“The common earthworm was not always the lowly creatures it is today. Remember that the next time you bisect one with your shovel.”

Flinthart’s review: I caught this at the cinema back in the day, and it’s been a pleasure to revisit from time to time ever since. Don’t pay too much heed to the more serious-minded reviewers: this was never going to be a horror film. It was always meant to be camp comedy dressed up in fangs and scales – and if you approach it with that understanding, it’s a complete delight.

Ken Russell (writer and director) was at the time better known for a series of highly regarded films including Tommy and The Devils. Yet as Roger Ebert observed, Russell “…loves the bizarre, the gothic, the overwrought, the perverse.”

And oh, how it does show here.

The Lair of the White Worm is adapted (very loosely indeed) from the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker (he wrote ‘Dracula’, remember?). Budding archaeologist Angus Flint (played by a weirdly young Peter Capaldi) is digging up a Roman-era convent (really?) on the grounds of a B&B farm in Derbyshire run by the Trent sisters, Eve (Catherine Oxenburg fresh from her turn in legendary soapie Dynasty, and wielding an accent about as convincing as a Trump tan) and Mary (Sammi Davis, blonde and fresh-faced.) Flint discovers a gigantic serpentine skull on the site, setting up what might have been a mystery culminating in a horrific encounter in hands other than Russell’s. But instead? Well, read on.

We quickly learn that Eve and Mary’s mother and father mysteriously vanished about a year ago, but the girls are off to a big party at the manor of the local lord, one James d’Ampton (Hugh Grant, even more unnervingly young than Peter Capaldi – but playing exactly the same slightly caddish but ultimately good-hearted upper-class gent he plays in every film.) Fast forward through a nifty party with raucously cool music, and suddenly local woman of mystery Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe absolutely reveling in a thoroughly cheesy character role marked by slinky clothes, nudity, copious double entendres, fangs, blue skin dye, oversized sex toys, and clunky dialogue truly worthy of the B-films that Russell is clearly referencing) shows up to return to her home at Temple House.

A clue to the disappearance of the parents points our stalwarts James and Angus to the local cave system (Stonerick Cavern), but by this time we’re already aware that Lady Sylvia is not what she seems – and once Eve is seemingly hypnotised and kidnapped by the serpentine Sylvia, the stage is set for a confrontation with a bizarre serpent-vampire cult and ultimately, the dreaded White Worm itself. (Spoiler: the White Worm is one of the least convincing bits of puppetry and practical FX to come out of the last sixty years or so of cinema.)

So far, so very B-grade. What makes it worth viewing?

It’s fun. It’s a HUGE PILE of fun. Ken Russell does indeed love the bizarre and the overwrought, and in making this little homage to the much loved Hammer Horror films, he misses absolutely no opportunity to slather on the Freudian symbolism and the campy comedy. Pretty much any item in the film that could be tweaked to become a phallic symbol/white worm is grandly splashed onto the screen. White garden hose? Check: gets its snaky moment in the first few minutes. White vacuum cleaner tubing? Oh, yes: serpentine as heck. Strangely twisted hands of a pocket-watch? Specially created ‘snakes-and-ladders’ game board? Heck, even Lady Sylvia’s car is a long, lean, low E-type Jaguar which first appears in a darkened wood, its fog lights resembling the yellow eyes of a serpent.

The serpent motif drives the film’s lightweight but entertaining adventure story. Lady Sylvia’s vampire minions are appropriately snaky themselves – and possibly the high point of the film is Peter Capaldi in a kilt, playing the bagpipes after the fashion of a snake-charmer to hypnotise and beguile one of Lady Sylvia’s creatures (who dies a gruesome death involving a predictably snake-shaped gnomon).

I really don’t want to give away too much more. This film is gorgeous. It remains completely straight-faced, never once breaking register or winking at the audience – but Russell ensures that practically every scene delivers in terms of spectacle, comedy, and sheer, joyous weirdness. This a B-movie, yes, descended from a long and illustrious line of British B-movies – but it revels in that quality, delivering everything that a Mutant could ever want. It’s got action, adventure, square-jawed heroic types, a gloriously over-the-top villain, monsters, nudity… all delivered with tongue firmly in cheek, layered with visual jokes, ludicrous dialogue, and a distinctly Ken Russell understanding that too much is barely enough.

And it’s playing right now on my second monitor, next to the screen where I’m writing – and I’m giggling, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how the actors managed to play it all so straight. I mean… Peter Capaldi has a goddam MONGOOSE in his sporran!

Okay. That’s enough. Oh, except for one quick warning: the psychedelic chromakey scenes of Roman legionnaires raping and butchering a convent full of nuns are more than a little graphic. Beyond that? If you settle back and let yourself appreciate a cheerfully deranged tribute to a vanished cinematic era, you’re in for a treat. This film rates nine out of ten ridiculously overwrought phallic symbols.

Intermission!

• Oh look. A big white snake skull.
• “Oh no! Me spotted d**k!”
• Catchy song…
• Oh look: a big white serpent puppet.
• Constable Ernie is… special.
• Amanda Donohoe is absolutely loving this.
• Oooh. Lady Sylvia really doesn’t like that crucifix, does she?
• Nuns and Romans and big white snakes… yeah, that’s a bit over-the-top. Thanks, Ken.
• Wait… the pocket watch too? Come on, Ken. Even Freud said ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’.
• Kev the utterly clueless boy scout… oy! “I’m not bad on the mouth organ!”
• Aaaand CHOMP! Ooh, that’s gotta hurt.
• “Do you have children?” “Only when there are no men around.”
• If Hugh Grant’s upper lip got any stiffer he’d have to find a coffin for it.
• Oh, dear Bog… that dream sequence!
• That’s quite a lot of Lady Sylvia…
• Wait. What? Is that supposed to be a dildo? Ooh, shit!
• A basket? What the hell? Okay… just roll with it.
• Worst. Snake-charmer. Evar.
• A mongoose? What next?
• Aha. Anti-venom. Naturally.
• Oh! That’s a lot more of Lady Sylvia!
• Wait… a grenade too?