On its release in 1988, Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm was met with reviews which were largely quizzical and an equally bemused audience reaction, not least because much of the film’s marketing had tried to sell it as a horror movie, which it isn’t really; it’s a Ken Russell film. Critics, notably the great Roger Ebert, tended to characterize it as a failed attempt at a self-consciously old-fashioned pulp horror film, referencing as evidence its source material, Bram Stoker’s 1911 novel of (more or less) the same name. What they didn’t point out though, was that The Lair of the White Worm is no Dracula, but has long been regarded not only as Bram Stoker’s worst novel, but one of the most laughable books ever written by a major author. Russell was, however, far from unaware of the novel’s reputation, and bearing that in mind makes The Lair of the White Worm entirely explicable and, depending on your taste for such things, very enjoyable.
It’s hard to think of anything more drab than the average British film of the 1980s; but amidst the glorified TV shows and worthy but static costume dramas that the UK churned out during that decade, Russell’s work stands apart for its flamboyance, energy and willingness to not be taken too seriously. Although he was and still primarily is valued for his work of the 1960s and ‘70s; Women in Love, The Devils and his seminal biopics of classical composers, The Lair of the White Worm was the last in a trio of particularly eccentric and entertaining Russell movies that had begun with Gothic in 1986 and arguably peaked with the first of his two 1988 releases, Salome’s Last Dance. Be that as it may, the manic energy of Salome’s Last Dance – shot in just three and a half weeks – hadn’t yet dissipated when he came to direct The Lair of the White Worm.
Before beginning work on the movie, Russell had been attached to an abortive, never-to-be-realized adaptation of Dracula and it was perhaps that experience which made the director realize that he was uniquely suited to filming Bram Stoker’s work. As anyone who has read The Lair of the White Worm – or pretty much any Stoker novel – can testify, Stoker was the master of the presumably unintentional but excruciatingly obvious sexual overtone. He was a decade older than Sigmund Freud and however Freud’s reputation may fare through the decades, his theories can never be completely discredited while Stoker’s work remains in print; if you think the title The Lair of the White Worm sounds like a sniggeringly crude schoolboy sex reference, try reading the book. Russell, though he was more of an artist than he was sometimes given credit for, forever remained in the public mind the director who filmed the notorious naked Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestling scene in Women in Love (1969) and showing Strauss having sex while conducting “Thus Spake Zarathustra” on TV. With that in mind, Russell and Stoker is an irresistible marriage and the thing to remember about The Lair of the White Worm while watching it is that – perhaps unlike the novel on which it’s based – the film is supposed to be the way it is.
Both Stoker’s novel and Russell’s movie reference the fascinating folk legend of the Lambton Worm, a dragon-like creature reputed to have terrorized several generations of a family in the north of England. The film borrows much – including its eccentric tone – from the novel, but Russell wisely chose to pare back the story to, if not its essentials, then at least a manageable and more-or-less straightforward narrative. In the film, a young Scottish archaeologist Angus Flint (a very appealing performance by Peter Capaldi) unearths the giant skull of a mysterious and unidentifiable creature on a farm belonging to two sisters, Mary and Eve Trent (Sammi Davis and Catherine Oxenberg), whose father is missing, presumed dead after setting off to explore the nearby Stone Rigg Cavern. At first, the story manages to maintain a fairly sedate and even pastoral feel, while moving surprisingly rapidly. A broad but significant historical background is hinted at, rather than given in detail; we find that the area was home to a Dark Ages convent and before that, a pagan settlement, and still is, as we find out, home to the ancient D’Ampton family, with their family legend, the white worm. The present Lord D’Ampton (Hugh Grant) is introduced when the sisters and Flint attend a ball at D’Ampton Hall, and the film’s most iconic character, Amanda Donohoe’s Lady Sylvia Marsh, a nearby neighbor, is introduced soon afterwards, picking up and preying upon a hitchhiking boy scout. Like Lord D’Ampton, Lady Marsh has historical ties to the area, being some kind of (never fully explained) vampire-esque attendant/caretaker for the D’Ampton worm itself.
With all of the pieces in place, the Trent sisters, with Flint and Lord D’Ampton by their sides, set off in search of their father. The story unfolds much as one would expect, plot-wise, but it’s enlivened by some typically hallucinatory/outrageous/explicit Russell scenes and a campy tone that acknowledges the absurdity of it all without derailing the drama altogether. Amanda Donohoe steals the show with her over-the-top, seductively sly and knowing performance, but the whole cast is likeable, especially Peter Capaldi. The just-pre-stardom Hugh Grant does what Hugh Grant does and the worm, when it finally appears, is pleasingly analogue but not the feared sub-Ray Harryhausen/Jim Henson’s creature shop puppet. The film captures the absurd, eccentric spirit of Stoker’s novel without including every one of the book’s wayward preoccupations, red herrings and dead ends and whenever it starts to feel too sedate, Russell throws an eye-popping, hysterical vision or dream sequence at the viewer.
This last point is important, because despite incidental similarities to self-consciously trashy B-movies of the Troma/Fred Olen Ray type, The Lair of the White Worm is at heart a very different and entirely more imaginative beast. Ken Russell may have, like a B-movie auteur, churned out his movies at a sometimes-ridiculous speed, but he immersed himself in them too, and in doing so he stamped all of his work with his uniquely recognizable personality in a way that puts him in a category with only a handful of modern directors, from Peter Greenaway to John Waters and Tim Burton. Like those filmmakers, Russell’s work is definitely not to all tastes, but for a relatively mild and accessible entry point into a wildly uneven but also wildly entertaining oeuvre you could do much worse than giving The Lair of the White Worm a look.
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