It would have been a futile endeavor to expect a “normal” horror film from Ken Russell. The flamboyant enfant terrible of 20th-century British cinema was never one to revel in kitchen-sink realism or basic genre expectations. After all, this is the guy who made The Devils and Tommy, wherein masturbation via femur and rolling around in baked beans are some of the more conventional parts of their respective narratives. By the late 1980s, Russell had suffered a few financial flops and dropped out of a handful of projects, including the film adaptation of Evita. A three-film deal with the indie upstart Vestron Pictures offered him a chance to delve into some of his favorite themes. The studio wanted a horror film that could be done with a mere $1 million budget; a fan of Bram Stoker (Russell famously wrote an adaptation of Dracula that never got made, with the title role intended for Mick Fleetwood), he decided to adapt one of his other books instead.
The Lair of the White Worm isn’t a vampire novel, at least not technically. It’s a clumsily written, weirdly racist story of a snake-like monster and the sinister woman who wants to raise it from the depths of the underground. Russell decided to pick the bits he liked from the book and discard everything else, leaving behind the core concept of a snake-worshipping cult and adding aspects of the legend of the Lambton Worm for flavor. In his version, the snake/worm of the title is the god of the aristocratic Lady Sylvia, who plans to create an army of not-vampires to help resurrect the creature. Standing in her way are Sir James D’Ampton, the foppish young lord of the manor (Hugh Grant) and a Scottish archaeology student named Angus (Peter Capaldi.)
Russell has no qualms about letting the intrinsic silliness of folk horror take center stage. The snake is a pagan symbol (but also possibly the serpent that tempted Eve in Eden) and its followers loathe Christianity’s invasion of Britain. One sequence reveals the backstory to the cult, which involves a crucified Jesus being strangled by a giant serpent while a group of nuns are raped by Roman soldiers at his feet. It’s a full house call in Ken Russell bingo, executed with the defiant absurdity that blends sex, death, and blasphemy into one retina-burning vision.
He’s not any more reverent towards gothic fiction, with the combination of foreboding shadowy manors and giant snake skulls practically daring you not to chuckle. The impeccable Britishness of this combination through Russell’s lens also allows him to poke fun at the British stiff upper lip approach to life. It got Edward Woodward killed in The Wicker Man and it doesn’t bode well for the characters here, with Hugh Grant’s trademark posh bemusement put to excellent use. Blessed be to the Scotsman who wards off vampires with a set of bagpipes while wearing a kilt. Why be polite when you can survive instead?
It’s all very British in its themes as well. Russell moves the setting of the novel from Stoker’s era to the then-modern day, the tail-end of Thatcherism and decade of free market fetishism. The wealthy evil lady of the manor preys upon the locals with impunity, while even the supposedly good lord James is blatantly out-of-touch with his own people and generation. Russell has little time for those who fawn over the aristocracy, which feels especially caustic in a film released amid a plethora of respectable Merchant-Ivory period dramas that came to exemplify British cinema to the outside world. Americans may want cravats and Noel Coward, but Russell knows that phallic imagery and giant snake puppets are just as representative of the nation.
Russell’s work is often labeled camp, and The Lair of the White Worm’s handmade “let’s put on a naked show” quality certainly strengthens that categorization. Rather than conceal the film’s low budget, Russell exposes it, allowing the green-screen effects to enhance the feverish surrealness of the source material. Yet true camp is unconsciously aware of its own nature, whereas Russell is having too much fun rolling around in the chaos to not know what’s going on. You cannot watch the sultry Lady Sylvia (an extremely game Amanda Donohue) literally slink around and be ignorant of the tone it establishes. At one point, she sits in a tree and tries to tempt the innocent young maiden of the film, whose name is Eve. It’s that level of subtlety, and all the more delicious for it. You can’t have this much phallic imagery in one film and expect restraint to rear its ugly head.
Many critics dinged Russell for silliness, claiming the ooh-er dialogue, nipple shots, and wobbly effects undercut any kind of point he was trying to make. Such assertions seem to ignore that Russell spent decades sticking his middle finger up at the genteel nature of British art, as well as his omnipresent cheeky humor. Of course The Lair of the White Worm is silly. So is a centuries-old system that dictates some people are worthier than others based on who gave birth to them. So is worship of any kind, whether it’s to God or a big snake living in your basement. If you can’t laugh at that, you might as well throw yourself into the pit.
“The Lair of the White Worm” is streaming on Plex, Tubi, and Vudu.
