Altered States

1980 • Dir: Ken Russell • St: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Charles Haid

Premise: Eddie Jessup begins experimenting with isolation tanks and hallucinogenics to see if there is some underlying common race memory of mankind that explains spiritual phenomena. Or something.

Analysis: I can't really call this film horror, but then again it's also called science fiction, which I don't think fits either. In the end, I keep it on the horror shelf because it scared the piss out of me when I saw it as a kid.

This is William Hurt's first feature film, and also quietly features the first film appearance of a wee Drew Barrymore. Adapted from Paddy Chayefsky's first, last and only novel (Chayefsky himself adapted the screen play) and directed by the renegade director Ken Russell, Altered States is one incredibly messed-up crazy movie.

The central plot of the film revolves around Prof Eddie Jessup's experiments in a sensory deprivation tank while knocking back shooters of a hallucinogen that may be intended to be ayahuasca.

Eddie's first trip is a cue for the usual gaudy visual madness of director Russell, including a trip to the Garden of Eden, and the occasional side trip into a flaming Hell. Not much of a one for drugs myself, I watch Altered States so I don't have to take peyote or acid. To my dying days I will probably imagine that acid trips must be like a Ken Russell film.

The film really does feel pulled in two directions - the intelligent dialogue, original John Lilly research, and search for purpose in man's evolutionary history is Chayefsky's, while the lurid, gaudy and religious overtones are undeniably Russell's. The two are said to have argued quite a bit during filming, causing Chayefsky to have his screenplay credited as 'Sidney Aaron'. To be honest, while Russell's satanic, crucified goat-head figure is what I mainly remember seeing from when I was a kid, it is Jessup's obsessive drive to find this shared genetic memory of humanity, and the idea of physical regression that I find most intriguing.

With an adult viewing, Ken Russell's Garden of Eden and devilish/hellish imagery look, well, a bit silly. One moment everyone's talking soberly about DNA, anthropology and evolution, and the next a snake/Edenic serpent is choking Jessup/Adam to death under an umbrella. You've got to give credit where credit's due - Ken Russell's an amazing lunatic.

The film still leaves me pondering: the notion of storing a genetic memory of the entirety of physical and mental evolution in all of us, is a heady idea. It makes even the humblest person feel like an incredible repository of the tragedies and successes of the human species. The idea of accessing this heritage is a staggering one. If Altered States teaches us anything it's how much more amazing it would have been if not helmed by the sexy nun/heaven and hell obsessed Russell.

Is it horror? Change, mutation, murder, fundamental questions about human existence, an underlying nothingness to existence that could swallow you whole - sounds sufficiently horrific to me.

Stars: 3.5 out of 5