Starring Hugh Grant, the personification of teeth himself!
Join BP, Coop and Justin as we discuss The Lair of the White Worm, the 1988 British horror comedy film loosely based on the 1911 Bram Stoker novel of the same name and drawing upon the English legend of the Lambton Worm. The film was written and directed by Ken Russell and stars Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi.
Angus Flint (Peter Capaldi) is a Scottish archaeology student excavating the site of a convent at the Derbyshire bed and breakfast run by the Trent sisters, Mary (Sammi Davis) and Eve (Catherine Oxenberg). He unearths an unusual skull which appears to be that of a large snake. Angus believes it may be connected to the local legend of the d'Ampton 'worm', a mythical snake-like creature from ages past said to have been slain in Stonerich Cavern by John d'Ampton, the ancestor of current Lord of the Manor, James d'Ampton (Hugh Grant).
When a pocket watch is discovered in Stonerich Cavern, James comes to believe that the d'Ampton worm may be more than a legend. The watch belonged to the Trent sisters' father, who disappeared a year earlier near Temple House, the stately home of the beautiful and seductive Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe).
The enigmatic Lady Sylvia is in fact an immortal priestess to the ancient snake god, Dionin. As James correctly predicted, the giant snake roams the caves which connect Temple House with Stonerich Cavern. Lady Sylvia steals the skull and abducts Eve Trent, intending to offer her as the latest in a long line of sacrifices to her snake-god.
Before Lady Sylvia can execute her evil plan, Angus and James rescue Eve and destroy both Lady Sylvia and the giant snake. However, Lady Sylvia bites Angus before she dies, and Angus finds himself cursed to carry on the vampiric, snake-like condition, after he finds, to his shock, that the snake anti-venom he used was actually a new form of arthritis medication he got by mistake. When Lord D'Ampton invites him for a dinner celebration, Angus sinisterly smiles and accepts his offer.
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On movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, as of September 2021, the film had an approval rating of 68%, based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10.
Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four and called it "a respectable B-grade monster movie." Variety called it "a rollicking, terrifying, post-psychedelic headtrip." Russell said the movie "became a cult film, appropriately enough, down under.
It did well in other countries, but not in Merrie England, where our dour-faced critics insisted on taking it seriously. How on earth can you take seriously the vision of Catherine Oxenberg, dressed in Marks & Spencer’s underwear, being sacrificed to a fake, phallic worm two hundred feet long?" Russell later used Donohoe and Davis in The Rainbow.
Donohoe says there was some talk of a sequel but none was made.
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