Ava DeVries
There is a surprising lack of academic criticism surrounding the absolute fever dream of a film that is The Lair of the White Worm (1988). Ken Russell’s folk horror-comedy is often overlooked within discussions of the genre, as academics turn instead to more widely recognized folk horror classics like The Wicker Man (1973) or newer films like Midsommar (2019). The Lair of the White Worm is a ridiculous, campy, psychosexual masterpiece – but, most of all, it’s absolutely saturated in queer themes.
Loosely inspired by Bram Stoker’s final novel of the same name (published in 1911), The Lair of the White Worm stars a pre-Doctor Who Peter Capaldi as archeologist Angus Flint, Hugh Grant as the dashing Lord James D’Ampton, Catherine Oxenberg and Sammi Davis as sisters Eve and Mary Trent, and Amanda Donohoe as the iconic femme fatale Lady Sylvia Marsh.
Flint, an archaeology student, is staying at Mercy Farm, the Trent sisters’ bed-and-breakfast. He’s excavating the grounds of the farm, which was the site of a convent in Roman times, and discovers the skull of a huge reptilian beast. Eve, Mary, and Flint attend a party commemorating the local legend of the D’Ampton Worm, a monstrous white snake that supposedly terrorized the area a few hundred years ago. The sisters introduce Flint to Lord James D’Ampton, their landlord, whose ancestor was the knight said to have slain the Worm.
Eve and Mary’s parents disappeared some time ago; local police had given up the search, but on the night of the party, their father’s watch is discovered in a nearby cave called Stonerich Cavern – the legendary lair of the D’Ampton Worm.
Lady Sylvia, we learn, is an immortal priestess of the pagan snake god Dionin – the source of the D’Ampton Worm legend. She’s a kind of snakelike vampire, whose venom has the power to paralyze or convert others into snake-vampire disciples like herself.
As the gang investigates Stonerich Cavern, Eve splits off from the group and gets hypnotized by Lady Sylvia, who wants her to be a virgin sacrifice to Dionin. Mary, Flint, and Lord James are able to uncover this conspiracy and save Eve, killing Lady Sylvia and the other disciples of Dionin. However, Lair of the White Worm‘s final sequence reveals that Flint was bitten and converted by Lady Sylvia, becoming the last surviving member of the cult.
Lady Sylvia is heavily implied to be bisexual. Her sexuality is a weapon that she knows exactly how to use, and she acts equally lascivious toward all of her victims, regardless of their gender. When she kidnaps Eve, Lady Sylvia tells her that she knew her in a past life – that Eve was once a nun at the convent where Mercy Farm now stands, which, apparently, was built over the sacred temple of Dionin. “Yes, I can see you now, on your knees,” she says, “blindly worshipping your false god. Fancy praying to a god who was nailed to a wooden cross, who locked up his brides in a convent. Did they really enjoy themselves, hmm? Poor little virgins masturbating in the dark.” Eve’s innocence and virginity is both a commodity to Lady Sylvia, and a point of ridicule.
Later, when she has Eve tied up over the pit where Dionin resides, Lady Sylvia is dressed to perform what one can assume will be a ritual of defilement: she wears a huge, sharpened strap-on phallus, with which she plans to penetrate Eve. Flint comes to the rescue and throws Lady Sylvia into the pit instead. The first time I watched the film, though, this was the moment which fully solidified Lady Sylvia’s coding as a predatory queer woman – the corrupting, oversexualized monstress who wants to rape the pure, vulnerable virgin.
This character archetype, of course, is nothing new: the queer female vampire has been around at least since Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872). In his article “Not All Fangs Are Phallic,” James Craig Holte writes that female vampires in film tend to be “depicted as clearly outside the accepted norms of traditional Western culture,” often “both a lesbian or bisexual and sexually aggressive” (166). Their death at the end of the films, says Holte, “restores traditional values after viewers have had the opportunity to enjoy narratives full of forbidden pleasures” (167).[i]
But while Lady Sylvia is destroyed at the end of Lair of the White Worm, her influence lives on. Throughout the film, there’s a definite tension between the two male protagonists, Flint and James. Both have female romantic interests: Flint kisses Mary, and Lord James is attracted to both Lady Sylvia and Eve. One of the more memorable sequences of the film is when James has an erotic dream about both women dressed as flight attendants. But there’s a repressed sexual energy between the two men as well. In a double entendre referring to the archaeological excavation at Mercy Farm, James quips, “I love Mr. Flint’s hole. It’s rather fascinating.” Toward the end of Lair of the White Worm, after the boys have saved the day – James smokes Dionin out of its hiding place, and Flint detonates it with a grenade – they sit together at Mercy Farm, shoulder-to-shoulder, and share a drink out of Flint’s flask.
“I suppose it’s all gonna take a little bit of explaining,” says James.
“Seems we’ve both a little explaining to do,” says Flint. “Perhaps we should give ourselves up together.”
“Well, yeah, but after we’ve had a drink with the girls, don’t you think?” James reminds him.
Moments after this exchange, the phone rings inside, and Flint receives the news that the anti-venom he had procured from a local research lab, which he believed had inoculated him against Lady Sylvia’s bite, was actually the wrong serum. Horrified, he stares at himself in the mirror, feeling his gums for newly-formed fangs. But he seems to accept his new affliction quickly. He rejoins Lord James outside, and they drive toward the pub for a drink.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m famished,” says James. “Can we stop on the way for a bite?”
Flint gives him an intense look, then smiles darkly, a private joke between himself and the audience. “Why not.”
“Great,” says James, not catching on to his strange behavior. It’s then that he shifts the gear stick, inadvertently pulling Flint’s kilt up higher and revealing the bloody bite marks on his thigh. Flint stares at him, hungrily, and the film ends.
What’s interesting about this sequence is that, before realizing he’s been infected, Flint is his usual self. I read his interaction with James as more than friendly—their physical closeness as Flint jokes about turning themselves in together, only for James to remind him of Mary and Eve’s existence. But then, almost immediately after he learns that the venom has affected him, he embraces it. In the car with James, his demeanor becomes just as predatory and seductive as Lady Sylvia’s. Any desire he previously held for James is now a literal hunger. Where he likely never would have acted on his attraction before, being a man beginning a heterosexual relationship in 1980s Britain, Flint’s bite grants him the permission—the liberation—to devour James. The transformation into one of Dionin’s disciples can be read as an indoctrination, or as the freedom to give into one’s basest desires.
Jack Halberstam discusses vampiric sexuality in his article “Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula.’” He writes that “the vampire is not lesbian, homosexual, or heterosexual; the vampire represents the productions of sexuality itself. The vampire, after all, creates more vampires by engaging in a sexual relation with his victims, and he reproduces vampires who share his specific sexual predilections” (344). In the current state of American politics, conservatives fear queerness like a disease. Any contact between children and queer people is seen as an attempt to indoctrinate innocents. In Lair of the White Worm, this fear is made literal—the strap-on-wearing snake-vampiress transmits her sexuality to those she bites, creating equally sexually aggressive disciples.
But rather than justifying this standpoint, The Lair of the White Worm satirizes it. Folk horror has a history of challenging conservative anxieties (even while reinforcing others), especially surrounding sex and sexuality. The lead character of The Wicker Man (the ‘73 version, not the Nicholas Cage version) is a caricature of conservative Christianity, while Witchfinder General exposes the hypocrisy of patriarchal religious paranoia. Likewise, Lair mocks the fear surrounding sexuality in general, and especially queer sexuality. The film’s over-the-top comedic tone, and the context of Ken Russell’s wider filmography, make it clear that Lair isn’t a serious portrayal of dangerous queerness[ii]
Queer people have been feared for too long—seen as predatory like Lady Sylvia, corrupting vulnerable innocents like Eve. But just as Flint’s attraction to James wasn’t suddenly created by Lady Sylvia’s venom, the reality is that queerness isn’t something that can manifest out of nowhere through indoctrination—it can only be awakened if it already exists somewhere beneath the surface. In this way, The Lair of the White Worm actually portrays queerness as liberation.
Sometimes all it takes is a bite.
Notes
[i] Russell’s next film, The Rainbow, portrays a romance between two women, also played by Sammi Davis and Amanda Donohoe.
[ii] In her seminal text The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Barbara Creed provides an in-depth analysis of the female vampire archetype (and, specifically, the lesbian vampire).
Ava DeVries is an English MA Candidate at Western Washington University. She mainly studies horror film and literature, and is working on her capstone project about female archetypes in folk horror. She has previously written for Horror Homeroom about gendered violence in Get Out and Mexican Gothic. Ava also writes fiction and can be found @ava_devries on Instagram, @AvaDeVries04 on Twitter, and @avadevries.bsky.social on Bluesky.
