|
 (100925)
For Week Two of this years 30 Days of Halloween Horror reviews on
myalternatereality.com I'm hopping in the "Way-Back Machine" to the year 1988 an
looking at an adaptation of a little known Bram Stoker story. Like most of
the reviews this month I'll be commenting on older, classic, obscure, and/or
underappreciated horror films, and this one certain fits that bill. It's an
almost forgotten fright film by a major film director, and it combines horror,
camp comedy, a little bit of romance and a lot of drama. The movie played mainly
in art house theaters and while an admittedly imperfect work, it means a lot to
me because it was the first film I wrote about in grad school.
Ken Russell’s Lair of the White Worm is a delightfully perverse film that
successfully combines humor with horror. Russell has built his whole reputation
by walking a thin line between high art and crass sensationalism. Like his other
films (including The Devils, Altered States, and Tommy), Lair of the White Worm
is alternately repulsive and hilarious. Russell is known above all for his lack
of restraint and his unfettered celebration of every form of excess. This
aesthetic parallels the real sexual and drug-related shenanigans that happened
in Hollywood during his glory period.
Russell took the films title and very basic plot structure from the novel by
Bram Stoker (the author of Dracula), although I must point out that the original
had no vampires in it. Russell updated the story from the book's contemporary
nineteen-teens to the the films contemporary nineteen-eighties. Besides the time
shift, perhaps the most significant change made is the tone of the story. The
book is basically a heavy, somber. self-serious tale while the movie is campy
and self-parodying. This change was definitely a wise move considering how
ridiculous the original plot was and is here.
The cast is adequate but un-extraordinary and uneven. The film also features
Catherine Oxenberg (of Dallas) and Sammi Davis (Hope and Glory) as two sisters
and their suitors are played by Peter Capaldi (one of the later Dr. Who's and
Local Hero) and Hugh Grant (Maurice). This was at a time when Grant still
starred in art house films, before he became a big mainstream rom-com
heartthrob. The male performances all tend to be stronger than the female ones
with one exception: Amanda Donahue hits the ball out of the park giving one of
her most memorable performances as the Lady Sylvia Marsh. Donahue is completely
wonderful here and should be commended for playing her role with a straight face
through out, because the film's main goal was obviously not to showcase any one
performers remarkable acting.
The fun starts when a Scottish science student discovers a sinister reptilian
skull. The skull is stolen by a mysterious noblewoman named Lady Sylvia Marsh.
This is the same basic setup as the 70s cult classic, Gargoyles (1973). Lady
Sylvia turns out to be the high priestess of a pagan snake cult and a kind of
snake vampire goddess. Her dastardly plan is to sacrifice a virginal young woman
to a giant serpent. We are told that the serpent was the same one that was
chased out of Eden, but it looks suspiciously like an oversized Muppet.
There's a great early scene in which Hugh Grant cuts the rug with his girl on
the dance floor at the Lambton Worm Festival. He slices a puppet serpent in half
with a fake sword. This is supposed to be a reenactment of a legendary scene in
which his distant relative, Lord Lampton, slew a big dragon or snake that was
terrorizing the town. All this happens during a delightful performance by the
punky folk band, The Pogues, which tells the whole legend in a song.
Most vampires in American and European horror movies and novels are closely
associated with bats, however they can also transform into other mammals, wolves
in particular or a hybrid of humans and those animals. But the vampires used in
Lair of the White Worm film are a whole different breed from the ones in
Stoker’s Dracula novel, and they come from completely different legends, the
Mesoamerican (mainly Mayan and Aztec) lore of the culebras. This reptillian-type
of creature still drinks blood, can take on human form, and can still transform
others into their breed through bites. But in their natural forms, they have
scales and fangs, and instead of turning into bats, they can completely
transform themselves into killer serpents. While not as well known in modern
vampire lore, culebras are featured in the From Dusk Until Dawn film series and
show. Other films that feature snake people like the culebras include Cult of
the Cobra (1955), The Reptile (1966), Night of the Cobra Woman (1972), and
Sssssss (1973), but none of these feature true snake vampires. For my money, The
Reptile is the best of this bunch and the only one worth seeing.
Lair of the White Worm also contains a substantial amount of Freudian imagery.
The camera constantly lingers on such objects as a womb-like cave, a phallic
hose, and pickled earthworms. Many of these images come directly from the novel,
but they are used seriously in the novel; here, they are used for comedic
effect.
There are many hysterical puns and double entendres in the film. When Lady Marsh
is asked if she has children, she replies, “Only when there are no men around.”
She offers a guest a drink by saying, “Name your poison.” When one of the
townspeople admires her car, she says, “I change cars as often as a snake sheds
its skin.”
Many other moments provide unexpected laughs. At one point, the Scottish student
enthralls a snake man by playing a snake charming tune on his bagpipes. Lord
Lampton sends a mongoose after the snake queen, but she just shoots it. The film
satirizes Citizen Kane when Lady Marsh says “Rosebud” while throwing some pieces
of wood into the fireplace. Lady Marsh looks preposterous when she calls to her
intended victim (Eve) while slithering around a tree.
Like many of Russell's films, this one contains some shocking
psychedelic-inspired dreams and historical flashbacks. One of them recalls the
infamous Catholic nun orgy dream scene from The Devils. In this dream scene,
Christ is strangled on the cross by snakes while nuns are raped by Roman snake
cultists. But the scene is not just there for shock value; it serves to predict
the film's ending, which features a triumph of paganism over Christianity.
Surprisingly, the director, Ken Russell, was a practicing Catholic convert, and
he never disavowed his faith. This scene is close to me because the argument
over its artistic merits actually helped in ending one of my friendships long
ago.
Lair of the White Worm is definitely not for sensitive or squeamish viewers. It
contains some gratuitous violence and several grotesque dream sequences. But the
film should satisfy fans of the macabre or anyone with a truly warped sense of
humor. On it;s initial release it lost lots of money and was eviscerated by film
critics. But it is a jolly good romp full of low laughs by a highly talented and
unjustly forgotten director.
|
