Clive Barker: a half dozen smart volumes of genre-defining shorts; one terrific novel; and a likeable, re-energising movie. There is plenty of other guff - Los Angeles, the obese fantasy novels, bloody Nightbreed - but, frustratingly, the only thing with the Barker tag recently to merit more than even a passing glance was Redemption's tape of early surrealist Super-8's. By rights then, the video debut of his third cinematic feast, Lord of Illusions, should not detain us long.

The film, adapted loosely from The Last Illusion (Books of Blood VI), limped through a Stateside theatrical run and arrives in Barker's homeland, thankfully, in his preferred cut, restoring the twelve minutes excised by ratings problems (an NC-17) and poor test screenings. And the final results, while far from entirely successful, at least make for Barker's most diverting work in nearly a decade.

Devout Catholic, private detective and series character Harry D'Amour (Quantum Leap's Scott Bakula, surprisingly sympathetic) is coming down off of a particularly hairy exorcism ("What was she possessed by?" "You know, the usual"), when he's offered a simple insurance fraud in Los Angeles. There he stumbles in on a dark conspiracy involving David Copperfield-esque illusionist Swann (Kevin J. O'Connor), his beautiful young wife (Famke Janssen), and the execution a decade earlier of cult leader Nix (Daniel Von Bargen). Just because Nix is dead doesn't mean he's gone, of course, and the stick-thin, lurex-favouring Butterfield (a deliciously camp Barry Del Sherman), is about the city slaughtering his way to the master's desert resting place. When Swann is spectacularly killed mid-show, Harry finds himself ensnared by the resulting illusion and magic.

This is a horror film and one that benefits from an intelligent playfulness to Barker's script. Imagine, if you will, Chinatown by way of Aleister Crowley. For the majority at least, because, while we might feel magnanimous towards its lumpen prologue, the big desert finale is pitiful, beset as it is by the tedious fantastique trappings and mythical bestiary that have steadily suffocated Barker over the last decade. The film works best despite its not-so-special (and in one case, dire) effects. Just occasionally - the illusionist's death and a nod to Argento - it's handsomely grisly. And on the plus side, the City of Angels gets a striking smoky noir sheen to look at its best this side of a Michael Mann picture, while Simon Boswell's score is both pithy and satisfying.

It's the lack of suspense and all that mythic arse that finally drives the picture down some sub-John Carpenter cul-de-sac. For too long Barker hasn't known to leave well enough alone and his reputation has gone to Hell because of it. This cut shows that he too must shoulder some blame for scuppering his picture's chances, but equally, that here's a film worth visiting with at least once before you die.