The Lair of the White Worm (film)

Angus Flint is a Scottish archaeology student excavating the site of a convent at Mercy Farm, a Derbyshire bed and breakfast run by the Trent sisters, Mary and Eve. He unearths an unusual skull which appears to be that of a large snake. Angus believes it is connected to the local legend of the d'Ampton "worm", a mythical snake-like creature from ages past said to have been slain in Stonerigg Cavern by John d'Ampton, the ancestor of current Lord of the Manor, James d'Ampton. When a pocket watch is discovered in Stonerigg Cavern, James comes to believe that the d'Ampton worm may be more than a legend. The watch belonged to the Trent sisters' father Joe, who disappeared a year earlier near Temple House, the stately home of the seductive and enigmatic Lady Sylvia Marsh. Lady Sylvia is an immortal priestess to the ancient snake god, Dionin. She sneaks into Mercy Farm and steals the snake's skull, before baring fangs and spitting venom on a crucifix hanging on the wall. Eve later touches the crucifix, absorbing some of the venom and experiencing a disturbing vision involving a crucified Jesus being encircled by a giant serpent, while a group of nuns are raped by Roman soldiers. Lady Sylvia picks up a young male hitchhiker named Kevin and brings him to Temple House, where she seduces him before fatally paralysing him with snake venom. When James visits Temple House shortly afterwards, Lady Sylvia invites him in. She tells James she is terrified of snakes and the d'Ampton worm legend. That night, James has a surreal nightmare in which he boards a plane with Eve, Mary, and Lady Sylvia acting as stewardesses. In the morning, James investigates the mountainous Stonerigg Cavern near Temple House with Angus, Eve and Mary. When Eve decides to return to Mercy Farm before the others, she is abducted in the woods by Lady Sylvia, who intends to offer her as the latest in a long line of human sacrifices to her snake-god. James correctly theorises that a giant snake roams the caves which connect Temple House with Stonerigg Cavern. Using large speakers, James projects Turkish music from his residence in an attempt to charm the serpent, invoking Lady Sylvia to visit him. Meanwhile, Angus and Mary break into Temple House, where they find Eve and Mary's mother, Dorothy, in a trancelike state. Dorothy suddenly bares fangs and bites Mary's neck before fleeing, triggering a hallucinatory vision in her, but Angus manages to extract the venom. Dorothy then enters James's manor and bites the neck of his butler, Peters, before James cuts her in half with a sword. At dawn, police officer Ernie arrives at Mercy Farm, summoned by James's phone call. Mary accompanies Ernie, believing they are headed to the police station, but Ernie reveals they are driving to Temple House to investigate the previous night's events. Upon arrival, Mary discovers Ernie has been bitten and is under the serpent's spell. Angus, using bagpipes, lures Ernie away and kills him as Mary flees into the subterranean space beneath Temple House. Angus follows, and is bitten and incapacitated by a blue-painted Lady Sylvia, who has morphed into a partial serpentine form in her lair. Mary is bound as Lady Sylvia prepares to sacrifice Eve to Dionin, who awaits at the bottom of a pit. Angus thwarts the sacrifice by pushing Lady Sylvia into the hole, where Dionin consumes her, before blowing up the giant serpent with a grenade. All the while, James leads a crew to investigate the Stonerigg Caverns from above the lair. Angus uses an antivenom serum he acquired earlier from the local hospital to prevent Lady Sylvia's bite from affecting him. After Eve and Mary are taken to the hospital for evaluation, Angus visits with James. Their meeting is interrupted by a phone call from a nurse at the hospital, who informs Angus that the antivenom serum he received was actually an arthritis medicine. Horrified, Angus examines his face in a mirror. Moments later, Angus accepts James's invitation for a lunch celebration. In the car, Angus sinisterly smiles before revealing the bite wound on his leg. == Cast ==

• Amanda Donohoe as Lady Sylvia Marsh • Hugh Grant as Lord James D'Ampton • Catherine Oxenberg as Eve Trent • Peter Capaldi as Angus Flint • Sammi Davis as Mary Trent • Stratford Johns as Peters • Paul Brooke as Ernie • Imogen Claire as Dorothy Trent • Chris Pitt as Kevin • Gina McKee as Nurse Gladwell • Christopher Gable as Joe Trent ==Analysis==

British writer Ian Hunter described the film in his book British Trash Cinema as an aesthetic revision of 1970s films such as Horror Hospital, the Phibes films, Theatre of Blood and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. == Production ==

Development into the screenplay. The film was made as part of a three-picture deal Russell had with US film distributor Vestron Pictures following the success of Russell's Gothic (1986). Instead of setting the film in the early-20th-century period of the source novel, Russell chose to set it during contemporary times, and based some of the characters on people he had encountered while living in the Lake District. Donohoe says Russell sent her a script with a note reading: "I don't know if you'll be interested in this little bit of nonsense but please read it anyway." She read it and agreed to play Lady Sylvia because, she said, it gave her "the opportunity to play a woman who is basically a fantasy woman. There are no boundaries. Therefore, I could do exactly as I chose with that lady.... I didn't want her to be some sort of vampire bimbo. I really wanted her to be a sort of incredibly sophisticated and ageless woman." "I always admire someone who really dares to be bad", said Donohoe of Russell. "Even his actors—people like Oliver Reed—have always impressed me that way. They can be brilliant or perfectly dreadful, but they're never boring. I'm fairly serious about acting and integrity, that films should have some real vrumph to them and say something about life. And I'd just been on this string of films and television films in the last two years, all pretty heavy stuff, and I thought 'Well, why not do a film that doesn't mean anything at all?'" Russell said Vestron wanted an American name and suggested Catherine Oxenberg, who had been in Dynasty. Russell agreed although he said Oxenberg refused to be naked in the final sacrifice sequence, insisting on doing it in her underwear. Russell later wrote "being of royal lineage, she opted for Harrods' silk but as we were a low budget movie she had to be content with Marks and Spencer's cotton – and very fetching she was too." It was one of Hugh Grant's first films and Ireland says Grant was "embarrassed by it" in later years. Filming The film was shot on location and at Shepperton Film Studios in England over a seven-week period from mid-February to mid-April 1988. Additional photography took place in Wetton, Staffordshire. Russell said it was a difficult shoot because "[s]pecial effects take forever to do, and we had to schedule things in such a way so that we didn't lose any time. Sometimes we'd have two crews shooting simultaneously on different soundstages: One was shooting on the shrine set with Catherine Oxenberg about to be sacrificed to the worm, while other, we were filming a convent of nuns about to be raped by a legion of centurions. Never a dull moment." Russell insisted the film was a comedy. "Audiences don't realize my films are comedies until the last line has been delivered, and even then, most people don't appear to get the joke. I would like to state that I actively encourage the audience to laugh along with White Worm." ==Release and reception==

Box office The film premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival in Canada on 29 August 1988, and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 14 September 1988. In the United States, it screened at the Boston Film Festival on 16 September 1988. It was given a theatrical release through Vestron Pictures, premiering in New York City on 21 October 1988, where it grossed $22,155 during its opening weekend. and in Detroit and Hartford, Connecticut on 23 December 1988. while Variety deemed it "a rollicking, terrifying, post-psychedelic headtrip." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film's "far-from-serious aura allows Russell to get away with some hilariously cut-rate visions of hell, various Christian-pagan conflicts and lurid Freudian symbolism", but felt that its contemporary setting, though allowing for anachronism, would have "benefited considerably from the period quaintness of 1911, the year in which Stoker, creator of Dracula, wrote it". LA Weeklys Helen Knode felt the film's themes and screenplay were lackluster, but conceded that it was still "scary, funny, gorgeously hued light entertainment". Robin Fields and Jacquelin Sufak of the Chicago Tribune praised the film for its use of deadpan humour as well as for Donohoe's performance, adding: "Lair may be a bit more palatable as a whole than most of Russell's efforts, but that doesn't mean the film is easily digested. An impaled eyeball, a dinner of pickled earthworms in aspic and a hallucinatory sequence involving the rape of nuns keep viewers from resting too easily: This is a Ken Russell film, after all." Malcolm L. Johnson of the Hartford Courant awarded the film a two out of four-star rating, but felt the film paled in comparison with Russell's previous works, noting that the film "has its humorous moments, and its aftermath is subtle and chilling, in a droll way, though only a diehard devotee could describe this new piece of Russell-mania as totally successful". Linnea Lannon of the Detroit Free Press praised Donohoe's performance as "deliciously funny", but deemed Oxenberg as "awful", adding that the film ultimately only has appeal for ardent fans of Russell. Retrospective assessment In the years following its release, The Lair of the White Worm developed a cult following. Russell himself commented that the film had acquired a following in Australia and other countries, "but not in Merrie England, where our dour-faced critics insisted on taking it seriously. How on earth can you take seriously the vision of Catherine Oxenberg, dressed in Marks & Spencer's underwear, being sacrificed to a fake, phallic worm two hundred feet long?" Assessing the film in his book Nightmare Movies (2011), film critic Kim Newman described it as "Russell turn[ing] his chainsaw at Bram Stoker's worst novel". Peter Walker of The Guardian deemed the film a personal "guilty pleasure" whose "defiant disrespect for plot and taste win me over...  Badly shot, clumsily edited and seemingly scored by a teenage boy who has just taken delivery of his first synthesiser and then pressed all the buttons one by one, the film has a peculiarly jarring tone. Ostensibly making a gothic horror, Russell repeatedly undermines the mood with moments of absurdity – some deliberate, many not". Rob Hunter of Film School Rejects wrote in a 2017 retrospective review The Lair of the White Worm is "probably the most accessible" film of Russell's career, noting that he "infuses what could have been a familiar genre setup with wit, sex, and blasphemous imagery, but as nutty as elements of it become the core simplicity of heroes fighting to save their small village from an ancient evil remains." Budd Wilkins, writing for Slant Magazine in 2017, compared the film to ''The Blood on Satan's Claw'' (1971), another film in which the unearthing of an inhuman skull unleashes evil forces, adding that it features elements of the folk horror subgenre. Home media The Lair of the White Worm was first made available for home media by Vestron Video, who distributed a VHS in North America in May 1989. On 19 August 2003, Artisan Entertainment released the film on DVD. Vestron Home Entertainment released the film for the first time on Blu-ray in 2017 through their Vestron Video Collector's Series line. ==Proposed sequel==

Donohoe stated that there was some talk of a sequel, but it was never made. == References ==