When I started looking for some good movies featuring my favorite subjects, I encountered good and bad ones. To make the search easier, I'd decide to post my findings. Let me know if it's any good or if you have expirience with the movie, or the movies I am reviewing.
Altered States (1980)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080360/
Altered States is considered a 'psychedelic movie' because it is, mostly, about hallucinogenic drugs. It is set in the american sixties, and the protagonist, "Eddie", works on several experiments and investigations on schizophrenia and chemically induced psychosis. In several (typically for their age) special effect sequences we also learn about his tendecy for visionary expirience, the death of his father and the religious theme of psychosis. He also gets several 'trips' himself in a floatation (sp?) tank. The plot line focuses on the character Eddie and a few of his friends from either his faculty or more loose social contacts.
This is where the drugs come in. Eddie decides to experiment a 'new drug' (which is completely fictional and looks suspectively much like amanita, but I will dismiss this for fun's sake, but it would be fun if they had, say, DMT with MAO inhibiting herbs?) with several native americans and it blasts him away. He immediatly wants to conduct experiments with it at the faculty, and takes some with him. From here, the plot goes wild.
Altered States is certainly no classic psychedelic movie like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, bulky with colorful drug expiriences and sturdy phrases, but comes closer in it's effect to Godzilla. The beginning of the movie is serious, and well-meant, but after a certain while the script writer simply lost all contact with reality and created a fictional universe. For anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet, I don't encourage you to read further because this part contains some heavy spoilers toward the end of the movie. EYES AWAY... yes? Still here? After a certain while, Professor "Eddie" is enveloped in an expirience of the earliest type of man chasing some kind of animal, and he is suddently transformed into some sort of ape-man running around trashing the set. The first time I saw the scene I sat gaping at the screen, amazed at the ridicule of it all. It's just pathetic to see the main actor of the film in a flimsy ape suit prancing around a rather unstable set, sometimes wickedly screaming at the camera, showing fake teeth. Even later, he continues about his apy business by eating a gazelle, which is brought rather weakly. And to have it climax in him melting like Jell-O in the sun because his "DNA alterations" are so bad is really not very cool. It's absolutely fun to laugh at, but it's completely disassociative to the atmosphere in which the movie starts.
EYES BACK HERE. So, Altered States is a nice movie to watch with a beer on a lazy afternoon when there is nothing on. Don't expect a serious movie about drugs or psychedic culture, because it's a complete psy-fi.
13-12-2005, 18:45
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