The Lair Of The White Worm

 

Have you ever gone to a museum, whether via a field trip as a child or of your own volition, and you're standing there admiring the artwork, slowly moving from piece to piece, and then you come across a piece that you wholly abhore and cannot imagine anyone ever considering hanging in a fine art museum. That's kind of what's happening here. You can see glimpses of an amazing work of art, but it's all so bogged down and covered up by the crap someone smeared over it that you just can't see it as it should've been.

Let's discuss some positive points, like that font. That font is downright incredible. It's just plain cool, man. Like, if you were thinking of making, specifically a B-Horror movie, that's the font you'd look at and go "perfect!". That is A+ grade b-horror movie font, right there. But that's about where the positive points end, sadly, and it quickly devolves into a collage that looks like it was put together by an edgy teenager in a 2005 computer high school class. I mean, I won't argue that the snake...worm...snorm? This creature, whatever it is, that they have designed is pretty cool, but I don't think it was necessary to have it cover every single goddamned inch of box art. It makes everything far too busy and hard to comprehend, visually.

I love that they specifically, just to help sell this picture, slapped a little piece of text that reads "by the author of Dracula" right on the front cover, with no questions as to whether or not the person renting this movie recognizes it is not a book. If you wanted to include that, it should've said "based on a work from the author of Dracula." Director/Writer and all around good decision maker Ken Russel put his name directly on top of the title, proudly exclaiming this is HIS picture. He's happy he made this thing. Good for him. Take pride in your shit, even if it's actual shit.

This fanged creature on the front is pretty 80s generic horror type, but at least it's not that ridiculously goofy lookin' fuck that's on the spine of the box. That thing is downright hilarious.

And the images on the back box don't really lend much to anything, but they don't really hurt either. They're so static an so noncontextual that they aren't even really worth mentioning, outside of perhaps the very last one, which looks like some sort of start to a blowjob sequence in a vampire porno.If you can come up with a title for a vampire porno, please, let me know. I'd be so thrilled to hear some suggestions. I'm gonna go ahead and start the discussion with, "Nosfuckratu,"

But perhaps more perplexing than the box art itself are some of the details behind it, such as the fact that it stars Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi, and the fact that Ken Russel had written a film adaptation prior to this about Dracula, as he was a major admirer of Bram Stoker's work, that was not developed into a feature. Even more humorous, regarding casting, is the fact that Russel had originally sent a script to Tilda Swinton in hopes that she would sign on. She didn't. It wound up being one of Hugh Grants first features, he later say he was embarrassed by it. Russel insists the film is a comedy, which, the insinuation is certainly funny, even if the film ends up not being.

But what's even more perplexing, perhaps, is the fact that this movie did fairly well. I mean, it almost made its budget back, but its got a 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and even the man, the myth, the legend himself, Roger Ebert, gave it two out of four stars calling a sold b-horror monster movie. It's amazing to me when we come across relatively decent flicks that just HAPPEN to have bad box art, as opposed to the bad movies that of course are going to have bad box art. It makes no sense that you'd put all this time and effort into a picture, a picture that does fairly well, and then release it with the ugliest goddamned thing known to man as its public presentation.

But hey, that's just me.

Apparently there were talks of a sequel to be made, but that never came to fruition, thank god. This box art is a hot mess, and in the worst sort of way, as it's not even a funny hot mess that can be truly mocked, but just a gross hot mess that's ugly to look at and hard to decipher visually.

And on a note that has nothing to do with this movie in particular, I'd like to bring up the fact that so many horror films use women and sexuality, often together, as the basis of horror themselves. Women turning into giant worms, or black spiders, or women with teeth in their vaginas. Female sexuality it so terrifying to men, especially when it's the woman presenting said sexuality and not her sexuality simply being sexualized by men themselves, that they think of it as "terrifying". As I said, this has not really much to do with this flick, but it was something I wanted to point out nonetheless.

Anyway, sorry updates have been rather sporadic for all 5 of you reading, I'll try and get back to near daily posting, or at least post 2-3 times a week, if possible. Until then, enjoy looking at this hideous piece of garbage in what I'm come to coin 'The Museum Of Unmodern Art."