Lord of Illusions: Director’s Cut - Movie Review

I remember seeing Lord of Illusions advertised when I was a child and thinking how incredible the movie looked. It had one of the coolest movie posters I had ever seen. It also had Scott Bakula in a film that was completely against type for his career up to that point. I ended up getting the movie from our local Blockbuster on VHS when it was released. Having had to wait months upon months to see the film, my expectations were high, but in the end, the movie delivered. There were issues, a rush plot, scenes that felt too abbreviated, but I was ten years old. It was a movie about evil magic and a serial killer cult. I ate it up.

As an adult, I still love this movie, but its issues are glaring. I was happy the other day to win an Ebay auctions for the Shout Factory! Release of the director’s cut of the film. I had known there was a Director’s Cut, but I had never had the chance to see it. I had no idea how complete this alternate version of the film was. According to the notes from Clive Barker in the special features, this version of the film was fully finished included all postproduction and scoring. It shows. As compared to the limited-edition Director’s Cut of Night Breed, which had unfinished, grainy scenes added back into the remastered film. Lord of Illusions Director’s Cut is a complete remaster. This is the movie that should have been released in theaters.

Clive Barker is my favorite author. He is one of the 20th century’s greatest horror writers. He is also a criminally underrated filmmaker. He wrote and directed three major Hollywood films: Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. What’s strange about Barker’s film career is that his first film, Hellraiser was a huge success. His singular vision created one of horror’s most iconic villains and longest running series. However, after this success, Clive found nothing but adversity when working with the studio system. With both Nightbreed and Lord of Illusion, the studio forced him to cut the films to pieces. What could have been genre defining works, were neutered into incomplete box office bombs. Luckily for us, Barker only agreed to the cuts to Lord of Illusions if the studio would pay for post-production on his Director’s Cut.

Lord of Illusions starts in the middle of a story, with Swan and his friends storming the compound of a Manson Family-esque. This cult is led by a fearsome sorcerer named Nix who is masterfully portrayed by genre great Daniel Von Bargen. He oozes malice as he interacts with his followers and Swan, his greatest student. The rescue is successful with great cost. The events of that day leave a stain on all of the lives involved.

Jump forward a decade or two and Detective Harry D’Amour is battling with Post Traumatic Stress related to an exorcism he was forced to perform to save a young boy a few weeks earlier. Down and out, he takes a job across the country in sunny Los Angeles. What starts as D’Amour following a cheating husband, turns into him fighting for his life against Nix’s occult assassin Butterfield. From there he goes down the rabbit hole into a world of dark magic.

Now, those who have read Barker’s books will know, Harry D’Amour is one of the few reoccurring heroic figures. He isn’t noble. He isn’t a knight in shining armor. He’s just a man who is a magnet for supernatural horror. Scott Bakula was the perfect choice for the character. Bakula is the every-man. He has a certain blue-collar charisma that makes his fish out of water detective truly shine. I love the little Easter eggs that emphasize the character’s plight. Early on in the movie you see Valentin reading a copy of Albert Camus The Stranger as D’Amour walks by him. The Stranger, being one of the most famous books about an outsider in odd surroundings.

The rest of the cast is a fantastic group of character actors that all really seem to be enjoying their work on the film. You don’t see anyone phoning in a performance. Even small characters seemed to be fully invested. Kevin J. O’Connor gets to play a rare straight man role in the film as Swan. He is best known for his comic relief work in movies like the Brendan Fraiser The Mummy and Deep Rising. With Swan he gets to play a more nuanced and thoughtful role and he plays it perfectly. Famke Jensen takes your breath away, like always, as Swan’s wife Dorothea. Special props go to Joel Swetow in the role of Valentin. He somehow portrayed a character you both loathe and pity in equal measure.

I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to ruin the story. It’s a fun horror movie with some brutal violence and twisted ideology. The majority of the special effects are fantastic practical work done by the team at KNB effects. Greg Nicotero and his team have gone on to become one of the top SFX houses in the world after their success with The Walking Dead. CGI is used in the film for those magic effects that couldn’t be done practically at the time. The CGI hasn’t aged well, but it doesn’t hurt the film as much as I thought it would. Since the sorcery in the movie is supposed to be played off as fake, the fact that the CGI looks off only adds to the idea of the film. Bending reality doesn’t look real, it looks odd and out of place. It works.

I highly recommend watching this movie. The Director’s Cut is fantastic, but if you can only find the Theatrical, it’s still worth a look.