Remember the scene in Ken Russell’s Altered States where the film’s subject leapt out of his isolation
tank as a kind of ape/werewolf and the film intentionally completely jumped the
shark from horror into lunatic farce?
Well, with his loose adaptation of Dracula
author Bram Stoker’s novel The Lair
of the White Worm, Russell more or less made a two-hour film out of the
aforementioned scene. Following the
success of Gothic as part of a four
picture deal with Vestron Pictures, the studio offered to finance Russell’s
prequel to Women in Love, The Rainbow, if he could come up with
another horror movie to make.
Drawing upon the English legend of the Lambton Worm and
starring Amanda Donohoe and Hugh Grant, The
Lair of the White Worm is a supremely tongue-in-cheek silly snake/vampire
romp that is all sensory overload and not to be taken seriously. Despite many hallucinatory interludes
including ones that conjure up some of the more blasphemous imagery adorning The Devils, everything here is in
service to the Hammer Horror movies and creature features dominating the 1950s
drive ins. With the new Lionsgate reissues
of the Vestron Video library hitting shelves, Ken Russell’s impish, sacrilegious,
sexy, gory and just plain goofy horror movie comes to blu ray in a newly
remastered package which ports over many of the extras included in the Pioneer
Special Edition DVD along with some newly recorded extras of their own.
Russell’s penchant for carnality, over the top acting,
surreal camera angles, hyperkinetic editing and snarky sense of humor all show
up in some form or another in The Lair of
the White Worm yet this may be his most escapist entertainment since The Boyfriend. Despite being a low budget effort with key
hallucinations photographed on videotape before switching back to present time
in 35mm, Russell’s cheapo horror flick is visually stunning with some truly
creative wide-angled camerawork and beautifully rendered practical makeup
effects. The synthetic score by Stanislas Syrewicz which threatens to work
against the film but given The Lair of
the White Worm is old fashioned check your brain at the door fun made by a
formidable artist tickled pink by the ridiculousness of it all, not everyone
will mind the soundtrack.
Arguably the high watermarks of Russell’s career
encompass the late 1960s through the early 1980s before the quality of his work
began to peter off as his personal life inevitably began to influence it. On it’s own, average horror movie fans will
balk at the lack of scares and overt goofiness ensuing onscreen though it has
some ardent supporters. Seen in
comparison to Russell’s oeuvre, knowing the heights he reached as an artist, The Lair of the White Worm is one of the
director’s lesser efforts but still a visionary blast of horror movie fun. The best approach one can give comes from an
interview with actress Amanda Donohoe who confided in Russell that the film was
coming off less like a horror film and more like a screwball comedy, to which
Russell replied “of course it’s a bloody comedy, what did you think it was?”
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki