Tuesday, October 5, 2021

31 Days, 31 Horror Reviews Day 5: Lord of Illusions

1995.

Clive Barker is one of those absolutely essential names of modern horror. He belongs in the same breath as people like Cronenberg or Carpenter, huge names in the last generation of horror directors. The sad thing is that in spite of his legacy and talents, Clive Barker only directed three movies, Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and our topic today, Lord of Illusions. His writing was even more influential, inspiring both ridiculous shlock like Rawhead Rex and immensely important movies like Candyman. Barker added a spiritual edge to modern horror and a uniquely twisted queer edge. You could easily read his Nightbreed as a queer allegory. His worlds are underground places of kink and sometimes violence beyond the heteronormative imagination. Lord of Illusions is probably Barker’s most mainstream attempt to court the hetero normies. That’s probably why it is his least-celebrated and least-loved creation.

Lord of Illusions is an interesting experiment at least, combining a noir detective story with supernatural horror. Scott Bakula played our lead, Harry D’Amour, a New York private eye who travels to Los Angeles just in time to get involved with a magician conspiracy and multiple violent murders. The movie is not much interested in introducing Harry to the audience. It acts like we’ve known him for years. Harry has flashbacks to demonic events and a prominent back tattoo, and Lord of Illusions never tells you what either of those things mean. Thanks to Bakula being a prominent TV actor, Lord of Illusions has this air of being like, the season finale of a show your friends are really into but you’ve never seen. It’s like an above-average episode of The X-Files but with an R-rating.

The problem with Lord of Illusions is that while Clive Barker is excited to combine detective stories with horror, the two genres do not much mix well here. We lose any sense of mystery because the film opens with a huge sequence involving dirty cultists that kidnapped a little girl in the desert. We see immediately that their leader Nix (Daniel von Bargen) can dig his fingers into your brain to plant illusions. After all that, watching Harry hunt down witnesses is not as impressive. A big question for Harry is whether magic is real or not.

Well, we know. I saw Nix fucking fly! Magic is real! Harry is just circling around for an hour to catch up to the place the audience already reached by the first ten minutes. It becomes boring.

Harry D’Amour is a recurring character in Clive Barker’s stories, so there’s probably more to the guy. He’s prominent enough to have his own Wikipedia page. However, he just does not belong in Lord of Illusions. It’s that same effect you have in Big Trouble in Little China issue where Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton does not belong in this genre or this story and so comes off ridiculous for it. Except Lord of Illusions is not in on the joke. Scott Bakula is a solid lead, he’s got a great jawline, he can carry a movie. But he’s just not the main character here.

The main character instead should be Swann (Kevin J. O’Connor), this celebrity magician with a spectacular show modeled on Cirque Du Soleil. His whole vibe feels like Criss Angel ten years ahead of time. Swann is also Nix’s greatest apprentice and the man who defeated him in the opening of the movie. Between Swann and Nix is this bisexual love quadrilateral involving Swann’s wife, Dorothea (Famke Janssen in her first big movie role), and a rival acolyte, Butterfield (Barry Del Sherman). Butterfield is the main threat throughout the movie, murdering people while dressed in tight gold pants. Somehow all the major characters connect to Swann, yet Harry is the star. It doesn’t work.

That leads me to the issue of queerness here in Lord of Illusions. I am unsure what sexuality Swann is supposed to have, but certainly he is not an all-American hunk like Harry. Harry is totally straight. Swann and Dorothea have a non-traditional marriage that seemingly doesn’t involve sex, which is fine, good for them. The problem is that the openly queer characters like Butterfield are shown to be complete monsters and their queerness is part of their menace. Lord of Illusions is pretty regressive, the straight guy wins the day and is our hero and gets the girl. The maybe-gay guy is sidelined to a supporting role and cuckolded. And anybody completely out is a freak and should be feared. It’s bad.

Harry being the lead doesn’t work too because the final battle you’d want is between Swann and Nix. You want to see the two wizards have a big Jedi duel, but instead you got this Muggle guy here instead. Perhaps this is my own personal bias speaking. Kevin J. O’Connor would go to star in two of my favorite movies of the 1990s: Deep Rising and The Mummy. I guess if you’re a huge Star Trek fan you’d be happier Bakula getting the spotline.

Despite failing as a noir movie, Lord of Illusions still works as a cosmic horror movie. Nix’s return in the finale is as disgusting and horrifying as you’d want. The movie basically turns into Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond at the end, up to and including the throbbing pineal gland. Daniel von Bargen is better-known for his comedy roles. I can’t not see George’s last boss from Seinfeld. But he’s a great villain here. “A man who wanted to become a God, then changed his mind. I’m going to be rotten shit from now on.”

Lord of Illusions is a badly flawed movie with not-great sexual politics. But Famke Janssen wears a lot of incredible outfits in this movie. That can’t be a negative.

Next Time we head to 1996, the year of the great Macarena plague, the rise of the last Yankees Dynasty, and our next movie, Hellraiser IV: Bloodline. (Spoiler: it sucks.)

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