Ken Russell's "Lair of the White Worm"

A couple of years ago, Gemma bought me this book:


In case you can't read the title, it's "101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen." There are a lot of good, not-quite-famous movies that I was already familiar with in this book and a fair amount of movies that I had never heard of that I got steered towards thanks to it.

The blue snake-lady is from Ken Russell's "Lair of the White Worm," a movie I've been looking at in video rental stores since I was at least 9 years old. For some reason it is a movie that I would always pick up, look at the back of the box, and put back on the shelf. It's like I have a sixth sense for irredeemable, shit movies.

Ken Russell's best known film is probably the adaptation of The Who's "Tommy." I'm also familiar with his movies "Mahler" and "Altered States," and I also saw "Gothic" once about a million years ago, but I barely remember it. "Mahler" is kind of a sugarcoated biopic of composer Gustav Mahler that I had to sit through in music school (despite it having 0% educational value), and "Altered States," is a weird ass semi-sci-fi flick about a scientist who uses an isolation chamber and some, um, science-y type stuff to regress to a primitive state through reverse evolution. (The climatic scene of "Altered States" actually inspired part of A-Ha's "Take On Me" music video, specifically the part where the cartoon guy slams himself repeatedly against the walls to snap himself into the real world. That's just a stupid little nugget I threw in there in case Rotwang is reading.)

Interestingly enough, I also sat through "Altered States" as part of my musical education, because the film's composer, John Corigliano, at one point gave lessons to my teacher, Ronald Foster. Corigliano wasn't really a "film composer" per se, he only did 3 film scores (the 4th on IMDB is just a film adaptation of an opera he wrote), although the third film score was for "The Red Violin," which is actually a really, good movie that you should definitely see if you haven't yet. And while I'm name dropping, I might as well mention that I did have a half hour "masterclass" style lesson with Corigliano, he is one of the nicest men I've ever met in my life, and now I work in a pork plant... Keep that in mind before you let your children go to music school.

Back on topic: Ken Russell. He has this, "I-wish-I-was-art-house" style about his movies, and this is coming from a guy who loves the concept of art house horror, and sees it in the work of directors like Argento and Fulci. (An art house horror flick to check out if you haven't already: "Eyes Without a Face." Absolutely fucking beautiful.)

Russell's films all have these bad, cheesy dream sequences, with obligatory garish and tacky color schemes. For example, in "Mahler," the title character has a dream where a Wagnerian opera lady, complete with a horned helmet, sings a song to the tune of Wagner's famous "Ride of the Valkyries" that chides Mahler for being Jewish, which instantly inspires him to convert to Catholicism faster than you can say, "Eureeka!" (Oh, and I think during the entire dream, Mahler was trying to have sex with the Wagner-lady.)

Another thing I've noticed about Russell's style is that he sets up these nice, wide shots - then ruins them by doing these shaky, fast zooms. It's an effect not completely unlike some dad doing a quick, shaky zoom-in on his son at a little league game with a camcorder. It never looks good, yet he does it, over and over again. Finally, for some reason, with "Mahler," "Altered States," and "Lair of the White Worm," the cinematography has a definite 1970's PBS look to it, kind of like an episode of "Mystery!" or "All Creatures Great and Small." You can argue that Ken Russell may have been working with small budgets for these films, but I don't think that argument holds water when compared to the cinematography of Argento and Fulci in their late 70s/early 80s heyday, which likely involved even smaller budgets.

So - obviously I'm predisposed to not like a film by Ken Russell for various reasons, why did I watch Lair of the White Worm? Well, for one, the Fangoria book steered me towards some really great movies, like del Toro's "The Devil's Backbone," and recommended so many films that I already loved, like Fulci's "The Beyond," and Brad Anderson's "Session 9," that I figured, shit, if they not only recommend it, but also use it's monster as the single most prominent photo on the cover of the entire freaking book, it just HAS to be good, right? And two: it was fucking free, it aired on IFC a few weeks ago (part of their pretty decent "Grindhouse" film series) and I recorded it.

So onto the movie: it is based on a novel by Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and if the movie could be summed up in one picture, this is probably it:

See that orange crap in the background? That is an abstract, visual representation of this movie. I don't know if this was a poster for it when it was in theaters, or if it was the cover of one of its VHS or DVD releases or what. I do know that this was *not* the cover of the VHS version I saw in video stores as a kid, nor is it the current DVD release's cover, which, features Hugh Grant's face according to amazon.com. He plays the third or fourth most important character in the movie, but, hey, he ended up being famous, so let's have *his* face take up 75% of the cover.

So the movie is about a Scottish archeology student who digs up a giant snake skull on the land rented by two chicks whose parents disappeared. The landlord is a wealthy English noble (played by Hugh Grant), whose ancestor is said to have slain a "great white worm" in ye Olden days; an event which the town - or village or whatever - still celebrates to this day with a catchy folk song, accompanied by flashing disco lights. Seriously. Thank you Ken Russell - may the 70's always be with you.

Well once the skull is dug up, in comes a mysterious, rich new neighbor, a sexy lady whom you can tell is sexy because she wears garter belts to hold up her thigh-high stockings which she manages to show off at every opportunity. And she's part snake and can spit poison that will cause you to have day-glo orange colored hallucinations involving the Crucifixion and nuns getting raped by Roman soldiers if you so much as touch a drop of it. Oh and by the way, her snake lady make-up looks way better in still photos than it does when she's actually moving around and shit.

So the plot of the movie revolves around tying together the skull, the mysterious snake woman, Roman-era paganism and the missing parents, and it proceeds in a somewhat predictable manner, except for a stupid twist ending involving a mix up at the chemist shop. BUT, this being a Ken Russell film, we need all the weird, random hallucinations and dream sequences we can get, so that the director can shoot his wannabe-Fellini load all over the audience's collective face. This is best represented by a sequence in the middle of the movie where the rich landlord guy (Hugh Grant) goes to sleep and has a five minute long dream sequence where he's on a plane and all the female characters in the movie are airline stewardesses, and the women are all wearing garter belts and thigh-highs under their stewardess uniforms, which you can see because they are wrestling each other and inadvertently hiking up their skirts in the process. The dream seems to point to some weird conflict wherein Hugh Grant is going to have to choose between the snake lady and the two chicks, but this NEVER HAPPENS. In fact, the only thing this prolonged dream sequence seems to foreshadow is that one of the sisters wears a ring with a crucifix on it, which ultimately does not end up meaning much in the course of the movie. It's like foreshadowing, without actually foreshadowing ANYTHING!

I should also point out that Hugh Grant's character is *not* the hero of the movie, the archeology student is, because he's Scottish - which, of course, means he not only plays the bag pipes, but also has a set on hand. Not only is *this* plot point *not* foreshadowed, there is actually a scene in the movie where his room is being thoroughly searched for a missing giant snake skull - no bagpipes. And in case you don't get what I'm inferring, bag pipes are important to the resolution of this movie.

In gathering info and pictures for this qausi-review, it appears a lot of people file this in the "so-bad-it's-good" category - the wikipedia article on Ken Russell even refers to this movie as a "Hammer spoof." Maybe it's my bias showing, but the things I hated about this movie I hated about other Ken Russell movies, so whether or not I found it funny seems inconsequential.
Maybe my "funny bone" just wasn't working today, or maybe I'm missing something, but I rate this movie: Crap!