Review of Altered States (1980) by Wayne O — 07 Sep 2008

Ken Russel unleashed his eye for visual flair in this story of a human evolution and madness. There are lots of pros and many cons to this movie. On the one hand, it's actually a fairly intellegent treatment of theories about hullucianagenics, collec...(read more) tive memory, evolution, schizophrenia, anthropolgy, and religon, in it's opening half. Also the film has some of Ken Russells most lavish and visually dazzyling images that he ever commit to film (though the first scene in the tank is amongst his weakest ever). The music is also amazing, even won them an academy award I think.

Now on the other hand, the second half of the story is terrible sc-fi, bad ape suits, and a love will conquer all ending that should pull unanimous rancor from just about any viewer. Sadder still is this book was written by Paddy Chayefsky (screenwriter supreme of "Network" and "Marty"), who was apparently so appalled at the treatment of his work he had his name removed from the creidts.

This is a pretty bad and ridiculous movie, which bites off alot more substance than it can chew, but for the most part it tackels interesting subjects in a fairly interesting way, and has very some creative use of special effects and music. It's a mad scientist story(perhaps executed by an equally mad director) but it's one which makes you want the scientist to win, to finish his awful experiments and find the answers to everythings, kind of a 20th century Faust. B-movie sci-fi treatment of a a possible first rate speculative fiction masterpiece.

Also fine performances by William Hurt, and company, even a young Drew Barrymore makes a cameo.

Not gold, or even silver, but for those who like psychedlic sci-fi, it's a must see...almost a guilty pleasure, but who needs guilt...I lost my copy of this...I miss it...