Tiresome.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Cheap effects and gratuitous displays of nudity only heighten the film’s delirious demeanor.
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
Not a worm is left unturned in Ken Russell's buoyant, mischievous and predictably overwrought new film.
Though the film does contain a few other humorously erotic moments, it's mostly a listless exercise in intentional camp.
Washington Post by Richard Harrington
Say what you will about Ken Russell, his films are usually bonkers. His latest, Lair of the White Worm, will do nothing to alter his reputation as the champion of camp thrash, but at least it's a step or two -- if only short ones -- above such recent efforts as "Salome's Last Veil" and "Gothic."
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
It has everything you want: shadows, screams, feverish scientific speculations, guttering candle flames, flowing diaphanous gowns, midnights, dawns and worms. Russell was once, and no doubt will be again, considered an important director. This is the sort of exercise he could film with one hand tied behind his back, and it looks like that was indeed more or less his approach.
An embarrassing mish-mash of comedy and horror which fits neither criteria.