90-Min Tubi: "The Lair of the White Worm" - Snakes versus Scots

  *Blog post started on March 5, 2021.

I have been trying to makes things better for myself, but the gatekeepers are not budging. And to think, I almost thought I could finally have an excuse to leave weekend retail.

The sense that I need to make connections is driving me nuts. As I type that, the feeling that my blog "Forty Years Is Enough" may as well have been a suicide note. Nothing has happened to me over the past year, so it feels like I may as well be dead. There is "NinetyForChill.com - The Podcast", but with the difficulty to line up guests, can I keep that up. Sadly, AAW is not looking to start a podcast. Or an interview guy to abuse. Like Sarah Shockey is willing to be thrown into walls to get a heel over.

My hopes for connection are kind of stuck on intrigued Snapchat "friends" to give the podcast a chance. Eva and Skimble have at least opened communications, but judging the lack of dates from my prior app use, expecting people to dedicate an hour to just bullshit about movies is ill advised. There is just seemingly no way to get anyone to take a chance on me. I guess Skimble's one-eared charm is not enough.

Perhaps Skimbleshanks needs to be replaced. If I need to replace my ward, maybe I should just sacrifice him. Do eunuchs count as virgins? Do I want to abandon my atheistic views to appease imaginary beings just because it may be fun? If the results are as crazy as "Dagon" or "The Lair of the White Worm", how can one not be tempted?

I brought up the latter film to some coworkers received a not so surprising response of, "Where do you find these movies?" Am I the only person who does not consider the algorithm's suggestions? With a title like "The Lair of the White Worm", how do you not click on it? Once you see that it stars Hugh Grant before he was HUGH GRANT and Peter Capaldi (The Twelfth Doctor) in an obviously campy flick, how can you not place this in your queue?

I did not even need to consider that it was directed by Ken Russell of "Altered States" and "Tommy" fame. With that said, "The Lair" tells me I need to give the prior of those films a watch.

"The Lair of the White Worm" (1988; 1 hour 33 minutes)

The only late winter excitement in Debryshire is usually the annual party to celebrate how the Lord of d'Ampton Manor slayed the a serpent god who was feeding on the locals nearly 1000 years ago. This year is going to be different with the arrival of Scottish archeological student Angus Flint's arrival at the Mercy Bed and breakfast. He has done some excavating and discovered a giant lizard's skull.

It cannot be a dinosaur since he was able to locate it along side the remnants of a 1000-year old Roman church. What makes this even stranger is that the church's art work seems to indicate that the Christians from Rome were trying to incorporate their fate with a regional snake god. Has he discovered the remains of the d'Ampton Worm? With a rash of snake bites and disappearances, even the current lord of the manor, James, thinks the legends might be true.

To further escalate the queerness, Lady Sylvia March has returned home for the season. With all the excitement and a possible break in the missing persons case of the B&B's parents, Sylvia steals the skull and leaves a hallucinogenic trail of HER venom at the house. It turns out that she is a priestess to the snake god Dionin, and now is the time for sacrifices to him.

After one of the sisters goes missing, a year after their parents vanished, Angus and James decides they better forgo logic and take on this ancient evil on their own. Angus has his bagpipes and James has his sword and Turkish snake-charming records, whoever is most clever will likely win the day.

I can see why flipping channels would not help this flick out. If you come into "The Lair of the White Worm" just looking for a film to watch and before Lady Sylvia is introduced, this feature would come across as just a cheeky sounding Britcom. To count the times I flipped from "Keeping Up Appearances" and "Are You Being Served?" would be a futile task. Fortunately, this is a brief picture, so if you hit info on the cable box and stick with it, the sheer craziness makes this feature irresistible.

This is from the director of "Tommy", so maybe the film was better served to have a visually stimulating overture, but that is the only change I would consider. Oh to see Capaldi pantomiming.

The odd visuals keep you invested until Amanda Donohoe's cynical seductress in Lady Sylvia controls the narrative. Ken Russell really only has one scene until that point that displays his talent and hearkens back to "Tommy", but his obnoxious cuts to video like dream sequences and the absurdity of his set pieces makes sure you know his controlled madness is driving this picture.

I find the real strength is Russell's script that sets up for all of the wackiness. The film is dealing with snake vampires, but instead of treating them like vampires, he commits to treating the villains like serpents. These serpents are susceptible to all the animal training tricks and it is a blast to see our heroes fight them off as if they were being driven to the sea.

On top of these snake exploitations, Russell does not forget how phallic these reptiles are. Be it a naked Donohoe with a codpiece or Grant's pen rising as his arms are tied to his side, the director demands that you to know that this film is suppose to be sexy. Humorous, but sexy none the less. It leaves me thinking that Russell may have been too old for his appropriate entertainment medium. That perfect medium for him would have been music video or narrative porn.

"The Lair of the White Worm" is near perfect camp. It never takes itself too seriously while being intriguing enough to keep the viewer invested. I would say that it is more comedy like a Joe Dante horror film than it is scary, but by treating the darker genre with a silly nature, one can imagine the laughs and gore that could be had with more resources behind this feature. The ending is left slightly open, and I would not mind more snakes versus kilts.