The Lair of the White Worm ** (1988, Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, Peter Capaldi, Sammi Davis, Stratford Johns) – Classic Movie Review 5448

Writer-producer-director Ken Russell’s wildly over-the-top 1988 horror movie The Lair of the White Worm re-tells the 1911 Bram Stoker (author of Dracula) tale about the ultimate evil worm that lives on through sexy high priestess Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe).

When Scottish archaeologist Angus Flint (Peter Capaldi) discovers a mysterious skull in the land round the ruins of a convent he is excavating, the evil that once stalked the countryside returns to suck the blood from innocent virgins like Eve Trent (Catherine Oxenberg’s character), symbolically named Eve, and Hugh Grant’s Lord James D’Ampton has to battle the humanoid snakes.

Everyone looks like they are relishing Russell’s spoofy, send-up screenplay, which adapts the Stoker novel very loosely, the silly effects, and Russell’s flashy direction that combine to throw up a fair quantity of frights amid the schlocky laughs.

If it is not taken seriously, as Russell does not seem to be doing either, The Lair of the White Worm might just worm its way into your affections.

Also in the cast are Sammi Davis, Stratford Johns, Paul Brooke, Imogen Claire, Christopher Gable as Joe Trent, Chris Pitt, Gina McKee, Lloyd Peters, David Kiernan and Jackie Russell.

Christopher Gable, actor in Russell’s Women in Love, The Music Lovers, and The Boy Friend, appeared in one more Russell movie, The Rainbow (1989), before his death of cancer on 23 October 1998, aged 58.

Stoker’s story The Lair of the White Worm is based on the legend of the Lambton Worm, in which John Lambton, heir of the Lambton Estate, County Durham, battles a giant worm (i e a dragon) terrorising the local villagers.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5448

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