Conan The Barbarian (1982) "Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age….My Dinner with André (1981) My Dinner with Andre consists entirely of a conversation in a New York restaurant between theatre director Andre Gregory and….Fish Called Wanda, A (1988) From the Monty Python stable, an English caper-comedy with a complex plot involving a gang of hopeless misfits who pull….Those in the mood for side-splitting lunatic nonsense – the kind that has reptilian Amanda Donohoe nakedly writhing through her country mansion to snake-charming music – are on the right track.
Lair of the white worml movie series#
The unearthing of the skull, which archaeologist Angus Flint believes is linked to the legend of an ancient snake god, leads to a series of grotesque happenings.īased on Bram Stoker’s least famous novel, and starring an unknown Hugh Grant, this Christianity versus Paganism tract is a delirious hoot from start to finish, so serious horror fans had better look elsewhere. In the Peak District, a reptile skull is found in the grounds of a building looked after by two sisters whose parents have disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Of course, if you are the sort of person who is so humourless that you will look at a film as wildly kitsch as this and only be troubled by ‘gender representations’ (that’ll be Peter Walker for The Guardian who sheepishly admits to enjoying this even though the fact that the women are either monsters or scantily clad innocents, which, perhaps never having seen a horror film before, he calls ‘worrying’), then you’ll never really ‘get’ it, and the more pompous strain of genre fan – not to mention those who inherently think that all horror is a bit trashy – will at best think that this is irredeemable rubbish, and at worse find it deeply offensive, catering to the sniggering schoolboy division of unreconstructed horror fan.Nude nuns, lesbian catfights and snake-cult rituals what else could this be but a Ken Russell fantasy sextravaganza? With a cast that also includes Hugh Grant (who is predictably embarrassed by this, yet seemingly proud of the likes of Notting Hill… sigh…), Catherine Oxenberg and future Doctor Who Peter Capaldi, The Lair of the White Worm is a glorious feast of excess, glorying in its own bad taste and vulgarity.
Lair of the white worml movie movie#
Yet, her larger than life performance is ideal for a movie that is excessive in all ways – lurid imagery, ludicrous special effects and florid dialogue add to the mix, creating a film that is a genuine joy from start to finish. Donohoe has great fun parading around in skimpy underwear, a variety of extravagant costumes or nothing more than green body paint, savouring her outrageous dialogue and gobbling on spotty boy scouts, and of course, she steals the film. She’s given to sacrificing young virgins and spitting venom on crucifixes when not inspiring crazed blasphemous hallucinations involving Christ and assorted semi-naked nuns. Loosely based on Bram Stoker’s potboiler novel, the film has Amanda Donohoe as an immortal snake-vampire who worships a giant dragon in Derbyshire. These are people who look at this 1988 film and think that Russell must have been approaching the material with a determinedly straight face, even when all the evidence on screen is that he was having a whale of a time satirising Hammer Horror and shooting one of the most gloriously camp, deliciously entertaining British horror movies ever made. It took a lot of creative licence with the Bram Stoker.
The idea that there are still, even today, critics who don’t get The Lair of the White Worm, and bemoan it as an example of Ken Russell’s supposed decline, is a depressing example of just how pig-ignorant some film ‘experts’ are. The Lair of the White Worm is a so-bad-its-good horror-comedy film from 1988 made by Ken Russell.