#Lair of the white worml movie movie#

It’s scarcely giving anything away to reveal that she is more than a menace to the virginity of local youths. While these four young people act as if they were caught up in a Nancy Drew-Hardy Boys mystery, another neighbor, Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe), comes on like Maria Montez, all kink and slink with her provocative gowns, insinuating manner and penchant for thigh-high stiletto-heeled black boots. Legend has it that the ancestor of Lord James D’Ampton (Hugh Grant, the aristocratic co-star of “Maurice”), whose vast estate is nearby, slew the white worm that inhabited Stone Rigg Cavern. On the mosaic floor Angus uncovers in the Trents’ garden there is a central design of a great white worm (or snake), coiled around a crucifix. It seems that the sisters’ farm is on the site of an early Norman-era convent, built on Roman ruins from what was once the ancient kingdom of Mercia. You can be sure that all hell will soon be breaking loose in this story drawn from Bram Stoker’s final novel. Angus (Peter Capaldi), a Scottish archeologist, staying at the inn run by the Trent sisters, Mary (Sammi Davis) and Eve (Catherine Oxenberg), uncovers a curious, unrecognizable skull. While an abundant sense of humor cannot save the film from terminal silliness, it might make watching it bearable and even sometimes amusing.Ĭonsidering Russell’s well-deserved reputation for the bizarre and for sheer wretched excess, you’d be foolish to be taken in by the restraint with which the film begins in England’s beautiful Peak district in Derbyshire.

She’s a high priestess of the cult of Dionin, a giant flesh-eating serpent whose legions have plagued the village since Christ was a carpenter.With “The Lair of the White Worm” (selected theaters), you’re certain for once that England’s perennial, prolific enfant terrible Ken Russell is being intentionally funny. Seems the slinky Marsh is not only an ultra rich, man hungry mama but a deadly, venom spitting, snake worshiping vampire hellcat too. When hapless, kilt-clad Indiana Jones clone Flint unearths an unclassifiable, monstrous reptile skull in a buried pagan convent near the girls property, a midnight visit is paid by their mysterious, reclusive and undeniably gorgeous neighbor Lady Sylvia Marsh ( Amanda Donohoe).

#Lair of the white worml movie movie#

The movie tells the tail-eating tale of orphaned sisters Mary (the delightful Sammi Davis) and Eve (Catherine Oxenberg), two lasses who while away their days happily running their parents’ quaint country guesthouse and fritter away their nights flirting with bratty local Lord James Dampton (a charming, early turn by future megastar Hugh Grant) and visiting Scottish archaeologist Angus Flint ( Dr.

Loosely based on the considerably less-saucy short story by mad Irishman (and of course, Dracula mastermind) Bram Stoker, The Lair of the White Worm was part of a package deal of movies the wacky filmmaker produced and directed for the fledgling theatrical wing of Vestron Pictures, a lower budget but high-concept multi-genre freak-out that defied easy classification. And though his controversial 1971 cinematic freak-out The Devils still stands as one of the most important meditations on sin, lust and corruption, and though Russell’s pop culture pay-dirt hit with his hyper-kinetic 1975 adaptation of The Who’s rock opera Tommy, I think my single favorite Ken Russell joint is his 93-minute stretch of coiled, semi-offensive, quintessentially Russell immersion into funny, free-form perversion the dirty-minded, blackly comic romp that is 1988’s The Lair of the White Worm. Ken Russell - God rest him - was one of cinema history’s great eccentrics. An exclusive look at the special features from Vestron’s Lair of the White Worm Blu-ray