Director Ken Russell’s 1988 bizarre horror comedy returns to the high definition format now entombed in metal in The Lair of the White Worm: SteelBook Edition (Lionsgate Home Entertainment, rated R, 93 minutes, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, $19.96).
Very loosely adapted from Bram Stoker final novel of the same name and the English folklore surrounding the Lambton Worm, this cult classic creature feature has Scottish archeology student Angus Flint (the future Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi) finding a large snake skull at a pagan dig site near an ancient church while the Trent sisters Eve (Catherine Oxenberg) and Mary (Sammi Davis) distress over their missing father.
The skull intrigues our villainess, an immortal priestess of the snake god Dionin, Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe), often wearing incredibly tight and sensual costuming.
Her goal is the sacrifice of humans to bring the slithering deity back to life and she wields an extended and sharp pair of fangs when necessary to kill and control her victims.
The sisters, archeologist and Eve’s boyfriend Lord James D’Ampton (a very young Hugh Grant) eventually work together to find out what happened to daddy Trent and stop Lady Sylvia.
Of course, Mr. Russell, known for his flamboyant directing style (reference his masterpiece “Tommy”) cannot simply make a monster movie.
The visually twisted director presents an abundance of exploitive imagery tied to snakes and worms to reinforce the villain’s intentions, and even a battle between Christianity and paganism plays out.
His addition of nightmarish hallucination sequences tied to Lady Sylvia’s venom delivers moments of disturbing sensuality and ridiculous phallic symbolism and even occasional blasphemy that will cause the occasional facepalm from viewers.
The screen-filling, high-definition presentation, originally released by Vestron in 2017, really disappoints with too many specks and dirt, and the fantasy scene effects look well-worn, all leaving a very B-movie, near grind-house quality throughout.
Best extras: The deconstructive dive starts with a priceless and previously released (from a special edition back in 1999) optional commentary track with the venerable director offering a very theatrical explanation of his masterpiece.
Mr. Russell speaks nonstop, often acting like an amusing omniscient narrator to the movie. He focuses on the Stoker source material, D’Ampton Worm folklore and the cast, but he doesn’t give much explanation for his more outrageous expressionistic scenes.
He mentions fodder such as shooting in a residence owned by a famous video-game creator, the lack of lighting in scenes, his handling of the camera, some favorite snake stories and discussing an actor who refused to take his clothes off.
A second optional commentary features Lisi Russell (Russell’s fourth wife) who joins film historian Matthew Melia in offering a much more standard discussion of the production with tales from the set, casting credits, story and shot selection. The predominance of the information comes from Mr. Melia with Ms. Russell agreeing to his observations.
Moving on to featurettes culled from the 2017 release, the disc delivers a 27-minute look at the truly disturbing practical visual effects as delightfully explained by artisans Neill Gorton, Paul Jones and Geoffrey Portass.
They touch on such moments creating the large worm head puppet, impaling a character on his eyeball, moving a foam worm in the awkward crucifixion scene and cutting a body in half.
Viewers also get 16 minutes with an enthusiastic Ms. Davis reminiscing about the film and 10 minutes with the film’s editor Peter Davies.
The Walmart exclusive SteelBook packaging has an eye-catching cover with a tight headshot of blue-skinned Lady Sylvia in full vampiric-serpent mode with fangs flashing.
A swirling, Easter-egg-colored portal — with purple, yellow and teal hues dominating — is behind her leading to the back cover highlighting the end of the film and meeting the snake god ready to chomp on victims.
The interior presents the original movie poster to the left with Lady Sylvia slithering in black leather and a key scene on the right of the villain hissing at a crucifix, images all bathed in dark blue.
• Joseph Szadkowski can be reached at jszadkowski@washingtontimes.com.
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