{"id":10142,"date":"2026-02-25T14:47:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=10142"},"modified":"2026-02-25T14:47:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:47:05","slug":"lord-of-illusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/lord-of-illusions\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord of Illusions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Another podcast movie, because there have been so many in a row I have not seen. The scare was witch, and the style was LA, and so here we are with a noir about male witches and real magic vs illusion “magic” and also good vs evil, by Clive Barker: Lord of Illusions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s time I think to admit I don’t really get<\/em> Clive Barker. There’s nothing wrong with this movie. It’s great to get to see Scott Bakula in his prime, and I like noirs that have modern[1] settings and sensibilities. But I feel like people get excited when they see Clive Barker’s name attached to something, and meanwhile, I<\/em> have no clear idea what it is I expect when I see his name. I saw Hellraiser<\/em>[2], and it was a weird family mystery that had far fewer Cenobites than were advertised to me by pop culture, and then this is a weird almost-family mystery that’s also an almost takedown of pop culture magicians like David Copperfield, plus the whole noir with the maybe but maybe not treacherous femme fatale, and a dude with his head in a spiky box who is the bad guy. I think I even liked it, but I definitely didn’t get it.<\/p>\n

The surface level plot made sense from moment to moment, but if there’s an essential Clive Barker-ness, I am just out of the loop, that’s all. Anyway, cool magic show, somewhat incomprehensible final battle, hyper-young Famke Janssen, and best use of the Ten of Swords I’ve ever witnessed. (Plus it was awesome that the mysteriously unrevealed tarot card wasn’t just Death like always.)<\/p>\n

Whatever else it was, I’ve talked myself into remembering that it was very stylish, and that’s not nothing.<\/p>\n

[1] Look, I get it, the ’90s aren’t modern, I’m just old. But still!
\n[2] Not reviewed because I saw it on The Last Drive-In, and Joe Bob says so much about a movie that I don’t know where my opinions end and his begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another podcast movie, because there have been so many in a row I have not seen. The scare was witch, and the style was LA, and so here we are with a noir about male witches and real magic vs illusion “magic” and also good vs evil, by Clive Barker: Lord of Illusions. It’s time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[30,1428,1224,1395],"class_list":["post-10142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-horror","tag-mgm","tag-noir","tag-random-number-generator-horror-podcast-9"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10142"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10147,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10142\/revisions\/10147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}