This title strikes fear into the heart of any British horror film lover. This movie truly reaches the state of being so bad that it is good. To give you some idea of just how bad it actually is, the "hero" of it all is a young Hugh Grant.

In the movie, Hugh plays Lord James D'Ampton, an oddly awkward name, but it suits the role. Sort of.

An archaeology student named Angus Flint unearths a large skull thing while digging around on the grounds of Mercy Farm, a guesthouse of sorts in rural Derbyshire, England. He explains to Mary Trent (who runs the guesthouse with her sister, Eve) that, although it looks like a dinosaur, it cannot possibly be, as it was found at the same level as some Roman coins. They seemed to overlook the seeming impossibility this implies and assume it must be a Roman beast instead of a tampered artifact.

The excavation also reveals that a convent existed at the same site at the time of William the Conqueror. Mary invites Angus to a party that evening with Eve and herself.

At the party, an annual event held for the locals at D'Ampton Hall, Angus learns from the current Lord of the Manor, James D'Ampton (Hugh Grant) the legend of how brave John D'Ampton slew the D'Ampton Worm and saved the villagers -- an event acted out through drama and song. A load of villagers jumped around, and there is a really shoddy recreation of the whole event. Here's the song, which pretty much sums up the legend:

"John D'Ampton went a-fishing once, a-fishing in the weir, He caught a fish upon his hook he thought looked mighty queer, Now what the kind of fish it was John D'Ampton couldn't tell, But he didn't like the look of it, so he threw it down a well.

"Now the worm got fat and growed, and growed an awful size, With great big teeth and a great big mouth and great big goggle eyes, And when at night it crawled about all looking for some booze, It fit fell dry upon the road, it milked a dozen cows.

"This fearful worm would often feed on cows and lamb and sheep, And swallow little babes alive when they lay down to sleep, So John set out and got the beast and cut it into halves, And that soon stopped it eating babes and sheep and lambs and calves.

"So now you know how all the folks on both sides of the weir, Lost lots of sheep and lots of sleep and lived in mortal fear, So drink the health of brave Sir John, who kept the babes from harm, Saved cows and calves by making halves of that famous D'Ampton Worm!"

If you ask me, anything that begins with a line like "John D'Ampton went a-fishing once" must die. This is a worm we are talking about. Cutting it in half would make two D'Ampton worms, right? Wrong!

James explains that the word 'worm' should not be taken too literally, as it is probably a derivation of the Anglo-Saxon 'wyrm' meaning dragon or snake; but James says it is worth remembering that the earthworm used to be of greater significance.

Um, ok, thanks for clearing that up.

Eve stays on to dance with James while Mary and Angus walk home, taking a shortcut through the wooded grove. I couldn't do something like that after learning about a killer worm shortly after finding a worm skull, but this is a horror movie.

We learn that both Mary's parents disappeared in this area nearly a year before, when returning home from the pub, and that no trace of them has ever been found. We also discover that Mary is now single, her boyfriend having been killed in a motorbike accident.

And just as she and Angus are on the verge of getting it on, a strange car with dipped headlights crawls past them, heading towards Temple House, the home of Lady Sylvia Marsh, played by Amanda Donohoe. She's a crucial element of the movie and a very weird one too.

The local policeman, Ernie, is waiting for them at the farmhouse, as some guy called Joe Trent's pocket watch has been discovered at Stonerich Cavern. A search party is being arranged for the following day to see if any further clues can be found. As he is leaving, Mary informs Ernie of the mysterious car, so he heads for Temple House to investigate. Good idea. Someone pulls up in your drive, so you send a cop after them.

After failing to gain assistance from his deputy, he is suddenly bitten by a snake (a typically blurred scene), at which point Lady Sylvia appears asking if he requires any assistance. Inside her house she sucks the venom from his ankle (ironic, because this scene sucked) and inquires as to why he was on the grounds. He then tells her *everything*, that Mary noticed the car and Joe Trent's watch has been found.

The next day, Sylvia drives to Mercy Farm and snoops around the house. Well, what did you expect? She first checks the watch, then goes upstairs and steals the skull from Angus' room. On the way out she notices a crucifix on the wall. Her eyes turn yellow, her teeth turn to fangs, and she spits green venom over the cross and wall before driving away, taking the skull with her. WHY?! Why spit venom on a cross? It didn't burn the cross. She couldn't know what would happen as a result. It just made no sense. To make up for this confusion, you can just see a tube where the "venom" comes from on her face in the enhanced DVD version.

Hugh Grant drives Eve home from the party, and they find a note from Mary and Angus saying that they've joined the search party at Stonerich Cavern. Eve says she'll lie down until they get back, and James goes to take some pictures of the excavation before returning to D'Ampton Hall. On the way up to her room Eve notices the venom and touches it. Hmm...I want to argue with this, but I can't. The stupidity of this film is so annoyingly logical.

Eve suddenly falls unconscious and experiences a surreal dream where nuns (one being herself) are ravaged and murdered by Roman soldiers while worshipping Jesus on the cross, who becomes entwined by a large, lame, animated white worm. I don't know why this wasn't mentioned in the Bible or any history books...and I also don't know why Eve would see back into the past from touching venom.

Anyway, throughout all of this a vision of Sylvia, painted blue, baring her pointed teeth, and laughing at the carnage. She looks absolutely hideous in this form; I'm sure many a child has had nightmares about this.

Well, James, hearing her cry, returns and asks her to explain what happened. She can't remember until she removes Joe's watch from her pocket and sees that the hands have turned into snakes. Hmm. She explains the image of the crucifixion/serpent, and James insists she looks at the excavation -- where Angus has uncovered a mosaic depicting a snake wrapped around a cross. Oooh...so, they make sure people know that a snake attacked Jesus by putting it on an English mosaic. Right.

While they are searching for the skull, Angus and Mary return from their unsuccessful trip.

Sylvia, having deposited the skull, goes snake-watching in her car (in the rain) and picks up an innocent hitchhiking scout named Kevin. She insists he must come back to her house to dry off. They play Snakes and Ladders (get it?), and then his mouth-organ music causes her to dance strangely. She grabs it from him and insists he takes a bath before "the experience of a lifetime," passionately kissing him to seal the bargain. In the bath she scrubs him down and insists he should stand up to enable her to wash him properly. When he does, her fangs promptly reappear, and she bites him in the baby waiting room, which paralyses his nervous system or something like that. She then informs him that he is to be fed, alive, to the god Dionin, and that this is a great honour reserved solely for virgins. While going on about the Dionin cult, the doorbell sounds, and she puts her foot on his head and pushes him under the water as a precaution and says something like "Sorry, you must die." Gahh....

The ringer of the doorbell was James, who, after seeing Ernie's ankle, makes an offer to have her grass cut to get the snake. Previously unacquainted, Sylvia thanks him and invites him in for a brandy. They make amiable conversation, she speaking of her love of playing solitary Snakes and Ladders (solitary Snakes and Ladders -- that's fun) until the subject of the Trents' disappearance arises and Sylvia says, "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness," at which she laughs, though James finds this remark in bad taste, or maybe just not funny.

She justifies herself by claiming that humour is her defense mechanism, and she has been having a difficult time -- she explains that she is terrified of snakes so would never have been able to attend his D'Ampton Worm party at the Hall and that Ernie's snake bite greatly upset her. She did suck the venom out, but I guess it doesn't matter. Overlooking this, he asks why she should then play Snakes and Ladders, and she says that it is a compulsion -- she was in a coma for ten days due to a snakebite when a child and has had a fear of (and morbid fascination with) snakes ever since. She's not a convincing liar.

He recommends facing this fear, so she throws the Snakes and Ladders board into the fire. As he is about to leave, they passionately kiss.

James, in his bedroom, agrees with Mary (by phone) to meet up the following day, before he falls asleep. As he does so, he imagines that the worm has disappeared from the historical painting of the D'Ampton Worm, himself appearing in its place. He enters the cave in the painting and is transported into an aircraft where the stewardesses are played by Mary, Eve and Sylvia, the only other passengers being Dorothy and Joe Trent. He starts to draw around the outlines of a crossword puzzle and finds that this creates the image of the serpent wrapped around a crucifix. Subtle or what?

Sylvia then attempts to make him drink some green liquid, though Eve wrenches it from her. They fight, but just as Sylvia seems to be winning, the fight ends and Joe Trent leaves the aircraft or something. James is now faced with two exit options (both signaled by a stewardess' leg) of either heading in the direction of the green liquid or towards a ring depicting the crucifixion. He heads towards the ring (in the same direction as Joe) and emerges in Stonerich Cavern, where he finds Joe's watch. At best, confusing.

Then Peters wakes him up with his breakfast tray. He scolds him for breaking his dream but then is surprised to notice, from the picture in the local paper, that the cave in his painting is actually Stonerich Cavern. Peters informs him that this was the traditional home of the D'Ampton Worm of legend. Spooky, huh?

James, Mary, Eve, and Angus head off for a further search at Stonerich Cavern. James is convinced that there must be a link between the watch being found in the Cavern and the legend of the D'Ampton worm. I didn't see the connection.

The others think he is mad, reminding him that John D'Ampton made halves of the worm many centuries before -- "Yes, but what happens when you cut a worm in two?" is his reply. FINALLY, someone is thinking straight. James and Angus look at a primitive cavepainting, depicting hermaphrodites. James insists on seeing the place that the watch was found, as he is convinced that it could only have reached that place by being swallowed by the snake and then passed undigested into the caves. Eve heads off alone to prepare the evening meal for the guesthouse residents.

While walking through the grove, Eve meets Sylvia, who claims to have been caught in a tree while helping a kitten. Ha. Eve lends her a hand down, and once Sylvia is back on the ground Eve appears to be in a sort of trance and blindly follows Sylvia's invitation back to her house.

At Temple House, Sylvia orders Eve to "disrobe" before beginning a talk on reincarnation. She reveals that she is immortal and has seen Eve's soul many centuries before, when Eve was a Roman nun. It's all starting to make sense now. But why did this movie have to be so damn clever?

She mocks the Christian faith: and talks of the revenge she took on Eve's order when they attempted to build a convent on the side of her temple and also how Emperor Marcus Carousius was her lover. Stopping Eve before she is naked, Sylvia talks of how only virgins are really acceptable sacrifices, then tests her virginity with a large horn thing. Passing the test, she informs Eve that she will have the honour of being sacrificed alive. Sylvia then commands Eve to ring Mary and tell her that she's gone to London for a few days. Eve gives the concerned Mary a somewhat stilted speech, but the sight of her crucifix ring releases her enough from Sylvia's spell to shout "Dionin," at which point Sylvia spits venom across the room, making Eve fall into a fit and causing another hallucination featuring the Skull and skewered nuns. I've had enough.

Back at Mercy Farm, Mary returns the phone receiver not really understanding the conversation she just had or why Eve shouted "Dionin," a word she has never before used. Mary tries to ring the railway station to try and talk to her, while Angus and James discuss how Dionin was a pagan snake god and that Eve had been muttering something about him after her previous hallucination. Mary is then convinced, since none of Eve's belongings are missing, that Eve must be being held somewhere. James expresses his concerns that, since Eve has never wandered off or mentioned Dionin before and that a skull found on the site of a pagan mosaic was stolen, her disappearance could have something to do with a pagan god. Mary, when Eve's hallucination is mentioned, notes that Eve is quite religious, so James then decides that the whole situation could be a battle between Christianity and Paganism, and that Eve may well be being held for human sacrifice. James says there must be a connection between Temple House and the pagan religion, as there was a connection between the D'Ampton Worm and Stonerich Cavern. An incredulous Mary taunts James, saying that he'll probably claim there's a connection with Ernie snake bite. So he then mentions Snakes and Ladders. He is now convinced that the connecting factor between all these things is Lady Sylvia Marsh.

AHHHHHHH! How confusing and logical at the same time can one movie be?

That night, James has his butler Peters place loudspeakers on the roof of D'Ampton Hall before playing a Turkish snakecharming tune at full volume. Sylvia, at Temple House, emerges like snake from a basket and is charmed from the house, leaving the coast clear for Angus and Mary to investigate. They find a bust of Marcus Carousius, the Rebel Emperor, in Sylvia's hallway. They enter a darkened room where a lone figure watches a snake charmer on television. Mary sees that is her long-lost mother, but before she can make conversation, her mother bites her in the neck. Angus chases her off with a fire brand and sucks the poison from Mary's throat, but not before she has had a hallucination where blue-painted hermaphrodites rip her apart with sharpened strapped on spike things.

Enough with the hallucinations already!

Angus rings James to tell him the plan is working, as Sylvia is on her way. James then tells Peters to leave the door open and lock up the chambermaids, but moments later there is a power cut and the sound of Peters screaming. Before James can discover what has happened, he hears a high-pitched battle cry and, seizing Jon D'Ampton's sword from the mantle, swings it at Dorothy and slices her in two parts, which continue to move. This was really awful.

James runs out to the stairwell to find Peters dead in the hallway just as the power returns. Angus calls and tells him how Mary was bitten but is unharmed, then asks why there is no music playing. When James looks, the record is missing from the player. He looks down and finds half of Dorothy grabbing his ankle. Angus then tells Mary, now safely home in bed, that her mother is at rest.

The next day, Mary bandages the puncture marks on her neck before meeting Ernie, who says she must come down to the station and identify her mother's body. Ernie talks of how he found two corpses at D'Ampton Hall and that James is helping them with their inquiries. Mary says she wants to place a missing persons report for Eve. Ernie seems concerned, then adds that they are picking up Sylvia at Temple House due to James' allegations. They draw up outside the house, and Ernie, leaning on Mary's door, reveals a bandage on his wrist. Mary automatically realizes that he must have been bitten and whacks him with the car door before trying to run out of the grounds. She gets trapped by the gates, then blocks herself into a corner. Ernie, now with snake features, gives chase but is charmed by the sound of Angus' bagpipes before he can manage to bite her. Angus continues to play, luring him to a sundial at the front of the house. Angus eventually has to stop for breath, at which point Ernie tries to attack him, but he pushes him back with the bagpipes, and Ernie ends up with his face skewered on the sundial. It looks pretty nasty, believe me, but not quite as nasty as the constant wailing of Angus' bagpipes.

Angus, still playing (Gahhhhhhhh!), enters the house, injects himself with the snake venom antidote and releases a mongoose (traditional enemy of the snake, you know), and then follows after it, only to be hit in the face by the skinned animal and bitten in the knee by a blue-painted Sylvia. She, laughing, removes her ear-plugs (you always have ear plugs with you, of course) and drags him unconscious into the basement, where a scantily clad Eve is suspended over a well, and Mary is tied and gagged. Through the well we hear the sound of James and some men from the village who are about to try to smoke out the worm. Sylvia walks around the well preaching devotion to Dionin, then places a wreath on Eve's head before walking up the well steps, toward her, and wearing a horn thing. Before she can commit her "ceremony" on Eve, the worm, stirred by James' smoke, begins to emerge in the well. Sylvia starts to cut Eve's ropes so she can be fed to the worm. Suddenly, Angus wakes up and pushes Sylvia into the well. She grabs onto Eve's feet, so Angus saws through her wrist until she falls into the mouth of the worm. She didn't really do much apart from hiss at him, while he spent about ten minutes sawing away.

Angus removes Eve from the well and unties Mary before throwing a handy grenade into the worm's mouth.

Outside, he injects Eve with the antidote as a precaution and sends them to hospital. Back at Mercy Farm James turns up and explains to Angus that he smoked the caves as he though there was an underground link to Temple House. The phone rings -- the nurse who produced the antidote for Angus tells him that they have provided him with the wrong serum, an anti-arthritus one or something that would be no use at all against snake bites. Angus hangs up and feels his glands and teeth. He joins James in the car; James suggests that they both must be hungry, so they stop for a bite. "Why not?" is the reply, as James pulls back the gear stick, catches Angus' kilt, and reveals the bite above his knee. The credits roll on this cliffhanger ending.

Why they had to end the movie here, as Snake Woman is dead, worm thing is dead, and no sequel is likely, baffles me. It's always a sign of a bad, bad, bad, bad movie when there is ending, just confusion.

Rating: 3.5 turkeys. Try not to watch it alone.

Scene to watch for: Sylvia running around wearing the large horn thing.

Best line: I think we probably have another reptile here on the premises.

Things that make you go "Huh?": Why doctors would mix up life-saving anti-venom with something completely different.