The Lair of the White Worm is a 1988 supernatural comedy horror film written, produced and directed by Ken Russell, and starring Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg and Peter Capaldi.

Loosely based on the 1911 Bram Stoker novel of the same name, it follows the residents in and around a rural English manor that are tormented by an ancient priestess after the skull of a serpent that she worships is unearthed by an archaeologist.

Russell, an admirer of Stoker, loosely adapted the screenplay from the source novel, and incorporated elements of the English folktale of the Lambton Worm.

[4] Angus Flint is a Scottish archaeology student excavating the site of a convent at Mercy Farm, a Derbyshire bed and breakfast run by the Trent sisters, Mary and Eve.

The watch belonged to the Trent sisters' father Joe, who disappeared a year earlier near Temple House, the stately home of the seductive and enigmatic Lady Sylvia Marsh.

Eve later touches the crucifix, absorbing some of the venom and experiencing a disturbing vision involving a crucified Jesus being encircled by a giant serpent, while a group of nuns are raped by Roman soldiers.

Lady Sylvia picks up a young male hitchhiker named Kevin and brings him to Temple House, where she seduces him before fatally paralysing him with snake venom.

When Eve decides to return to Mercy Farm before the others, she is abducted in the woods by Lady Sylvia, who intends to offer her as the latest in a long line of human sacrifices to her snake-god.

Using large speakers, James projects Turkish music from his residence in an attempt to charm the serpent, invoking Lady Sylvia to visit him.

Dorothy suddenly bares fangs and bites Mary's neck before fleeing, triggering a hallucinatory vision in her, but Angus manages to extract the venom.

After reading Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm at a friend's suggestion, Russell decided to write a film adaptation,[2] despite being "disappointed" by the novel: "There are touches of the master there.

And as with the Loch Ness Monster... there is the assumption that a land-based creature of this sort could still exist under the right conditions— which in the story is this huge cavern called Thor's Cave in Derbyshire, located next to a snake-like river.

"[2] While the screenplay utilizes Stoker's source novel as a framework, Russell heavily incorporated the English legend of the Lambton Worm in the story.

Russell later wrote "being of royal lineage, she opted for Harrods' silk but as we were a low budget movie she had to be content with Marks and Spencer's cotton – and very fetching she was too.

[3] The film continued to open regionally throughout the remainder of the year, releasing in such cities as Seattle on 11 November 1988,[22] and in Detroit and Hartford, Connecticut on 23 December 1988.

[25][26] Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four and called it "a respectable B-grade monster movie",[27] while Variety deemed it "a rollicking, terrifying, post-psychedelic headtrip.

"[28] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film's "far-from-serious aura allows Russell to get away with some hilariously cut-rate visions of hell, various Christian-pagan conflicts and lurid Freudian symbolism", but felt that its contemporary setting, though allowing for anachronism, would have "benefited considerably from the period quaintness of 1911, the year in which Stoker, creator of Dracula, wrote it".

[29] LA Weekly's Helen Knode felt the film's themes and screenplay were lackluster, but conceded that it was still "scary, funny, gorgeously hued light entertainment".

An impaled eyeball, a dinner of pickled earthworms in aspic and a hallucinatory sequence involving the rape of nuns keep viewers from resting too easily: This is a Ken Russell film, after all.

[23] Linnea Lannon of the Detroit Free Press praised Donohoe's performance as "deliciously funny", but deemed Oxenberg as "awful", adding that the film ultimately only has appeal for ardent fans of Russell.

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?

Badly shot, clumsily edited and seemingly scored by a teenage boy who has just taken delivery of his first synthesiser and then pressed all the buttons one by one, the film has a peculiarly jarring tone.

[33] Rob Hunter of Film School Rejects wrote in a 2017 retrospective review The Lair of the White Worm is "probably the most accessible" film of Russell's career, noting that he "infuses what could have been a familiar genre setup with wit, sex, and blasphemous imagery, but as nutty as elements of it become the core simplicity of heroes fighting to save their small village from an ancient evil remains.