User reviews

This is one of Ken Russell's best films. He manages to balance plot and wild visuals as never before. The acting is also first rate. I watched it again recently I think it still holds up surprisingly well compared to many modern sci-fi movies. The plot is intriguing, I keep thinking that there might be some truth to the concepts presented, and the fact is that our own brains are still largely unexplored territory. A special mention to the extraordinary music written by John Corigliano, and for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. It dares to be loud and violent, and complements the visuals extremely well. This is a wild, original movie unlike any other.

Bizarre cinematic head-trip that is far better and more entertaining than anyone could guess from a description. I put it on my Netflix queue without realizing it was directed by Ken Russell. If I had seen that earlier, I would have avoided it. Thankfully I didn't. It contains everything that is good about Russell, that is, his crazy imagery, and none of the bad stuff. That is, it's not an enormous bore. The script was written by Paddy Chayefsky, based on his own novel. Not the writer you would associate with horror or sci-fi, which is the proper genres to which Altered States belongs. He disowned the film before he even saw a cut of it, despite the fact that Russell was contractually obligated not to change a word of the script. The greatest asset of the film is the fantastic acting. William Hurt makes his screen debut as a mad scientist, a Harvard professor, actually, who is experimenting with sensory deprivation, mixed with some choice hallucinogens. He hopes to lose his modern mind in the sensory deprivation tank and regress to a primitive state. Unfortunately, some mushrooms that he finds in Mexico help him regress not only mentally, but physiologically. Blair Brown plays his estranged and worried wife, and Charles Haid and Bob Balaban (love the Balaban!) play colleagues who help Hurt do his experiments. The plot is silly, but it's legitimately eerie and frightening, thanks to Russell's surprisingly excellent direction. The film ends up in territory very reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I thought it all worked pretty well. Drew Barrymore makes her film debut at age 5, and also keep an eye out for John Larroquette.

It's been a quarter century since I first experienced Altered States, Ken Russell's take on Paddy Chayevsky's novel of the search for a common bond between all of us, the ability to love. I personally don't care if Chayevsky disowned the movie or if Russell resented him for it or how many angels you can set on the head of a pin, for that matter. Altered States is a harshly beautiful and intellectual movie based on a book with the same adjectives.

I'm not going to praise the fine performances, the dazzling special effects, or the painful, emotional epiphany that the lead character, Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) experiences as he fights his way past the roadblock of pure intellect. I want to praise Altered States for its emotional and intellectual message of the power of love to embrace us all and heal our wounds.

Altered States is not for the weak of stomach or the easily offended. The imagery is disturbing and, at times, repulsive. There are scenes of blasphemy that I know have put off Evangelical friends of mine. But the central idea of a commonality, a kinship that humans have with one another and the danger of setting oneself apart to avoid the pain of interacting and loving is, I believe, supremely satisfying at both an intellectual and emotional level.

Altered States isn't one of the very best films I've seen, but it surely has been a source of joy for me. And if it doesn't turn your crank--or turns it the wrong way--then find your joy in another film or other media . . . and remember to love.

... and an early example of psychedelic horror.

I wanted desperately to like Altered States, because the things it gets right it gets so right. But sadly it's such a tonally inconsistent film, and one that can't seem to focus on anything at all. First it's about a Judeo-Christian concept of hell and the devil, and then it's about some ancient indigenous deity and spirituality, and then it's about some extra-dimensional being, and then it's about genetic memory and body horror, before finally referencing alternate universes. The tone of the film is also sadly inconsistent. At times it's closer to a romantic drama than anything else. When it actually gets down to the horror part it swings strangely between themes of the paranoid mad scientist and the grand tone and sweep of man vs God.

It's memorable for some of the great special effects of its time, but overall it feels like a conversation you have when you're 19, think you know everything, get really baked, and then start rambling about philosophy with your friends.

This is William Hurt's debut, and there's much to praise about it. Firstly, outstanding performance. The kind that lasts an impression and is thought of every time "William Hurt" is pronounced out loud. The film, in a nutshell could be summed up as a man's obsessive quest for the "truth". Truth about life, and the universe, why we're here, who created us? These are the core questions Ken Russel - more fairly, the original author Paddy Chayefsky - asks. All of that, is assisted by insane hallucinatory and downright horrifying visual sequences and music, which when combined, literally gave me goosebumps when I saw it all on screen. They take you on a surreal 'trip' and are a way for the viewer to experience what Hurt's character undergoes when he is in the isolation chamber. On another note, the pacing is a little slow in the first act, but sudden outbursts of surreal visual sequences get you back up in form.

If you're a thinker, this one's for you.

Okay, the character of Dr. Eddie Jessup is kind of a pompous ass, and there are a few groaner moments of, call it, self-importance.

But this movie breaks real ground.

One of my all time favorites.

And I'd like to point out that everyone is crazy about the much-touted and notoriously-expensive hallucination sequences, ...

Of course if you've seen Russel's "Tommy," some of the over-the-top sequences will look familiar and tinged with peculiar British-isms. And then there's the ending - well, it's controversial, that's for sure - anticlimax or not ?

But for me the most electrifying parts are the ensemble cast acting.

In the scene where Blair Brown is trying to cope with the trauma of the events in the isolation tank room, there's a very beautifully conceived long single shot through house windows. Russel needs credit especially for the argument between Balaban and Haid - some of the best acting I've ever seen - character actors hardly EVER get to put this kind of stage-acting energy on film. It stays with me still. They truly seem absolutely furious with each other, their lines overlap, it's absolutely convincing.

Some of the greatest effects of this movie are simply good movie craft - when Jessup first sees the love of his life walk through the door, fantastically back-lit, and the music comes up and cross-fades into the next scene - it's breathtaking.

It's the moments like that, and the very intro of the movie, with the slow title crawl, the deadpan lines read by Balaban, the first shots of Hurt in the tank, the eerie music ... This movie still stands out, still looks good,... and stands superior to other, more recent imaginings of internal hallucination become external.

Ah, the 80's. A time when brilliant scientific geniuses fresh out of universities and doing their magic was cool rather than frightening and dorky. I have seen this movie before, when I was a child, and I remember the sense of awe I got from it, if nothing else. This time, the awe is just as real.

Most impressive for this movie is the construction. Ken Russel does a brilliant movie that grabs your emotions and twists them around. The soundtrack plays a great factor here, too. William Hurt is just wonderful, while the other few actors are just there to support him.

I can't say much about the story. I feel that in the context of this movie, it is irrelevant. I plan on reading the book, see what the author actually meant. It is not a horror story, either, although it is frightening at places; certainly not a monster and gore film.

Bottom line: the realization is great, the feel is awesome, the story highly intellectual. Something movies today pretty much lack altogether. You just have to watch this, but beware: people that are not fans of trippy sci-fi movies will only spoil your experience. This is one of the few films that must be watched alone.

During a series of sensory-deprivation experiments, a professor devolves into a prehistoric form of life. This bizarre yet intriguing sci-fi offering comes from Ken Russell, a genre filmmaker who's made a handful of weak films, including The Lair of the White Worm (1988) and Gothic (1986). The script comes from Paddy Chayefsky, who also wrote the book upon which the film is based. Though Chayefsky disowned the film and Russell's direction, it remains among the best films in both they're careers. The best thing about the film is easily the script, which is intelligent and thought-provoking. Russell's direction is quite good as well; the editing on this film is truly top-notch. The actors gave great performances, especially a very young-looking William Hurt as the lead. In my opinion, Blair Brown's performance was at times a little uneven, but that never hurt the movie. The make-up effects, from Dick Smith, were terrific. The imagery—including visions of hell, a seven-eyed goat-man (how cool is that?), hideously mutated human bodies and a truly trippy vision of the creation of life—are startling. There's some decent gore too, included a nasty gutted lizard (which looks suspiciously realistic if you ask me…) and other goodies I won't spoil for you. Also worth mentioning is a great score from John Corigliano, which is unsettling and very suspenseful.

This film is NOT for everyone—some viewers might be lost by the scientific aspects of the film and the hallucinogenic scenes. If you like everything explained to you and you're afraid of a little ambiguity, this isn't for you. If you want a different, intelligent sci-fi film…see this.

7/10.

Just one complaint though—I'm no scientist, but wouldn't it be impossible for a human being to survive the physical and metabolic changes of a transformation like the one seen in the film? (I know, I know, it's just a movie…).

If you are a thinker now, or grew up looking up at the stars and trying to figure out how the universe could just go on and on forever, this film is for you.

If you like boundaries, and the familiar you will not understand why this film was made, or why this film was made the way it was.

Chayefsky's material is brilliant, and challenging. Russell's approach is startling; more like abstract expressionism than any kind of realism. The performances, especially by Blair Brown and William Hurt are raw and completely authentic.

From start to finish, this film is fascinating, original and consistently realized.

Altered States is frightening, disturbing, bizarre stuff. It also has a strong heart, and the dialogue is witty and sharp.

This film creates its very real sense of horror from foreboding, often disarming musical cues, and a sense that we're on the journey with Jessup, and we don't know what's real or imagined. It rarely relies on gore, or overt "horror" sequences to affect the viewer, but still manages to be truly frightening and horrifying. Russell tones down his usual excesses, but his stamp is nevertheless all over the disturbing hallucination sequences.

It's easy to spot the strong influence this film must have had on Videodrome. It creates a similar mood.

Thoroughly recommended to anyone with a taste for intelligent horror.

The fact that maybe subconsciously we still have remnants of earlier versions of ourselves is very intriguing, to say the least. What would happen if we would descent into a hallucinatory state that enables us to access these earlier versions and let them surface and take over our current status of human being?

This is what drives Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) to undertake a series of experiments with an ancient drug he acquires from an Indian tribe. The results of his experiments are more than he could have hoped for. Before long he starts hallucinating during the hours out of the experiments and during brief periods of time after the experiments he is transformed to these earlier versions of humankind, even all the way back to the primordial ooze.

Unfortunately this side of the story enters the movie too late. The first 45 minutes we are watching Jessup rant and rave about religion and philosophy like there is no tomorrow, but unfortunately this is not as compelling as the second part of the story. When Jessup goes into one of his first hallucinatory states, the viewer is bombarded with a visual and sound explosion. The visuals are of such a level that they can be explained in any number of ways, which hinders the movie. Some scenes just take way too long (sandfigures withering away).

The acting is decent. Hurt delivers a potent performance of the man who undergoes all these experiments. His convincing portrayal is what upholds the movie. His wife Emily (Blair Brown) must love him very much, because she endures Hurt's atrocious personality to the end in the name of love. The sceptic Mason (Charles Haid) was just too much, he resisted the experiments with such fervor that it became laughable and certainly not believable, his performance would have benefited from a more subtle approach.

When I said that the story about halfway turns for the good, I didn't mean that it ended good as well. On the contrary, all the credit that was built with the change in story halfway was thrown away in the last fews minutes when the conclusion all becomes muddled and incomprehensible, and that was a shame.

The special effects were nice enough to see, but not remarkable. The Oscar nomination for Sound Editing was absolutely deserved. Technically there is not a lot wrong with this movie. It is just the story that could have gotten a little more work.

7/10

(Some Spoilers) Trying to find his inner-self since he was 16 years old Professor Eddie Jessup, William Hurt, has been fascinated in what is and what is not real in the world of drug, or spiritually,induced hallucinations. Having himself tested on, in the basement of New York University, in a water tank with electrodes attached to his brain and body Eddie still didn't get the results that he wanted in the field of the human sub-conscious mind.

Since he was a young boy up until his father's death Eddie had visions of biblical events mostly from the New Testament Book of Revelations of fire and brimstone falling from the sky and people falling, and perishing, into a flaming and bottomless pit. Just what were these visions ,or hallucinations, that he had back then all about? Now as a full professor at Harvard Medical School he can use it's state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, with the help of his friend and fellow Prof. Arthur Rosenberg(Bob Balaban), where he can very possibly find out the truth about the human sub-conscious mind once in for all.

The experiments don't lead to anything special in the field of the human mind and it's effects from mind altering Illnesses like schizophrenia but one evening at a party with his wife Prof. Emily Jussup, Blair Brown, Eddie is introduced to Prof. Eduardo Eccheuerria,Thaao Penghlis, of the University of Mexico. Eddie's life after meeting with the Mexican professor made an abrupt U-turn and after that he and his state of mind would never be the same again.

Psychedelic-like movie where you, like the actors in it, can't differentiate what's real and what's not. You need a medical encyclopedia just to understand most of the dialog coming out of the mouths of Prof. Eddie and Emily Jessup as well as their friends and associates Prof. Rosenberg and Harvard Professor of Endocrineogy Mason Perrish, Charles Haid. It's in Central Mexico that Eddie's mind get screwed up by having a drink of this magic mushroom soup, with a sample of his own blood mixed in, courtesy of the Hinchi Indian Cheifton Charles White-Eagle, that drove Eddie literally out of him mind.

Coming back to Boston Eddie is obsessed to go back in the tank and experience the feeling of a prehistoric Homo-Sapien-like Apeman and does become one later in the film, played brilliantly by a very nimble and acrobatic Miguel Godreau. Miguel is absolutely amazing jumping over fences and swinging on pipes as he's chased by the Harvard Collage security men and a pack of wild dogs on the deserted streets of Boston at night.

This monkey-man, he seems a bit too small to be a full-grown ape or guerrilla, breaks into the Boston Zoo and after almost getting his hand ripped off by a tiger, when he tried to steal his lunch, jumps into the open areas of the zoo and kills one of the fleeing gazelles, with a rock. The monkey-man stuffing himself with the dead gazelle's meat intestines and blood is found the next morning ,by the zoo-keepers, naked and back to being a human being, Eddie, as well as sound asleep by the butchered devoured and dead animal UGH!

Trying one last time to prove that he can change his physical as well as mental structure Eddie put's himself in the water tank, against the objections of Emily and Prof. Mason. Eddie proving beyond a doubt that's he's as off-the-wall as everyone around him suspected but at the same time he's also right about his theory. That, every one of us, has everything every thought every experience, spiritual and conventional, inside our brain since the dawn of history as well as that of the the history, and existence, of the vast and endless Universe that's some six billion years old!

I never would have imagined anyone could meld the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story with the American notion of masculine rugged individualism (and a genuine love story at the heart of it). These grandiose ideas all thrown together into a stunningly disturbing and moving work of art. Ken Russell is an absolute genius.

William Hurt made his starring film debut in this thoroughly bizarre but fairly fascinating film, one that a viewer truly experiences. Hurt plays Eddie Jessup, a scientist determined to prove theories about other states of human consciousness. With his good friend Arthur Rosenberg (Bob Balaban) assisting, and associate Mason Parrish (Charles Haid) functioning as a voice of reason, he starts to combine trips to an isolation tank with usage of a *powerful* hallucinogenic drug that he's discovered in Mexico. The results are, to put it mildly, VERY unusual.

Paddy Chayefsky scripted this film version of his novel, although he would ultimately disown it, and the screenplay credit would go to his birth name, Sidney Aaron. Basically, it's a story about ideas, and it doesn't really set out to make its main characters "likeable" in the traditional sense. Eddie is a pure intellectual, a non-religious individual and a man obsessed. He is truly driven to experiment in the name of discovery. It will be up to Emily (Blair Brown), a fellow scientist who's drawn to his unique eccentricity, to reawaken his humanity and help him realize what it is like to love another person.

Ken Russell ("The Devils", "Tommy", etc.) was undeniably the right person to direct this flick, which alternates between a cerebral approach and a genuine amount of nightmarish intensity. Truth be told, the story *does* sometimes take a back seat to the mind-bending imagery (visual effects by Bran Ferren), such as that multi-eyed goat. One major set piece has Eddie reverting to a primitive physical being, played by dancer Miguel Godreau.

The lead characters may take some getting used to, but there's no denying that the central performances are excellent. They're assisted by a strong supporting cast consisting of Dori Brenner, Thaao Penghlis, and Charles White-Eagle. Keep your eyes peeled for John Larroquette, George Gaynes, and a five year-old Drew Barrymore, also making her film debut.

The ending falls short of really being satisfying, but for the most part, this is an interesting feature that takes you for quite a ride.

Seven out of 10.

Ken Russell is an acquired taste, his style and work are unique-not many directors quite like him- and never has less than interesting value to them. But he does have a tendency to use excessive imagery, a lot of them not for the faint-hearted and can cause offense. Altered States doesn't quite stand out for me as one of his best, it is a most interesting film though and it is difficult to stop watching it. It's not perfect, the ending is rather muddled, Blair Brown is beautiful with a to-die-for body but gives a ham-fisted performance(especially in her painfully overwrought meltdown) and the Neanderthal man sequence is on the eccentric side. Altered States is a great-looking film too, the special effects are awesome and hold up well today and the imagery has an eerie hypnotic quality, there is some excess here but much less distasteful than in other Russell works(ie. Lisztomania, Dance of the Seven Veils). The photography and set design are similarly terrific. The music score is haunting while not obvious with the odd quirky and tender touches too. The dialogue is smart and thoughtful, there are some witty lines that are wonderfully strange and laugh-out-loud funny, considering the type of film and that it's Russell it works. Admittedly narratively it is very, very weird, but Altered States is rich in atmosphere and the atmosphere here is one of the best things about the film. The foreboding parts are eerie, the surreal hallucinogenic parts are mind-bendingly hypnotic, the campier parts bring amusement that doesn't overbear things, the horror parts are appropriately ominous and the fantasy parts have the right amount of imagination. There's also a tender pang to Altered States' story too. Altered States has Russell's style all over it and it packs a bulls-eye but while not as restrained as his early work with Elgar and Delius biographies and Women in Love Russell embraces the camp but reigns in as well, as confusing as that sounds. The transformation sequence is silly but also disturbingly surreal and visually stunning. In terms of performances, Brown is the only blemish. The best performer and possibly the highlight of the film is William Hurt, whose outstanding performance ranks along his best. Charles Haig is very funny and not too hammy. Overall, not for everyone or the faint-hearted but especially for the atmosphere and Hurt Altered States is not just interesting but also a good film on the most part. 7/10 Bethany Cox

I saw this in 1980 and just didn't get it and haven't watched it since (I tend to give movies a 2nd chance) because I figured if I was older, it might make more sense; well...20 years later and it's still crap!!! Yes, the movie has some visually stunning, but it's just filled with 50-cent words to let you know it's all just SO brilliant. There's not a character worth caring about (except Blair Brown's); William Hurt's lead character is pretty much a thorough-going jerk who cares only for himself. He's impossible to care about. As usual, Ken Russel has made an interesting-to-look-at movie that's a real chore to watch. Highly unrecommended. Only for film-school devotees who use words such as 'subtext'. (Roger Ebert, are you listening?)

Altered States is not everything that it could be, and that's because director Ken Russell was more interested in assaulting the viewer with a series of startling (by 1980 standards) images than he was in exploring the stories subtext. Eddie Jessup is a scientist so introverted and afraid of human connections that it's not enough to abandon his family, he also has to further deprive himself of any and all stimulation, performing sensory depravation experiments on himself to attain better understanding of "ultimate truth." Jessup proclaims himself to be an atheist, but the visual content of his hallucinations reveals him to be a man who's more at war with God than a man who disbelieves. His descent into a more primal state of being is an obvious metaphor for how easy it is for a man with commitment issues and fear of intimacy to turn completely inward, leaving the real world behind. Some of what the character says early on about family and love make his motivations clear... Jessup is a man shattered by his father's death and unable to accept the vulnerability of the human condition. A viewer has to really work to absorb and enjoy these metaphors, though, as Russell never slows his onslaught of special effects. The movie also suffers from smart but unrealistic dialogue and ham-fisted performances from some of the principle characters (watch Blair Brown's over-the-top breakdowns in the last act). Altered States isn't the total package, it doesn't combine the visceral and the philosophical as well as movies like Jacob's Ladder or Natural Born Killers. But it's better than most of today's equivalent movies (Donnie Darko, etc) that want to stimulate and provoke the viewer and don't quite pull it off.