My Love for the White Worm
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We’ll be celebrating all month long with a series of posts by our team and esteemed colleagues and this year’s theme is “Going to the Movies!” Join us as we share themed content with special “tickets” for each category inspired by cinema.
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My Love for the White Worm
TW/CW: Sexual content, religious/pagan subject matter, mention of SA, violence to young adult.
My love for the white worm began in college. At the time of this dark indoctrination, I was dating a guy who was really into indie films and pretty much anything surrealist and outré. The photography of Man Ray. German expressionism. Weird books on bod-mod. You get the picture.
Though his favorite film was David Lynch’s Eraserhead, he was also a fan of Ken Russell, and it was through him that I first encountered a movie I try to watch about once every year or so, the cult classic Lair of the White Worm.
You may not have heard of this movie, which is a shame. Trust me, there’s nothing else like it.
I have this secret theory that some of the best films are made from some of the worst books, and The Lair of the White Worm is the perfect example. Despite being written by Bram “I Wrote Dracula” Stoker, the novella on which this film is based is…really one of the worst works I’ve ever read. For me, it commits the worst artistic sin for a horror novel: It’s boring. 1/10 would not read again. Let’s just say that director Ken Russell performed an act of transformative magic in this book-to-film adaptation. Like, majorly.
What I love about this movie is that it has…everything. Everything. Buried pagan temples in Derbyshire. A secret cult dedicated to the worship of the White Worm. 80s-era Hugh Grant, being classically Hugh Grantian: vaguely scruffy and aristocratically amused. Peter “Doctor Who” Capaldi as an intrepid anthropologist. A rockin’ folk song that really needs to be rediscovered on TikTok because the sea shanty enthusiasts will love it.
But there’s more. Weird worm venom-induced drug trips with blasphemous religious imagery. Dream sequences involving Hugh Grant’s flaccid pen. Peter Capaldi unleashing a hidden mongoose concealed in his sporran against the priestess of the White Worm. A frighteningly large dildo. And of course, the 200-foot worm.
No, I’m not kidding. Not even about the mongoose.
Nevertheless, the beating, vicious heart of this film is Amanda Donohoe as Lady Sylvia, the undying priestess of the White Worm intent on offering the innocent Eve (Catherine Oxenberg) as a human sacrifice to the snake-god. What I love is that even though this was one of her earliest film roles (one turned down by Tilda Swinton), Donohoe goes all-in, brilliantly relishing the sleek sexuality of this role with confident abandon. She is genuinely horrifying and erotic, often simultaneously.
Even when she’s morphed into her vampirically serpentine form, complete with long fangs and loads of blue body paint, we root for Lady Sylvia to win because…damn. She’s sophisticated. Eternal. Ironic. Snakey. Universally sexual. Also, she possesses great fashion sense. What’s not to love?
Ultimately, it’s Donohoe’s performance the movie depends upon for much of its unsettling creepiness because we have no idea what she will do in any given moment. We have no idea whether her next move will be erotic, ironic, perverse, courteous, cruel, or something completely different. In short, we cannot look away. We are hypnotized
On later viewing, what I also loved--and what I feel gets neglected about this film too often--is its solid participation in the folk horror genre. The film’s “D’Ampton Worm” makes a deliberately obvious nod to the actual Northeast England legend of the “Lambton Worm,” with the Hugh Grant character’s backstory being nearly identical to that of the legendary worm-slaying aristocrat whose name he essentially bears.
The legend of the Lambton Worm suffuses the picture from pictorial representations to a folk-festival reenactment of the Worm’s slaying by Lord D’Ampton--and a cool version of the traditional ballad of the Lambton Worm, especially if you’re into 80s-era bands with a Dexy’s Midnight Runners vibe. Really, if you’re wanting to have a DIY English Folk Horror Film Festival in your living room, this film needs to be right up there next to The Wicker Man--the original one, of course.
At the time of its original premiere, The Lair of the White Worm was not a great critical success, to say the least, and though I think he’s softened on the issue since then, Hugh Grant initially said he was embarrassed by it. Really, he shouldn’t be: he plays the same role he did in Bridget Jones and Sense and Sensibility, only with more dildoes and mongooses.
No, the underlying reason for the film’s lackluster box office was due to the audience’s confusion about whether they were watching a horror film or a psychedelic farce. (Answer: All of the above.) Seeing it in college. I remember getting to the end of this movie and thinking, What the hell did I just watch? Honestly, I would not recommend this as a date night flick.
And yes, rewatching it many years later, I found many aspects of this film that absolutely have not aged well. The non-diverse cast. The gender stereotypes where men are heroic and women are virginal or venomous. Sexual assault. Teen murder. The ethnic stereotyping of the Scottish character Angus, complete with sporran, bagpipes, and kilt. The deeply unsubtle phallic symbolism, although I can’t help thinking this has to be ironic. This is not a complete list, and I’m sure people of strong religious faiths, be they Pagan or Christian, are less than delighted at the representation here.
Still and all, this is a film that deserves to be watched by horror fans. I think Lair of the White Worm’s official IMDb classification is “horror comedy,” which I think is fair: it lets viewers know that the film was made with (forked) tongue in cheek, and hopefully its deserved camp status will appeal to lovers of the outrageous and extreme, such as folks like my Lynch-loving college friend.
They will not be disappointed.
By R.A. Busby
Twitter: @RABusby1
