Number 4 — LORD OF ILLUSIONS
For the month of October, we’re counting down the best horror movies of 1995! Check back every day for a new entry in the list.
In 1995, Clive Barker brought another of his literary creations to life on the silver screen. This time it’s Harry D’Amour, his beloved private eye who more than dabbles in the occult, getting the cinematic treatment. The forces of evil at play in Barker’s nightmarish LORD OF ILLUSIONS are far more terrifying to me than Pinhead and company and all the sights they have to show us. This is thanks in no small part due to the film’s villain, Nix. I know it’s blasphemous to be a Barker fan and prefer Harry D’Amour to Pinhead and his cenobite crew. But I am a sucker for a good noir more than I am a spooky story told in the dark, although I enjoy both.
We meet a handful of characters in the film’s prologue, set thirteen years prior to the main story. Four weary travellers setting out down a dusty dirt road in the middle of the Mojave Desert w(hich might as well be nowhere). They are coming to find a kidnapped girl, knowing full well they are facing something evil. That “something evil” comes in the form of Daniel Von Bargen as Nix, oozing unchecked menace as he walks the rooms of a dilapidated compound. He proclaims to a motley crew of followers that the fire spoke to him and rechristened him the puritan as he lazily juggles a fireball. During the prologue, Nix shows the world through a god’s eyes to a cowed and beaten down Swann (Kevin J. O’Connor), the man who was Nix’s protégé before rebelling and rescuing the girl. Swann and company attack and imprison Nix, but we know that nothing is really the end in this darkly fantastical setting.
LORD OF ILLUSIONS jumps ahead 13 years and audiences are introduced to Harry D’Amour, occult detective played with beleaguered exasperation by the always solid Scott Bakula. We meet Harry in his apartment, that his acquaintance and boss Loomis remarks, “could use a woman’s touch.” It’s Loomis who sends Harry out west on an assignment, insurance fraud and a guy named Tapert who, if he catches him in action, could earn Harry a fat paycheck. When he arrives in LA it doesn’t take long to pick up Tapert’s scent. He spies Tapert cavorting with a couple of topless prostitutes in a sleazy hotel room. It’s Tapert leaving the prostitutes to pay a visit to a fortune teller which brings Harry into this nightmare world where nothing is as simple as it seems. The fortune teller is a half dead Quaid (Joseph Latimore), one of the four we were introduced to in the film’s prologue. He is run through with all sorts of sharp blades leaving him moments from death. We also hear the name of Jennifer Desiderio, was another of the travellers we met in the open moments of the film. Amidst the blood and death, there stands Butterfield (Barry del Sherman), acting as Quaid’s executioner and, for a moment, Harry’s interrogator.
LORD OF ILLUSIONS cuts from this grisly scene to a beautiful young woman swimming in a lavish pool, wearing an eye-catching black bathing suit, named Dorothea—played with grace and beauty by Famke Janssen. After her swim, draped in a robe walking into the study of her husband, Swann. While Quaid lays dying and Butterfield is out there pursuing his own dark agenda, it seems that Swann is the only one from the prologue who is thriving. Of course, his luck doesn’t seem to hold as we watch him die on stage performing a new illusion, one with swords falling from the sky on timers that Swann is convinced he can escape before it’s too late. As the film states, of course, everything is not what it appears to be. And with Swann’s apparent death, a mystery unfolds that draws in Harry, Dorothea, and the insidious secrets that refuse to stay buried.
What makes LORD OF ILLUSIONS so frightening owes mostly to Nix. Nix is one of the more terrifying cinematic creations, not because he wears terrifying make-up (at least in the film’s beginning). No, the thing that makes him so frightening is that he is simply a man—but one who has seen the world through the eyes of a god and found humanity lacking. He shows this evil vision of the world to Swann at the film’s beginning. He sees his friends as monsters made of mud and dung, a far cry from the way we see each other in their mortal coil, the trap of flesh as Swann believes our bodies are. Nix’s power is in the way he can show people things that can break their minds, in a real way, even if they are only illusions. The way his fingers seem to dig into Swann’s very skull is a bloodless but no less gruesome effect, his thick fingers disappearing into flesh. Even after he escapes the grave, he still feels very much mortal rather than the immortal messiah his followers believe him to be. There is also the cruelty with which he treats his minions. The ones at the beginning who worshipped at the altar of his insanity. The ones waiting for his resurrection. After conjuring a storm from the sky and letting his devoted acolyte’s worship and grovel at his feet, he dries the rains and leaves these followers trapped in the drying mud to die as an enormous sacrifice for Nix escaping the grave.
Another area where Barker succeeds is the way he seamlessly blends the horror and noir aspects of LORD OF ILLUSIONS. This isn’t just a film meant to frighten the audience. Barker is clearly a student of both genres and weaves the tropes into a tightly knit braid. Harry is a perfect noir hero—a loner, a good detective dogged and determined. He follows the clues to find the truth, gets the beautiful woman to seduce. All while navigating this world of resurrections, cultists, and other gruesome monstrosities.
1995 was a year stacked with great horror films. Every sub-genre of horror was represented in that year. To my mind, however, LORD OF ILLUSIONS stands above the rest as the greatest horror film to come out of that year. Not because it’s simply a great scary story, but because it is a perfect blend of two beloved genres, littered with excellent performances, a genuinely frightening villain, and a delightfully deranged story.
