"Audiences don't realize my films are comedies until the last line has been delivered, and even then, most people don't appear to get the joke. I would like to state that I actively encourage the audience to laugh along with White Worm."

Ken Russell on his lunatic Lair of the White Worm (1988)

The British madman of film, Ken Russell, followed his hallucinatory classic Altered States and the sexual thriller Crimes of Passion with Lair of the White Worm an adaptation of a Bram Stoker novel. A hoot from start to finish the film is a bright blast of blood, babes and a healthy dose of camp. Of course we also get images of Christ being chewed up by a "worm" on the cross and Nun's impaled on stakes. Only in Russells' universe!

Lair has become infamous for containing possibly the most phallic symbols in the history of film, the title says it all. Russell went all out in this extravaganza with disturbing hallucinations brought on by Amanda Donahoe's venom spewing snake woman, Catherine Oxenberg (Russell on Oxenberg:"Catherine Oxenberg lost her handwarmer in the cave. This was a terrible ordeal for the girl.") tied up in only her bra and panties, and various - extremely bizarre - worm creations.

Worth the price of admission alone is Donahoe's performance as the snake woman who hangs around in trees and seduces a young man. She bites him while performing oral sex than gleefully explains to the fella what is happening to his paralysed body. She than nonchalantly pushes his paralyzed body under the water with her knee high leather boot. Terrific! She is a riot in her various sexy outfits slithering around in a snake like walk and dancing to the sound of bagpipes. You won't be able to take your eyes off of her.

"Horror is universal, and we all have this stuff inside us. I have a horror of snakes, am absolutely petrified by them."