| Director | Gilbert Gunn |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy film |
| Country | United Kingdom |
Struggling young writer Tony Blake is served an eviction notice by Mr Slate from his rented room in a Chelsea house shared with other artistic types including abstract "flicking" painter Arnold. Tony hatches a plan to drum up interest in his rejected book on the Loch Ness Monster by faking a sighting of the creature. He and his friend Vernon, who makes electronic music, construct a phony monster, which they photograph in the Serpentine, startling a tramp. The two friends and Vernon's ditzy girlfriend Charlotte "Charlie" Pinner decide to visit Scotland to further their ruse. Driving in a second-hand Rolls-Royce hearse, they pick up a young French hitchhiker, Marie, along the way. They are pursued by Charlie's dipsomaniac father.
Tony and his friends arrive at a Loch Ness inn, whose landlord Harry Sutton is trying to conceal dozens of poached salmon from two local policemen. Tony befriends the local postman and other locals, who become more convinced the monster is real when they hear a monstrous roar from a speaker secretly installed by Vernon. The next day, the inn is swarming with customers and the press, much to the delight of Sutton and the locals. However, the crowd's enthusiasm wanes when Tony is unable to produce a promised photo of the monster. In the midst of these events, Vernon and Charlie decide to get married, Marie falls for Tony, and the poached salmon are inadvertently loaded into a police car.
Tony and his friends secretly make another phony monster to photograph, only to discover that several locals, in an attempt to draw business and attention back to the area, had the same idea and made their own fake monsters. The locals also discover the hidden speaker Tony used to broadcast roars, and realize they were deceived all along. An angry mob chases Tony and Marie, who try to escape by rowing across the loch, only for the real monster to rise from the loch as the film ends.