10 MORE Ridiculous Horror Movie Villains That Shouldn’t Have Worked… But Did

Before Hugh Grant was the bumbling, floppy-haired rom-com darling, he was the bumbling, floppy-haired Lord (James) of the D'Ampton estate in Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm. Starring alongside future-Doctor Peter Capaldi and the inimitable Amanda Donohoe (in a delightfully seductive, sharp-fanged role), he must reckon with his family's best kept secret - that there is a large, white worm living under his ancestral home, which pops up every once in a while for a tasty human snack.

Far from pitching this as some kind of folkloric psychological affair, Russell goes in hard on the literal, supernatural side of things, and his villain is indeed the worm itself. The d'Ampton Worm - known to its friends and worshippers as Dionin - is actually an ancient snake god more than strictly a worm, although the creature's appearance leaves its species rather undetermined. Nonetheless, far from being a punchline, the monster winds up rather terrifying.

It's helped no end by the build-up of horrifying events, graphic flashbacks, surreal supernatural sequences and transformations preceding its arrival, but even without these the thirty-footer is something to behold when it rises from its pit, sporting bulging white eyes, a sun-starved body and teeth the basilisk would envy. Consider us terrified.