‘Lord of Illusions’ 30 Years Later – Is Clive Barker’s Forgotten Movie Worth a Revisit?

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.