In what is supposed to be a key "dramatic" scene in this Clive Barker flick, a magician (NOT an illusionist -- there's a difference) that has been dead for 13 years is resurrected from his earthen grave in the Mojave Desert. Time would've been better spent injecting some life into the dull, dull, deathly dull script.

On paper LORD seems like a fun concept, although HBO's CAST A DEADLY SPELL with Fred Ward and David Warner did it earlier and better. In this case, Scott Bakula (stop and say his last name like Gary Oldman says "Dra-koo-lah" -- I never tire of that joke) stars as Harry D'Amour, a hard-boiled private investigator from New York specializing in occult cases. During a gig in sunny California he becomes immersed in a case of occult coverup, marital infidelity, and some good ol' creepy goings-on. Sounds okay, right? Too bad it comes off like a drawn-out episode of 'Tales from the Crypt,' 'Night Gallery' or any of the zillion other post-'Twilight Zone' anthology shows.

Despite the good idea, the execution is wrong from just about every angle. Bakula, not a good actor by any stretch, is pushed far beyond his meager limits with this role. Every hard-boiled line or action is tired and telegraphed, and his limited range of emotion rivals that of John Saxon and Nick Cassavettes. Famke Janssen is nothing to write home about either, phoning in a performance as the wife deserted by her dead magician hubby. And, so as not to single these two out, everyone else is uniformly bland or under the delusion that they're simultaneously in a handful of other flicks.

Barker -- returning to the director's chair for the first time since 1990's underrated NIGHTBREED -- fans wildly on this outing. His reliance on the ritualistic cult nonsense is becoming rather tiresome, and I doubt he could make a straight, scare-you-shitless horror flick if his life depended upon it. Worse yet is his Wes Craven-like use of the dream/reality "shock" -- the single most overused horror cliche of the last 10 years.

Since I passed up LORD OF ILLUSIONS in the movies I rented the "unrated, uncut director's version" (complete with fawning quote from Tarantino). Maybe it wasn't this dull in theatres, but LORD OF ILLUSIONS couldn't move any slower if you dunked it in molasses.