Lovable floppy-fringed Hugh is famous for essentially playing the same
character (bumbling toff) in the same sort of film (cheeky but slushy
romantic comedy) for pretty much his entire career, so the rare moments
when he steps outside of his comfort zone are all the more noticeable.
His ill-advised detour into the action thriller genre, Extreme Measures,
is one such example – though its medical conspiracy is far too
dull and not nearly bizarre enough to warrant inclusion here. No, the
Hugh Grant movie that should be in the collection of all connoisseurs
of trash is the 1988 Ken Russell schlocker, Lair of the White Worm.
Based very loosely on Bram Stoker’s final novel, written shortly
before he died from syphilis, the 28-year-old Hugh Grant stars as James
D’Ampton, a vivacious globetrotting young chap directly descended
from Sir John D’Ampton, a local medieval hero who slew a monstrous
snake creature according to local legend. James returns to his ancestral
seat in darkest Derbyshire to take up his position as lord of the manor.
One of the properties on his land is Mercy Farm, a bed and breakfast
hostelry owned and run by Eve and Mary Trent, two sisters whose parents
mysteriously vanished in the vicinity of nearby Temple House the previous
year. When bespectacled archaeologist Angus Flint (Peter Capaldi) digs
up what appears to be the skull of the mythological D’Ampton Worm
in the grounds of the farm, evil forces are set in motion.
Resident in Temple House is Lady Sylvia, a predatory seductress played
with lascivious glee by LA Law star Amanda Donohoe. It takes the audience
all of five minutes to realise that she’s an evil snake priestess,
hellbent on summoning an enormous worm god from the bowels of the earth,
but all the characters have a lot of catching up to do before the final
ceremony that will unleash the slippery demon.
Thankfully, this is a Ken Russell movie and so the road to the final
ceremony involves no less than four outrageously camp dream sequences
featuring naked nuns being raped by Roman centurions, a crucified Jesus
being nibbled on by an albino snake, blue witchdoctors sporting razor-sharp
strap-on dildos, wrestling air stewardesses and more phallic imagery
than you can shake Sigmund Freud at.
The movie reaches a delirious crescendo as Sir James attempts to lure
Donohoe’s sultry serpent out of hiding by blasting snake charmer
music from the roof of his ancestral home. It’s a bold idea that
doesn’t quite work as planned. Eve and Mary’s mother, it
transpires, is not dead after all, but has been transformed into some
kind of reptilian minion and sent to do the dirty work of the slithering
seductress. Sadly, the chances of a happy family reunion are dashed when
she blunders into poor confused Hugh Grant and he slices her in two with
an enormous sword that he quite clearly struggles to even lift, let alone
wield in any meaningful manner.
Things come to a climax (almost literally) in a subterranean temple as
Donohoe tries to sacrifice the virginal Eve to her wiggly god, which
is inexorably worming its way from the caves and up into a specially
constructed snake god tunnel underneath Lady Sylvia’s pad. Brave
Sir James drives the beast out into the open by pumping gas through the
caves and bold Angus shoves Donohoe into the albino monster’s gaping
maw, dropping in a hand grenade for good measure.
To his credit, Hugh Grant has always treated his appearance in this memorably
insane slice of cult British silliness with good humour and has even
been known to call it one of his favourites. Given that he spends most
of the movie seemingly trying to suppress a bad case of the giggles,
you can’t really blame him. It’s certainly one of the weirdest
movies to come out of the British film industry’s brief Eighties
flirtation with arty-farty horror (see also: Timothy
Spall) and is well
worth tracking down purely for its mesmerising strangeness.
Need to know: Eve was played by Catherine Oxenberg, a descendent of Catherine
the Great and a member of the Yugoslavian Royal Family. She was tutored
in the dramatic arts by none other than Richard Burton (not that you
can tell from her appalling performance in this movie) and, following
a ten day marriage to legendary producer Robert Evans, she’s now
married to fellow B-movie star Casper Van Dien. Peter Capaldi went on
to become a regular face on British television, earning a BAFTA nomination
for his role as a ferocious spin doctor in the political satire The Thick
Of It. The white worm of the title, which only appears briefly at the
end of the film, was reportedly created by disguising the chassis of
a Volkswagen Beetle as a giant snake head.
For another dose of Ken Russell
craziness, including yet more demented hallucinations involving crucifixions,
see: William Hurt.
Availability: Out of print on both sides of the Atlantic, your best bet
is to try and find a second-hand copy of the US DVD which came out several
years ago, or to order the movie from Hong Kong, one of the few places
still to have the disc in legitimate circulation.
