Ken Russell was a known provocateur, but one dimension of his taboo-breaking was specifically English. Russell’s works made grand camp-romantic statements about god and sex, but also usually had something to say about class and power. His artist heroes struggled to advance in a capitalist society, or struggled for the elite’s acceptance, or simply struggled against power grabs. Even if they turned out to have a dictatorial streak themselves, Russell used their stories to send up Britain’s ruling class with glee and no subtlety.
Which is why his 1988 horror-parody The Lair of the White Worm is so unusual. One of the main heroes is a hereditary aristocrat, played by a young Hugh Grant. The story’s nominally based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, but Russell wisely dispenses with the majority of Stoker’s rambling plot, updates it to the late-20th century, and keeps his tongue in cheek throughout.
Russell’s script is set in a small town in Derbyshire with a peculiar legend; the local lord, James d’Ampton (Grant), apparently had a medieval ancestor who slew a dragon that inhabited a nearby cave. A Scottish archaeology student, Angus Flint (a young Peter Capaldi), digs up a skull that could’ve belonged to an enormous snake, and at about the same time another local aristocrat, Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe), returns to town. We soon find Marsh is a vampiric priestess of a pagan snake-god. She killed the parents of Angus’ hosts, Mary and Eve Trent (Sammi Davis and Catherine Oxenberg), and now has her eyes on the virginal girls themselves.
The cast play their parts with vigor, if occasional bafflement. Grant is perfect as the upper-class not-quite-a-twit, while Donohoe almost runs off with the picture as the sexualized vampire. But these aren’t subtle performances, nor should they be. There’s a sense in the acting that the film’s disposable; a lark, not to be taken seriously. Which is accurate.
Russell’s not making a Hammer-style horror movie. He’s doing something broader than in 1986’s Gothic, which can easily be taken as a straight-ahead horror tale, if unconventional. White Worm doesn’t have the intensity of that film. Much more openly a parody, it has a larger visual scope but feels smaller, with a narrowness befitting rural England.
There’s a vague folk-horror feel to the story, but White Worm is also a sending-up of knightly aristocrats and sexy vampire ladies and Luciferian the-snake-was-right-all-along dogma. There’s some obvious broad humor, notably a cute scene with a local cop trying to call in back-up when he sees activity in a supposedly deserted house. But there are also extended sequences that play as straight-faced self-satire; absurd expository dialogue, music stings that point up somebody tripping over a white garden hose (which looks like a worm, you see), a young man who takes a bath with his underwear on.
This combines with a fast pace—the movie runs 93 minutes—to build a weirdness that lets it become absurd almost without you noticing it. One moment a luckless cop’s enslaved by the vampire, and then before you know it Angus is attacking the vampire-cop by playing the bagpipes. Which somehow hypnotizes the serpent part of the vampire. (Why Angus wears a kilt while doing this is less clear.) There is a weirdness beyond camp, such that when the movie hits a climax with a hand grenade and a big unrealistic-looking snake in a big hole, it’s as though the film’s collapsing into a more familiar triteness.
If the tone verges on outright comedy without quite tipping over, there’s enough technical skill to demonstrate that Russell knows what he’s doing. The credits play over a slow push-in to a view of the dragon’s cave, and that lasts long enough that when we see the cave again a half-hour later we remember the place; which goes on to be a significant location for much of the rest of the film. A conversation between Grant and Donohoe is done in an unobtrusive long take, with precise camera movements giving us the right view of the right actor at the right moment.
What we’re seeing is Russell playing about with the form of the horror movie, while including a few of his signature mannerisms. There’s a bit of a theater show at a party early on. And a bizarre sexualized dream sequence in the midpoint of the film with marginal narrative connection to anything else happening. And garish hallucinations, in this case of Roman soldiers raping nuns while a snake-vampire cheers them on, with process photography that calls attention to its own artificiality; very Ken Russell scenes, visually striking not despite but because of their lack of restraint and taste.
And yet the flatness of the ending, followed by an unconvincing horror-movie twist, is disappointing. The film doesn’t develop or build on itself. Even some of the odd sexual aspects in the film, including ithyphallic cave paintings and Donohoe sporting a pointed dildo, don’t really land. Russell’s making the sexual subtext of horror film into text; but the year before this movie was made Hellraiser came out, doing much the same thing without the easy comfort of humor. Russell’s satire here is too late and too tepid.
Which isn’t usually a thing you can say about a Russell movie.