Halloween 2012 Day 7: Lord of Illusions (1995)

Magic is cool. Okay, I don't care if its campy or kitsch or dumb or whatever you want to say. Magic is dang cool. Anything that tries to convince people into thinking its something real or supernatural is the coolest thing to me, especially if its like a con. If there's someone in charge of the trick, illusion, or con game, it becomes absolutely fascinating. Much like professional wrestling, magic tries to supplant our existing reality and rules of physics and replace it with something way better. Something inexplicable. If one person can make this watch disappear, imagine what else they can do.
Lord of Illusions stars Scott Bakula as a hard-boiled private dick in Brooklyn who has had more than a few brushes with the supernatural. After being sent on a case to LA, he stumbles into a world of black magic, sexy babes, and resurrected gods of death. Deep in the Los Angeles magic and illusion scene, he bites off more than he can chew as people die all around him.
The film is dated. Clive Barker, serving as auteur on this film, makes the mistake many filmmakers did, and do, by pursuing computer animation over makeup or puppetry. Maybe it was less jarring in 1995 to see a low-poly skeleton walk around and then suddenly turn into a real skeleton as it comes to rest, but its almost laughable now. The acting is lackluster, Scott Bakula never had the chops to be a leading man and most of the main actors he's up against suffer from B-movie over-acting or woodenness. Famke Jannsen is sublime, as usual, in her role of leading lady, but that almost doesnt need to be said.
The pleasure in this film is found in the grim atmosphere it generates. Much like Hellraiser, Lord of Illusions doesn't reside in a pleasant world interrupted by a monster or a slasher or what have you. The world of Lord of Illusions is dark, corrupted, and just about hopeless. As our villain reminds us, in this film hope and courage aren't the antidote to evil. It stands as such a strong contrast to the film's peers. If you can ignore the poor aging and genre film stigma, there's a real bright gem in Lord of Illusions.