Genuinely, deeply haunting

Let's be honest, most of what the Children's Film Foundation (CFF) produced was (probably) not very good. I say this with no great malice or cynicism. The truth is that, as per Sturgeon's law, most of everything isn't very good, never was and never will be. Here and there though there were some gold nuggets, and they withstand scrutiny even now for more than just nostalgia's sake. Haunters of the Deep (available to watch on line for free here) is definitely one.*

It's not about submarines. It doesn't have any baddies. And the adult characters are just as important to the plot as the children are. In fact Haunters of the Deep is really an unusually mature film for children. For the early 1980s, at a time when every American on British telly was a moron or an evil capitalist villain (or, worse, a Cold Warrior), it's also unusually subtle. In fact the two American characters, a young girl and her father, are played as likable right from the outset - albeit (literally) in over their heads, lost in deepest darkest Cornwall, and then subsequently in the deepest darkest depths thereof.

The setting of Haunters of the Deep is also an unusually gritty "real world" one for a children's anthology series that's usually given to wholesome prepubescent whimsy rather than to modern "cultural relevance". Yes, it's set in Cornwall, land of second homes and public school surfers. And yes, it's beautifully shot. But it makes no bones about the lifestyle of a hardworking family on the edge struggling to make ends meet. So in a sense it's even more impressive that at a time when the CFF itself was in the doldrums the producers seem to have positively fought off any inclination to go "political". Even as the Thatcher government was closing down mines in the north of England, the economic atmosphere here in Cornwall is a seemingly quite wholesome one of reform, retraining, and reopening with American investment. There are the Yankee yuppies and there's a BMX and there's the usual idiot older brother, who listens to pop music on a walkman (and likes to do stunts on his younger brother's bike). Mixed in are not a few melancholy references to the decline of both mining and the Cornish fishing industry, though without any punches being pulled about the need for change or about how the mining itself was horrifically dangerous in the bad old good old days. 

From a modern point of view the film's beautiful sunlit vistas are a painful reminder that back in the day there were still filmmakers who knew how ghost stories work. Contrast rubbish like The Woman in Black (or most of Hammer's back-catalogue, for that matter). Kubrick knew that a brightly lit hotel lobby is scarier than a "spooky" dark cellar, and to his credit so does Ari Aster in Midsommar. And the stand out performance of the piece is Cardinal Newman's 'Lead Kindly Light', whose historical cultural connexion with mining is well thought of. The fact that the ghosts are trying to help the characters makes them paradoxically more scary, because it makes the audience actually focus on their ghostliness - their being dead, lost before their time in terrible circumstances - rather than distracting with some feebly conceived malevolent motivations. And the idea of a ghost boy who is trapped in his childhood is a beautifully disturbing and memorable notion, especially for children themselves.

All-in-all, Haunters of the Deep is almost certainly an unwitting gem that has survived the test of time remarkably well. And if CFF had been able to keep on making children's films as good as this - rather than proto-woke drivel like Terry on the Fence - then maybe there might have been some call to preserve it.

*Friend or Foe (available for a small fee from BFI here) is probably another.