The film's droll humor-especially from Donohoe's character-make this Russell's best since Altered States. Peter Capaldi turns in a creditable performance as Angus Flint, a visiting archaeologist who matches wits with Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe), the worm's vampiric emissary who has set her snake eyes on the town virgin, Eve. The typical Russell excesses-adolescent humor of a generally sexual nature (throughout, Russell wastes no opportunity in reminding audiences that a worm has phallic overtones), and a virulent anti-religious streak (embodied here in a pathetic fantasy sequence which features Roman soldiers raping nuns)-are irritating additions, but unlike other Russell efforts, they do not dominate the story. The other is Lady Sylvia Marsh, who dresses like a tasteful Elvira and lives in the moldering Gothic mansion down the lane.After such bombs as Gothic and Salome's Last Dance, avant-garde trash director Ken Russell turns his perverse attention to simpler fare in this retelling of Bram Stoker's horror tale of a giant worm which resides in England's Peak district, and feasts on the bodies of young virgins. One of them is Lord James D’Ampton, descendant of the dragon-slayer. But even weirder is that Lady Sylvia steals the skull for use in worshiping very erotically her pagan god, The White Worm, who hungers for the taste of virginal flesh. Russell introduces us to two more characters, and the chase is on. In a remote corner of Englands Peak District, a mysterious skull is unearthed. The skull obviously belongs to a race of giant dragons, or worms, and one of them quite possibly devoured the late Mr. Scottish archaeologist Angus Flint discovers an odd skull amid the ruins of a convent and learns of the legend of the DAmpton Worm. And local tradition has it that the medieval lord of the area once slew a giant dragon.Īnyone who has ever seen a horror film can carry on unassisted from here no prizes for reaching the end before Russell. The Trent girls lost their father when he disappeared during a spelunking expedition in a nearby cave.
Lair of the white worml movie movie#
This movie is 1 hr 33 min in duration and is available in English language.
Eventually, Flint discovers some of the family history. The Lair of the White Worm was released on and was directed by Ken Russell. What does the skull represent? That is an assignment for young Angus Flint, who has the perfect name for an archeologist and who has made his find in the barnyard of the Trent sisters, Mary and Eve. The movie begins on an archeological dig in the wilds of Scotland, where a curious fossil is discovered, a fossil that seems neither man nor beast, nor reptile, for that matter, and yet contains aspects of more than one species. The strangest thing about “The Lair of the White Worm” is that, by his standards, it is rather straight and square. Russell loves the bizarre, the gothic, the overwrought, the perverse. People expect something special from Russell, whose inflamed filmography includes such items as “Women in Love,” “ The Music Lovers,” “ The Devils,” “The Boyfriend,” “ Tommy,” “ Altered States,” “ Crimes of Passion” and “Salome’s Last Dance.” Every one of Russell’s films has been an exercise in wretched excess. Make that a Hammer film during which the tea lady spiked the oolong urn with some other controlled substance. And gets loopier the further we go into it. In losing a juicy early-1960s AIP horror movie, we have gained a juicy late-1980s horror movie that would probably seem better if Russell’s name were not connected to it. The Lair of the White Worm starts out like a classic cheap Hammer Films horror movie, but quickly veers off into wonderful Ken Russell loopiness.
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