Bring me the head of John the Baptist

Ken Russell died today, and so I think you should take the time to watch this clip from his 1988 movie Salome's Last Dance (or, as we know it today, "The Hubba Hubba Revue") --

He made some amazing, twisted movies. Everyone will be talking about Tommy, but I highly recommend Gothic, Lair of the White Worm, Salome and most especially Altered States.

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10 Responses:

  1. Enid says:

    Lair of the White Worm! I saw that as a teenager. With my father. Talk about weird. Granted, he didn't know how weird it would be, exactly.

  2. Andreas says:

    Wow, a sad day indeed.

    As a weird coincidence, this post is the first one for which google reader has decided to not fuck up displaying the embedded video.

    • jwz says:

      I changed how I'm doing embedding somewhat. It will now fuck up less on Google and slightly more on aggregators that do the right thing.

  3. Oh man. I basically blame "Gothic" and "Lair of the White Worm" for everything about me. A sad day.

  4. extra88 says:

    And The Devils! Which was only recently (finally) available on DVD in the UK.

  5. Edouard says:

    Aww, man, he was one of the true greats - that's sad news.

    Almost all of his autobiographical doco for the British arts show "Southbank" is here: https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2D0BFE23F882D817

    The internets has failed me in finding it whole and un-redacted though.

  6. I feel like I just watched the end of "Sleepaway Camp: The Musical".

  7. Michael V. says:

    The Ken Russell commentary on the Lair of the White Worm DVD is well-worth a listen. He's pretty batshit.