Lonely Water (widely known as The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water) is a 1973 British Public Information short film made for the Central Office of Information (COI). The film aimed to warn children of the dangers of careless or foolhardy behaviour in the vicinity of water, and was shown regularly on TV for several years during breaks in children's programming. Lonely Water is widely recalled as one of the most memorable and chilling of PIFs. In a poll carried out by the BBC on the 60th anniversary of the COI in 2006, Lonely Water was chosen as the UK's fourth-favourite PIF of all time and the highest ranked one-off production. Dozens of comments attested to the film's power and lasting impact on 1970s children. Background Lonely Water was directed by Jeff Grant and written and produced by Christine Hermon for Illustra Films, having been commissioned by the COI as a result of official concern over the high number of child fatalities in drowning accidents in the UK. Other PIFs of the early 1970s to tackle the subject of water safety included an instalment of the Charley Says series and Learn to Swim featuring Rolf Harris, which were targeted at younger children and parents respectively. Lonely Water however was aimed squarely at the 7–12 age group and was altogether darker in tone, featuring an eerie faceless black-robed and cowled figure and a voiceover by Donald Pleasence, whose echoing final words "I'll be back... back... back..." are often said semi-jokingly to have terrified an entire generation of British schoolchildren. Writing for the British Film Institute, Katy McGahan says Lonely Water is "eerily redolent of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now" and "plays like a distilled horror film, deploying the menacing tone and special effects normally the preserve of X-rated cinema shockers." Synopsis The camera pans across a mist-shrouded expanse of water clogged with fallen trees and branches, with a ghostly black-clad figure hovering hazily on the water's surface. "I am the spirit of dark and lonely water: ready to trap the unwary, the showoff, the fool..." intones the voiceover, "...and this is the kind of place you'd expect to find me. But no-one expects to find me here. It seems too ordinary", as the scene switches to a group of children playing on the muddy edge of a murky pool. A boy is teetering on the steep, slippery bank attempting to retrieve