THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM
Ken Russell | 1988 | UK/USA | 1h33m | Presented in the original English audio with English subtitles
THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM gives you a very young Hugh Grant, Peter Capaldi decades before DOCTOR WHO, Amanda Donohoe at her most commanding, and Ken Russell turning British folklore into an erotic horror comedy about a pagan snake cult.
The film begins when a young archaeologist discovers an enormous skull beneath a Derbyshire farm. The find appears connected to the local legend of the D'Ampton Worm, supposedly killed centuries earlier by an ancestor of Lord James D'Ampton, played by Grant. From there, Russell pushes the story rapidly away from folklore and into hallucination, vampirism and ritual sacrifice.
Amanda Donohoe is brilliant as Lady Sylvia Marsh, a glamorous aristocrat whose arrival brings most of the film's danger and humour with it. Peter Capaldi plays the increasingly alarmed archaeologist, while Grant spends much of the film trying to maintain his stuff upper-class composure in the face of increasing madness
Russell fills the film with sexual symbolism, sacrilegious imagery and deliberately over-the-top performances. None of it is remotely subtle, and that is exactly the point. THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM treats British folklore as an excuse to attack good taste from every possible direction.
Another thing that makes THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM such a great cult film is seeing familiar actors before their screen personas had settled into place. Hugh Grant is years away from becoming the face of British rom-coms and Peter Capaldi is decades away from DOCTOR WHO. Add Ken Russell, a pagan snake cult, vampirism, and you get the kind of British horror that nobody would dare even attempt to make today.
It's a banger!
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FOMO Secret Cinema • Bazari Orbeliani, 0105 Tbilisi, Georgia
