Lord of Illusions (1995) review

NYC-based private eye Harry D'Amour (Scott Bakula) is paid to travel to Los Angeles to track down a man accused of insurance fraud but instead finds a murdered fortune teller - later, he's hired by Dorothea (Famke Janssen) who is concerned for the safety of her illusionist husband Philip Swann (Kevin J. O'Connor) ... oh, and there's a cult trying to resurrect a dangerous magician named Nix (Daniel von Bargen).  What's kind of curious about this feature from novelist Barker is how it's actually a detective story with some horror elements, which allows him to indulge in his fetish for metal objects going into human flesh - many of the makeup effects are neat to look at (the digital ones ... less so).  Despite the cheap midnight movie thrills, it unfortunately comes across like an imitation noir, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense upon closer scrutiny.  The trailer for this came out when I was in high school and the "Are you ready for my wisdom?" line became inexplicably popular among the lads (even though none of us saw it in the theatre): see kids, we had memes back in the day....