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Note: This review is based on the Director’s Cut.
Umbrella Entertainment resurrected a forgotten flick from the mid-90s with their Blu-ray release of Lord of Illusions last year. Back in 1995, writer-director Clive Barker (Hellraiser, Nightbreed) ventured outside his normal horror otherworld playground to deliver this unconventional story that is part film noir and part supernatural fantasy thriller, but the result is all entertaining. Besides being a Barker joint, it starred an ex-Quantum Leaper, a Bond villain and a Seinfeld boss who loved making life a living hell for George Costanza!
And almost thirty years later, it indeed might be worth a revisit through fresh eyes.
A specialist in cases involving occult activity, private detective Harry D’Amour (Scott Bakula, Quantum Leap) heads to Los Angeles for what is supposed to be an easy insurance fraud stakeout to shake off the trauma from his last job involving a demonically possessed young boy. This gig inadvertently leads him to be hired by Dorothea Swann (Famke Janssen, X-Men, Goldeneye), the wife of famous illusionist Philip Swann (Kevin J. O’Connor, Deep Rising, The Mummy). She fears for her husband’s safety after his former associate Caspar Quaid (Joseph Lattimore, Devil in a Blue Dress) is murdered by a man named Butterfield (Barry Del Sherman, There Will Be Blood, American Beauty) and assumes Swann might be the next target.
You see, thirteen years ago in the Mojave Desert, Swann led some cult defectors (including Quaid) in an uprising against their former cult leader and powerful sorcerer William Nix (Daniel Von Bargen, Super Troopers, Seinfeld). Self-proclaimed as “The Puritan,” Nix planned on sacrificing a child to enhance his magic’s strength and cleanse the world in his vision, while providing power and knowledge to his devout followers. However, Swann and his crew were able to make the save in time, murdering and burying Nix to end his reign of terror before it was uncontrollable. Now it seems that Nix’s followers might have regrouped all these years later to take out Swann and the other defectors in an act of vengeance.
Things take a massive turn when D’Amour and Dorothea witness Swann die during one of his performances in what seems to be a stunt-gone-wrong. Both wanting to discover the truth as well as his new affection for Dorothea, D’Amour’s investigation leads to him learning of Swann’s past with Nix, as well as Butterfield and the other followers’ attempt to resurrect their leader and complete the plan he began all those years ago in the desert.
Lord of Illusions is perceived as a mixed bag as much now as it was back in the summer of 1995, when it underperformed at the box office, surpassing its $11 million budget by only $2 million. Critics were mixed on their feelings about it then and even today it scores 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, just on the doorstep of the 60% it needs to be considered “fresh.”
The film marks the last time Barker sat in the director’s chair for a major motion picture and is considered by many as his least appreciated film. Detractors previously cited that the first half of the film is great, while the second half became long-winded and tedious before the finale. And it seems they weren’t feeling Barker’s shift away from his usual unique horror elements, with Lord of Illusions leaning more into a mystery-thriller subgenre. Which is odd because this movie is actually based off his own short story The Last Illusion from the ’80s.
The movie is also littered with CGI effects; this was the mid-90s, after all, and the new technology was all the rage. While those effects were supposed to be a major highlight of the film, they look a bit awkward in a Lawnmower Man type of way and definitely have not held up over time. They also were not embraced by Clive Barker fans at the time, who appreciated the effects being mainly practical from his previous films, even though he still made sure to sprinkle enough practical gore where it is most impactful. Maybe this film’s biggest crime is that it wasn’t similar to Hellraiser or Nightbreed and simply caught fans off guard back in the 1990s.
But there is a lot to like about this film. For starters, the prologue in the desert really sets the stage for the rest of the proceedings and we are treated to the film taking place in several locations. And the story itself is actually engaging with some neat twists—the “illusions” are not limited to the literal battle of magic.
Additionally, the characters are interesting, and their portrayals are spot on. The extremely underrated Bakula was still trying to distance himself from being typecast as a Sam Beckett-esque character and really delivered as the lead. It almost seems like there was hope that Barker would be able to spin-off a potential franchise with D’Amour investigating more tales of the supernatural, but this film was not successful enough to warrant that. That is just speculation but appeared to be where things were headed if this were a hit. O’Connor can always be counted on to pull off bizarre characters believably, so that casting was spot on. Janssen used this role to get her career “Onatopp” of its game, starring in Goldeneye just a few months after Lord‘s release, and even reuniting with O’Connor in 1998’s cult classic Deep Rising before moving onto The Faculty, X-Men and many other roles on the rest of her impressive resume.
Thankfully, Umbrella has resurrected this flick and given it a new life for current and future generations to enjoy on Blu-ray, if they missed out on the Scream Factory release a decade ago or the recent one from 101 Films. How did they do with the transfer? Well, it’s Umbrella so they unsurprisingly knocked this one out of the park. The transfer is crisp with a 1080p format and 16:9 ratio, while the audio is 5.1 & 2.0 DTS. There are a great deal of archival featurettes, a trailer and commentary, as well as both the theatrical and director’s cuts of the film. The latter has about 11-12 minutes more footage added in, which Barker stands by as vastly changing the film for the better as he mentions in his commentary. Some cool scenes are thankfully added back in, but does it really change the overall film that much? You can decide for yourself.
Lord of Illusions is available from Umbrella Entertainment’s official website.
