The Water Babies

The Water Babies (1978)

Catch a Wave to a World Full of Wonder!

Grimes, an amoral chimney sweep, occasionally likes to steal valuables from his clients. One day, on the verge of being caught, he frames his young apprentice, Tom, for the crime. Tom runs away and jumps into a river where, instead of drowning, he finds himself transformed into a mystical aquatic creature. Swimming and breathing effortlessly, he discovers a colorful underwater world replete with creatures both cruel and kind.

Date of release
1978-06-23
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (16)
Runtime
1h 32m
Genres
Family, Fantasy, Animation, Adventure, Music
Director
Lionel Jeffries

Casting

Interesting facts

The Water Babies is a 1978 live action-animated family film directed by Lionel Jeffries and starring James Mason, Bernard Cribbins, Billie Whitelaw, Joan Greenwood, David Tomlinson, Tommy Pender, and Samantha Gates. It is very loosely based on the book The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby by Charles Kingsley.

Production

Producer Peter Shaw read the book in 1972 and thought it would make a good film. However, he was unsure how to tackle the film technically and was concerned about how to turn the book into a script. He and writer Michael Robson took some time adapting the book. Key changes were made including adding a sidekick for the evil sweeper Grimes and having the villains get their comeuppance in the real world as well as the fantasy world.

Shaw toyed with the idea of using special effects then decided to create the underwater sequences via animation. "We had the perfect excuse," said Shaw. "The surface of the water becomes the boundary between live action and fantasy."

Shaw formed a company called Water Babies Ltd. The budget for the film was raised entirely in England, and the film was shot without a distributor.

Shaw looked into hiring animators in Hollywood, but found them to be too expensive, so made a deal with a Polish company. The Poles did the animation while the British did the story, soundtrack, working designs and characters.

Lionel Jeffries was going to direct a film version of David Copperfield with David Essex but that was postponed so in September 1976 it was announced he would make Water Babies.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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