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Saved cows and calves by making halves of that famous Lambton Worm
Oh, my God, The Lair of the White Worm (1988) is not a good movie. I mean, nunsploitation with terrible bluescreen effects. Plot exposition plus Freudian crosswords. Peter Capaldi with a mongoose apparently stashed in his sporran. (All together now: or are you just happy to see me . . .) I imagine the anachronistic slander of the Emperor Carausius does not even rank among the problems most viewers have with this film, but what do you want from me? I read The Silver Branch (1957) in high school.
It was, nonetheless, a remarkably entertaining way to spend an evening with two friends who do not have livejournals, even if I may never get those synapses back. Next time, I insist on watching a movie with actual, you know, continuity. And better values of human sacrifice.
It was, nonetheless, a remarkably entertaining way to spend an evening with two friends who do not have livejournals, even if I may never get those synapses back. Next time, I insist on watching a movie with actual, you know, continuity. And better values of human sacrifice.
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I was heavily traumatized by The Music Lovers and I saw that in a college film class.
Of course, Tommy is fairly mainstream, for all the "swimming through beans that fall out of the laundry machine" sequences.
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I may have seen a clip of that—does it involve people's heads exploding in bursts of confetti to the 1812 Overture?
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I am inordinately entertained by this review, because making it a slashy crossover with Peter Capaldi's other work seems as reasonable as any other reaction.
And it's probably the closest thing Ken Russell's ever done to a mainstream film, which is worth a laugh in itself, just conceptually.
. . . So what are his other films like? More nunsploitation? Less archaeology?
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Actually, in some cases...yes.
Russell's probably best-known for either his adaptations of D.H. Lawrence books like Sons & Lovers and The Rainbow, his direction of the Who's rock opera Tommy, or his strange-ass biography of Franz Liszt starring Roger Daltrey (Lizstomania). My personal favourite films of his are Worm..., The Devils (an adaptation of Huxsley's The Devils of Loudon which casts Oliver Reed as the sexy priest and Vanessa Redgrave as the "possessed" Mother Superior--it was banned almost everywhere, forever losing two scenes that put Haxan to shame [the "rape of Christ" sequence, in which nuns sexually abuse a giant crucifix, and the coda in which Redgrave uses one of Reed's bones as a dildo]) and Gothic, the weirdest version of the Byron/Shelley/Mary Shelley/Clair Claremont/Doctor Polidori holiday menage you'll ever see. Might'v been based on Bloody Poetry, but...maybe not.
Um, so--basically, Russell is like the British Alejandro Jodorowsky, except for the fact that he was briefly far more popular than Jodorowsky has ever been, and therefore got stuck halfway ina nd halfway out of the Hollywood machine. "Visionary", in that very particular male way. On good days I look at his fuckery and say: "Oh, YOU", and want to pinch his little cheeks. On bad days, I wonder what the fuck the guy's damage is, but I must admit, I'm not interested/arsed enough to find out.;)
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Derek Jarman did the production design for that one! Never mind, I have to see it. Also IMDb informs me of a number of actors I like in it: Max Adrian, Murray Melvin, John Woodvine, Kenneth Colley . . . Wait, its Cardinal Richelieu is the same Christopher Logue who wrote War Music? Have you got this on DVD? Can I steal it?
and Gothic, the weirdest version of the Byron/Shelley/Mary Shelley/Clair Claremont/Doctor Polidori holiday menage you'll ever see.
Gabriel Byrne as Byron, whose Polidori is Timothy Spall? Oh, twist my arm.
On good days I look at his fuckery and say: "Oh, YOU", and want to pinch his little cheeks.
*ksnerk*
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Wiah I did! Like The Shout, The Devils is thisclose to being a sort of lost film. I'd love to have both it and Gothic, even if I had to pick them up on video--they'd go straight on the "gotta have!"" list, along with a copy of Trouble Every Day. Video Watchdog did a pretty amazing spotlight issue on The Devils, though, and I have that--otherwise, I'm working off memories of a screening I saw at some indie circuit festival years and years back.
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Oh, my God, the Harvard Film Archive is showing The Shout two weeks from now. Want to come to Boston?
otherwise, I'm working off memories of a screening I saw at some indie circuit festival years and years back.
It's not even on DVD from the BFI. Man . . .
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I realised you've been in a Regency drought. It's because I can't quite sit, you see. I have to save all my sitting for work. I much resemble, even three days later, one of those awful hams that got baked in maraschino-cherry juice.
But for the love of Gawd, must a lack of Regency drive you straight into the arms of nunsploitation?
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I don't think that would have helped. Well, maybe the perry. The paracetamol plus some of the snake-dancing Roman convent-rape scenes would have been a bad call.
But for the love of Gawd, must a lack of Regency drive you straight into the arms of nunsploitation?
So send me more Regency . . .
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Dude! The zero-g barfight in that thing is a classic.
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It is on my list of 'things to make Sonya watch'.
*whistles, twiddles thumbs*
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. . . wait, are there tentacles in that?
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No, it is all, sadly, far weirder than tentacles.
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I think, although I cannot be certain (I've never seen any of the director's other films), that The Lair of the White Worm was intended to be a sendup-homage of its genre like The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) or Shaun of the Dead (2004). Very occasionally, it pulled this balance off, as in the stupendously dumb/awesome scene in the finale in which a kilt-wearing archaeologist charms a hissing, snake-vampirized policeman by playing Roud #2337 on the bagpipes. This is Peter Capaldi with the aforementioned sporran of holding and an expression of resolute and terrified determination; it was awesome. The problem is that the overwhelming remainder of the film is neither clever enough to be tongue-in-cheek nor committed enough to function as real erotic horror, which I think is the genre in question; it's stilted, logic-gapped, either painfully blatant or incomprehensibly WTF, and giant chunks of plot exposition keep falling out of the dialogue and giving the audience a concussion. Also the entendres aren't even attempting to be double; it's like Carry On Hammer. I don't hate myself for having watched it, but I'm not sure how often I'll repeat the experience.
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I am afraid I did not invent it, but please feel free to make it your own!
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My ambition is to use the word "nunsploitation" at least twice in conversation today.
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Thanks. Very nunsploitatary of you to say.
(One down ...)
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I second that thumbs-up.
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N.B. Evenings with friends can always be spent at Bostonian Irish Pubs instead. That's better for your synapses in the long run, even if large amounts of alcohol are involved. :-)
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*snerk*
It goes for the original novel, too.
"Why?"
Oh, simple: the friends in question insisted when they found out I'd never seen the film (or even heard of it. We did not pay money for it in theaters, I should reassure you; they own it on DVD). Originally we had been slated to play a game called Pandemic, but nobody had the brain.
I was also offered Cannibal Women of the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989), but I think I made the right decision?
Evenings with friends can always be spent at Bostonian Irish Pubs instead. That's better for your synapses in the long run, even if large amounts of alcohol are involved.
No worries on that front: these are the same friends who regularly host Single Malt & Song. I met them through singing chanteys and Kipling, but the first time we ever met up anywhere was at a whisky tasting.
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I don't know; I think they might have been testing whether my brain was going to deliquesce from my ears. But at least there were cats.
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Gods, do I hate that movie. But. What a strap-on...
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Thank you for writing the good version of that sacrifice scene.
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Ooh! Ooh! There's a catfight, too!
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Nine
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I'll look for them. Cursory glance at the internet, Savage Messiah sounds amazing.
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I probably don't need to be lacking any more synapses than already I'm lacking, so maybe it's just as well.