Remember Altered States? Director Ken Russell (who "attracted criticism for being obsessed with sexuality and the church") made another semi-psychedelic film in the late '80s about a stereotypical "rich bitch" who secretly is a snake person. Typical to the ideology of the "vamp" persona, the villain Lady Sylvia sucks the blood of innocent victims around her manor. The vamp is an interesting persona, one that is seen as threatening, morally reprehensive for her self-owned sexual "prowess" and forwardness:
"No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles, – a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning."
—Joris-Karl Huysmans, À rebours, Sisters of Salome
Lair of the White Worm is somehow an adaption of Bram Stoker's novel published in 1911. In classic B-movie fashion, Russell takes many liberties at modernizing the tale: a group of teens (including young Hugh Grant) attempts to put stops to the reptilian sorceress's plan through trials and tribulations and in the process uncover the ancient pagan occultism of the snake myth in their hometown.
By no means "porn" but in alignment with the idea of surrealism and sexuality, the extremely glamorous femme fatale villianess played by Amanda Donohoe is combination of super-babe and mega-scary. (This movie was filmed before the bulk of her acting career but after her relationship with Adam Ant/her position as the band's wardrobe stylist). Above all the film plays into the Christian stigma that a woman's sexuality is a horrifying and oppressive presence. Reptilian late night eroticism with an array of black latex outfits and intense sexual overtones, the snake as a phallic/penis in parallel with the worship of a horny bisexual vamp is displayed rather hilariously throughout the movie.
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