Lord of Illusions has, once you look into it, a hell of a production history. Witten, directed, and partly produced by horror grandmaster Clive Barker, it should have been a shoo-in for a classic reputation as part of the mid-90s Premillennial apocalyptic gothic-horrors. However, instead of riding the wave of Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Candyman, it got bogged down in budgetary constraints and bitter disputes over final-cut issues. Then again, it also had a nifty set of promotional images and thus caught my eye when dredging through the lower portions of Netflix.
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Lord of Illusions (1995)
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The fundamentals of this film are explained within the first 5 minutes, in one of the greatest displays of “show, don’t tell” exposition in cinema that clearly demonstrates the skill found within this work. Tomatoes have started attacking, and killing, people all over America. The police and the army have failed to stop them, thus the country is facing Tomatogeddon. The Pentagon has recruited Mason Dixie (David Miller) to lead a team of utterly improbable agents (Sam Smith (Gary Smith), a disguise expert, Greg Colburn (Steve Cates), scuba diver, Gretta Attenbaum (Benita Barton) Olympic swimmer, and Wilbur Finletter (Stephen Peace), parachute trooper) who team up and then head their own ways to provide comic asides in a variety of unlikely locations.
When you go looking for a werewolf movie and discover there is one called “Werewolves on wheels”, that pitches itself as a cross between Sons of Anarchy, The Devil’s Rain and Easy Rider, there really is no option but to watch it. And, after sitting through these particular 85 minutes of 1971 low-budget horror, I can happily confirm that it’s the finest weird-west satanic-horror biker-gang lycanthrope road moview I’ve ever seen. Then again, writer and director Michel Levesque doesn’t exactly have much competition in those stakes – which makes it a shame that there are a lot of nice ideas without enough solid execution.
This film got picked for review because my wife asked me to find something with cats in it. If you don’t think random “is there a film about X?” challenges are a valid way to select your viewing then you really haven’t lived – or, you are one of the lucky few who’s suggested viewing algorithm isn’t a stream of safe choice variations on the timeless classic “this film will fill an hour and a half of your life.” True, it took about twenty minutes of searching, and rejecting a million variations on Cat People to find The Uncanny was even a thing; but that’s only five minutes more than going all the way through Netflix to bung on what it first shilled at you when you turned it on.
Trash or Treasure 