finds D'Amour's gun and shoots Nix in his mystical third eye. He retaliates, saying she should not have taken Swann away because he and Nix were meant to be together after humanity was destroyed. Swann uses his last life energy and magic to help D'Amour deliver a final blow to Nix. Nix falls into the chasm and Swann dies from his wounds. Nix launches a final spell that disintegrates Swann's body to bones, and then seals the chasm. Dorothea and D'Amour escape the house and walk off into the desert together. Cast Conception and casting In the original 1985 story "The Last Illusion", Harry D'Amour has had only one previous encounter with the supernatural, having fought a demon in Brooklyn, and is still shaken by the experience. He is asked to guard the body of dead illusionist Swann by the man's wife Dorothea, leading him into a confrontation with more demons, including the story's antagonist Butterfield. The story is a mix of detective noir and horror. Barker wrote another D'Amour short story called "Lost Souls", which was published in a 1987 anthology called Cutting Edge. D'Amour then appears briefly in Barker's 1989 novel The Great and Secret Show, the first book of the "Book of the Art" trilogy. He returned as a major character in the 1994 novel Everville, the second installment of the "Book of the Art" trilogy, a year before Lord of Illusions hit theaters. Clive Barker had directed and written two previous film adaptations of his own work, Hellraiser (1987) and Nightbreed (1990), and had served as screenwriter and executive producer on Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988). Lord of Illusions was the third film he wrote and directed. According to an interview with Fangoria in 1992, Barker started the first draft of the screenplay in 1991, at which time the movie shared its title with the original short story "The Last Illusion". In an interview with Bloody Best of Fangoria in 1993, Barker said: "I've always loved illusionists. There's always a dark side, and illusionists present them to you. It's very much life-and-death illusion - you sawed the woman in half, but she's still alive. They're presented as breezy, funny, entertaining pieces - but, subtextually, they're stories of death and resurrection". Regarding how to translate D'Amour's character and the original short story, Barker said in an interview with Fangoria (#138, 1994): "The Last Illusion was almost a Philip