Lord of Illusions (1995) – The Test of Time
Clive Barker is one of the best horror authors we ever had and with that kind of title, you just know there have been adaptations. The stories found within the Books of Blood have been made into everything from Midnight Meat Train to Candyman and yes, the disparity in argued quality does run a similar gamut. Barker also got burned quite often on his adaptations. When he wrote Rawhead Rex he was ultimately disappointed with what it turned into. While he was able to take the directing reins as well as the screenwriting on Hellraiser, that same success didn’t always translate, especially if you look at stuff like Nightbreed which was butchered by the studio after shooting. One of my all time favorite 90s horror movies and a top 3 Clive Barker film came out 30 years ago this year so let’s look at the often-beleaguered directors shot at putting one of his favorite characters and short stories on the silver screen. Does Lord of Illusions stand the test of time? Let’s find out if it’s magic or an illusion.
The Plot
The start of Clive Barker adaptations would be 1986 with Rawhead Rex being written by the author but directed by someone else. Barker had tried his hand at screenwriting earlier in the decade with Transmutations but that was an original work. Barker wasn’t happy with how Rex turned out, so he was able to get behind the camera and the pen with 1987’s Hellraiser based on his own The Hellbound Heart. It became a massive success with tons of sequels in varying quality that he didn’t have much to do with. After that was Nightbreed in 1990 which didn’t turn out as well as Hellraiser. The director’s cut is the way to go with that one but even then it’s a flawed experience. Candyman would bring the author’s work back to the forefront and so the man himself would attempt to adapt on of his favorite works with his favorite characters. The work was The Last Illusion from 1985, and the character is Harry D’Amour. Casting wise we almost got Christopher Reeve as Harry, but he turned it down and Scott Bakula stepped in to play the part. After seeing how good Reeve was in Village of the Damned, I could absolutely see him rock this character in another universe.
Bakula felt like he could make the character his own while also being, as Barker put it, the perfect person for Harry. He had to figure out how to be a 40s noir detective in a 90s world while also adhering to the world that barker had created. He had primarily been a TV actor including just recently finishing his stellar run on Quantum Leap but had also appeared in a few bigger movies like the Bruce Willis vehicle Color of Night. This is his only horror film, but he would go on to make more impact on TV with his contribution to Star Trek in Enterprise as well as his role in NCIS New Orleans. Famke Janssen was allegedly picked out of a pile of pictures by Barker and no other actresses were seriously considered. While she had appeared in a few other projects before this, 1995 would be a huge year for her with this and GoldenEye giving us her leggy character Xenia Onatopp. They would be joined by her future Deep Rising costar Kevin J O’Connor in one of his best roles and character actor Daniel Von Bargen as the scene stealing villain Nix.
The movie takes place over the course of 13 years. The opening scene introduces us to powerful cult-like leader and dark illusionist Nix played by Von Bargen with his cult of followers. Swann, played by O’Connor, and 3 other people have come to stop Nix after he has kidnapped a child and is bent on world destruction. They are successful in killing Nix and trapping him deep in the earth. 13 years later a New York detective named Harry D’Amour is brought to Los Angeles on an unrelated note but soon finds himself entangled in a new case and the blend of magic and illusions. The people who may know the whereabouts of Nix’s body, who also happen to be those with Swann when they killed him, turn up dead, crazy, or both until Swann fakes his own death to protect himself and those he cares about. Nix’s cult gets back together with his number 1 disciple Butterfield getting the information and body he was looking for. Even more powerful than before, a resurrected Nix must be stopped by Swann, D’Amour, and Dorothea who was the girl Nix had kidnapped over a decade prior.
The movie did well in its first weekend but fell off steeply after and ended its run at 13 million on an 11-million-dollar budget. Critics weren’t overly kind on it either saying the material had been done better with things like Cast a Deadly Spell starring Fred Ward. Famous horror curmudgeon Roger Ebert did give it three stars though. This may have been avoided had MGM/United Artists not insisted on removing 13 minutes from the movie after test screenings. It was a little bit of blood but mostly dialogue scenes that were cut. While some of these are understandable, there are a few that really add to the overall feel of the story and the movie may have done better had it been more complete. Barker did negotiate a director’s cut and you can get it looking stunning on 4K from Scream Factory
Signs of the Time
One of the mainstays who was on the tail end of his run was Clive Barker. 1987 to 1997 was kind of his peak in terms of output and popularity. While he had Transmutations and Rawhead Rex before Hellraiser, it was Pinhead and his cohorts that really set up the writer and his works. The ups and downs would include more Hellraiser, both good and bad, with the final theatrical one being in 1996, Nightbreed, two Candyman films, today’s movie, and even being enshrined in the Mick Garris TV horror universe with his story The Body Politic being the first one out the shoot in Quicksilver Highway. After this though, it would be all straight to video hell for his works, literally in most cases with the Hellraiser films continuing to get churned out as well as another Candyman and some smaller fare. Midnight Meat Train would get a theatrical release in 2008 but be very limited in scope and returns. Finally, the Candyman legacy sequel would come out in 2021 but 1995 was very much in the Clive Barker Era.
Other 90s signs besides Scott Bakula’s amazing and tantalizing wardrobe include the cast itself with the all of a sudden white-hot Famke Janssen, GoldenEye would come out just 3 months later, and Bakula who was a TV favorite with his Quantum Leap run. The noir aspect was also in vogue in the 90s with everything from Fincher’s Se7en to the previously mentioned Cast a Deadly Spell, to the glut of erotic thrillers that were going around. This movie skirts some of the erotic thriller aspects but mainly focuses on Harry being a troubled and good at his job detective. Finally, the inconceivable magic that Swann pulls off, either in the day-to-day aspects or in his Pantages theater show almost mirror the Davids of first Copperfield and then later Blaine with their unexplainable and wildly popular magic.
What Holds Up?
This can be a make-or-break experience depending on which version you watch. Honestly, the cuts that United Artists made really take some of the flavor out of this movie. Watching the now standard directors cut, so much of this movie holds up. The score, which was originally going to be performed by Hellraiser‘s Christopher Young, is done by Simon Boswell and he absolutely knocks it out of the park with knowing exactly what type of story to tell in each scene with his music. The story of Lord of Illusions is a fun one that has real stakes and a fun original hook of an idea with illusions vs magic being a real thing and the wrong person using the knowledge for evil. While the entire movie is awesome, the opening and closing sections, that both take place at the beautifully designed cult hangout spot, stand out. The opening shows how dangerous Nix and his gang are while setting the potential consequences very high and the ending shows us maybe the least sexy or charismatic cult leader ever fully understanding what his mission is. He is disgusting now after being brought back from the dead and disgusted with humanity and even his own followers.
The acting is mostly great here too. Nix is flat out fucking terrifying and has some amazing lines like when he is asked what he is and replies “A man who wanted to be a god then changed his mind” or when he says Swann can join him in ending the world, but he will have to kill him after. Having a character actor like Von Bargen shine here is a great choice. Kevin J O’Connor gives Swann a nice character arc, especially the real fear he exhibits when he knows Nix is back and the boredom he has with his power and Bakula and Janssen play their parts of detective and stronger than average damsel to a T. The set and production design more than pull their weight and become characters in their own right with the amazing Magic Castle sequence and the cult hideout being disgusting and terrifying in its maze-like appearance. The practical effects are wonderful and really show what the 90s could do at the decade’s best. One of my favorite short scenes is when the cult gets called back and it shows them kill their new families not only with no remorse but even with glee and we even get to see the bodies of kids! Lord of Illusions does not mess around and that particular shock is something Barker fought to keep along with some of the sets and locations being pulled directly from what he imagined.
What Doesn’t Hold Up?
As good as the practical effects are, the digital ones fall flat besides a couple scenes that I genuinely can’t tell are practical or digital. Swann’s fire snake doesn’t look great and his blood red shape creature, while inexplicably looking better on 4K than VHS, still stands out like a sore thumb. While I like how lived in this world feels, there are almost too many things that go unexplained. While I like a good mystery, I also would like to know the genesis of certain things. It is even worse in the studio cut where expository conversations are outright excised to get to the blood and gore quicker and that loses most of the meaning and danger behind Nix and his illusions. In relation to that, they could have spent more time with Harry’s detective aspect and maybe cut some of the bloat down a hair. The scenes that the studio removed should have been kept in whereas a scene like exploring Jennifer at the asylum could have been left to a throwaway piece of dialogue. The last thing that maybe doesn’t hold fast is the attempts at humor. It doesn’t fit well within the scope of the movie and Harry tries to have the quick wit of a noir, hard-boiled detective but isn’t given the right lines for levity.
Verdict
I’m very happy to say that Lord of Illusions has only gotten better over 30 years in both how it looks and feels. It was already one of my underseen gems of the decade but has since been promoted to a top tier must watch for the time period. It shows the best of what Barker can do when he has the authority to write and direct for himself and it’s a shame we never got back to Bakula’s Harry in any other screen appearance, and it was the last thing Barker himself ever directed. Its no illusion what this movie pulls off and it more than stands the test of time.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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