Ken Russell dead at 84

One of my favorite film makers, director Ken Russell died this week.  John T. at Shocks to the System  shared from his personal experience as a film student under Russell's tutelage and Aylmer at Unflinching Eye  wrote a short but very insightful analysis of Russell's films and relationship to British cinema.


My among my favorites of his films (alongside Tommy and Salome's Last Dance, which I wrote about earlier) is The Lair of the White Worm, from a story by Bram Stoker.  It is a fairly traditional British horror film, a group of aristocrats and non-aristocrats band together to fight a super natural evil in the lush countryside.  But since Ken Russell seldom did anything traditionally, the film is rife with wild, psychedelic, sexual and religious imagery.