You know you’re watching a Ken Russell film when, in the afterglow
of some tremendously sweaty sex, William Hurt confesses that while pumping
away he was actually thinking of Christ. And crucifixions. Just to underline
the perverted point, the viewer is then treated to a drawn-out hallucination
featuring the Shroud of Turin bursting into flames, school uniforms,
a sheep’s head with seven eyes perched on top of the body of Christ…and
lots of sweaty sex.
Yes, much like Ken Russell’s other entry on this site (see: Hugh
Grant), Altered States is a delirious ride, stomping along with one
foot firmly planted in pretentious high art and the other dipping a sequinned
toe in the waters of high camp.
William Hurt, in his first ever movie role, is Professor Eddie Jessup,
a scientist fixated on human consciousness. Specifically, he believes
that our cells contain memories of not just past lives, but of all life. “Our
atoms are millions of years old”, he reasons, and he sets about
trying to find a way to unlock the neurological gateway that will grant
him access to this domain of accumulated ancient experience.
Starting out with lengthy stays in isolation tanks, he finds the key
he needs when he travels to Mexico to take part in an ancient shamanistic
ritual involving psychedelic soup. Another trippy hallucination sequence
follows, during which he apparently kills and eats a lizard, and he excitedly
brings back some of the psychoactive brew for study.
Through a combination of sensory deprivation and consumption of this
untested (and filthy looking) organic LSD, he begins to regress back
through human evolution, describing wide open plains, populated by short
upright simian beings, hunting for food with their bare hands. Then Jessup
goes one better and describes how he is actually becoming one such troglodyte.
But this is no whacked-out hippy fantasy. It’s a Ken Russell film,
by thunder, so Professor Jessup really is becoming a caveman. Genetically.
Physically. It’s a literal transfiguration bringing his atomic
subconscious into the waking world. Jessup is understandably elated.
After all, who wouldn’t be excited by the ability to transform
into a tiny hairy man? Well, apart from Danny DeVito, for whom the experience
would obviously be something of a busman’s holiday.
Of course, being an obsessed fringe scientist, Jessup can’t resist
going back again and again, blurring the lines of research and personal
gratification, eventually breaking out of the tank in his prehistoric
state and going on a naked ape-man rampage through the halls of Harvard
before heading for the zoo where, having worked up quite an appetitie,
he snacks on an antelope.
It’s the sort of behaviour that can put a strain on a marriage,
and his wife – also a scientist, and conveniently just returned
from Africa where she studied apes – is torn between the realisation
that her husband has made a world-changing breakthrough and the knowledge
that he’s clearly as crazy as a badger in a sack. Of course, he
did confess to thinking of Christ and crucifixions during sex, and she
still married him, so it’s perhaps a little late for second thoughts.
Attempting one final trip in the tank to break through the subconscious
barriers preventing him from truly comprehending the oneness of all creation
(or something), Jessup succeeds in releasing so much cosmic energy that
he blows up the isolation tank, creating a swirling anti-matter vortex
in his lab and setting his molecular structure into complete meltdown
for good measure.
Transformed into a sort of gooey blob with the face of William Hurt,
all seems lost as his very touch turns his wife into a red and black
glowing optical effect, before their love for each other pulls them back
from the brink of infinite atomic implosion. Or something like that.
They hug. The credits roll.
As you can probably guess, Altered States isn’t just the name of
the movie it’s also a serving suggestion of sorts, helpfully nudging
you in the direction of the ideal state of mind in which to view the
film. Heavily inspired by academic drug gurus like Timothy Leary and
Alex Shulgin – who both pioneered the psychological study of hallucinogenic
trips – Ken Russell throws everything into this one, with epic
2001-style sequences of wordless cosmic kaleidoscopes punctuated by random
and esoteric imagery.
And while it’s undeniably bizarre to see the 6’2” William
Hurt turn into a tiny caveman (played by a different actor, sadly) or
howling as he turns into a gloopy pile of DNA, there’s no getting
around the fact that the role of Jessup is ideal for Hurt’s peculiar
brand of detached, frigid strangeness. Though Altered States was a box
office disaster, it did his career no lasting harm – he followed
it up with Lawrence Kasdan’s erotic drama Body Heat in 1981, and
reteamed with Kasdan for the seminal 1983 ensemble piece, The Big Chill
(see: Kevin Costner).
Need to know: The X-ray technician who discovers that Jessup’s
skeletal structure is taking on distinctly prehistoric qualities was
played by George Gaynes, best known to survivors of the Eighties as the
absent-minded Commandant Lassard from the infernal Police Academy series.
Altered States also saw the movie debut of Drew
Barrymore, visible for
all of three minutes as one of Jessup’s two daughters. The girls
are crudely introduced into the story, and completely vanish from the
plot altogether long before the end – the mundane requirements
of hiring a babysitter apparently too much to ask for drugged up scientists
diving into the space-time gene pool.
Availability: Altered States is readily available on DVD.
