven through the streets of London tied to the back of a lorry – after an attempt by the usual pair of bungling crooks to steal it – seem particularly surprised or concerned either.
ON BFI PLAYER