Lord of Illusions
For his third feature as a director, Clive Barker decided to go a bit old school with his horror in wrapping it around a film noir detective story. The result was fine when it came to theatres in 1995, but when you watch his director’s cut, as I have finally done, it is a much stronger narrative. There isn’t a lot there in The Last Illusion, the short story he used for the idea of this film, but the way his screenplay builds off of it, and he utilizes other elements from his stories about paranormal private investigator Harry D’Amour to tell a full, entertaining thriller about the line between illusion and real magic, makes it his most satisfying feature as a director and storyteller.
To prepare for this watch, I went back and read The Last Illusion, and it’s striking how many of the elements Barker put on the page are excised from the film, and you do not really miss them. His previous films as a director, “Hellraiser” and “Nightbreed,” are relatively faithful adaptations of those respective source novellas, and while this is based on a short story, there are some intriguing potential visuals left on the page that are pretty surprising. The basic ideas in the story from a character and thematic perspective are still there, though, and the way he expands on them in feature form are a strong model of adaptation vs. interpretation compared to his earlier films, and a strong case for the latter.
“Lord of Illusions” begins in 1982 in the Mojave Desert, where a cult leader named Nix (Daniel von Bargen) is about to sacrifice a young girl for the purposes of “saving the world, and granting his followers wisdom.” As he prepares the ceremony, former members led by Philip Swann (Kevin J. O’Connor) come in to stop them, and after a magical attack on Swann by Nix, the girl shoots Nix through the heart, immobilizing him so that Swann and his group can bind him in an iron mask. Nix appears dead, and Swann buries him in the desert. Thirteen years later, Swann is one of the most accomplished and successful illusionists in the world, and the girl is now his wife (Famke Janssen). One of Nix’s followers, however, has resurfaced, and Dorothea, Janssen’s character, is concerned for Swann. She wants someone to look out for her husband, and she may have found one in D’Amour (Scott Bakula), who is out in Los Angeles investigating an insurance fraud case which leads him to a dead fortune teller, who puts him in the vicinity of Swann when he comes across Butterfield (Barry Del Sherman), the acolyte of Nix’s that got away in 1982. When Swann seems to die during a performance when an illusion goes wrong, D’Amour goes down the rabbit hole to see what might have led to Swann’s death, and a world he hoped to put behind him after a possession case in New York where he had to rescue a young boy.
D’Amour’s first story on the page was The Last Illusion, and reading it, you feel Barker’s excitement for telling an old Hollywood gumshoe story through the lens of the supernatural and horror, and even though Barker has said he didn’t look at the film as an homage to film noir, the second we see D’Amour’s office in New York, or Swann’s home in Los Angeles, or the Magic Castle, a magician’s hangout D’Amour goes to for information, the inspiration is all over this movie, and it only makes it more engrossing. Even the score by Simon Boswell has a sensual sax theme for D’Amour that screams of that period in cinema while also fulfilling the role of a haunting and dark horror score. This is easily Barker’s most accomplished film as a director, with his ability to capture the emotions of the story not just limited to the page- he gets genuinely solid work out of his actors, who know exactly what to give him. Bakula is a natural for the weathered detective who only came to LA for a quick two day job, and got roped into something beyond him along the way. This came out a few months before Janssen’s breakout role in “Goldeneye,” but from the moment you see her, you know exactly what you can expect from her, and the film is better for it. Casting D’Amour as someone who seems drawn to the supernatural is a great choice, and it gives Barker a chance to speed up the storytelling because he doesn’t have to be “convinced” of it or not. That puts him in a great position as a protagonist, and makes it one less hurdle of exposition “Lord of Illusions” doesn’t have to jump over.
The way Barker approaches the supernatural here is interesting, and in keeping with the spirit of his short story. Much like Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige,” one of the ideas the film explores is the nature of harmless illusions (what we consider magic in the real world) and the existence of a genuine supernatural force that allows Swann and Nix to perform their works. In Nolan’s film, Nikola Tesla is used to ground magic in a scientific world; Barker is after paranormal forces that cannot be explained by rational thought, which is what makes one a drama and the other a horror film. Even considering the nature of Nix’s cult, and Swann’s demise on the stage, this is not an overly violent film compared to “Hellraiser” and “Nightbreed,” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t scary on its own terms. Nix is an imposing force, and von Bargen’s performance is just over-the-top enough to really make you shutter, especially when Swann is sometimes scared to face him. As Swann, O’Connor is terrific at showing us the arrogance and fragility of the character, especially when we see him later in the movie, and D’Amour has discerned that he is, in fact, still alive. And though some of the visual effects in the movie have dated over the past 25 years, they remain successful in the context of the film itself.
It’s a shame that studio issues seem to have resulted in Clive Barker turning more towards producing and literary writing over the years more than directing, as both this and “Nightbreed” came to theatres in less-than-satisfying forms for their director. Now that we have both of those in director’s cut form, you can see a strong narrative and directorial voice emerging to bring something new to the horror genre. That said, rewatching all three films of his over the past month, I’m glad we got what we are able to say that Clive Barker was able to expand the horizons of cinematic horror, much like he did on the page.
