Watchers, The
Entry updated 6 January 2026. Tagged: Film.
Short UK film (1969). BFI Production Board. Written and directed by Dick Foster. Cast includes Joanne Harding, Rosemary Lord, Roland MacLeod and Helen Sorokou. 27 minutes. Black and white.
Sixteen-year-old Julie (Lord) wanders away from a picnic with her friends to find a lost Cat, and is led to its hiding place by a young child. The child then disappears in a vortex of light. Soon afterwards Julie begins hearing disembodied voices and, disoriented, starts skipping school. After visiting her grandmother, Julie and her mother are on a crowded bus which pulls over sharply when confronted by a blinding light. The disembarking passengers see a figure similar to the one Julie met before, which some take to be a heavenly visitation. Julie reaches out to it and is taken into another Dimension, but wakes up back in her own world and gets back on the bus, seemingly with a profound feeling of loss.
Clearly produced on a low budget, this is an inventive and enigmatic film which mixes two of the dominant forms of its time, the hippyish mystical sf element sitting alongside the realistically depicted, gently humorous kitchen-sink portrayal of Julie's family life. These seemingly incompatible strands are united by a particularly imaginative sound design and a real feel for the mystical possibilities of the Yorkshire landscape, both natural and industrial. The BFI Production Board produced short films by many directors who went on to become famous, including Terence Davies, Bill Douglas, Stephen Frears, Peter Greenaway, Shane Meadows, Ken Russell, Ridley Scott and Tony Scott. Sadly, this very promising debut was the only film written and directed by Foster. [CWa]
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