Wordiezett So much average

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

gridoon2018 For at least an hour, maybe longer, "Altered States" is thoroughly absorbing, especially for those viewers who can relate to William Hurt's (he makes an impressive cinema debut) quest for the Ultimate Truth, for something that gives meaning not only to his life, but to Human Life in general. The hallucinatory sequences are awe-inspiring and rewind-button-inviting. The visionary director Ken Russell appears to have found the ideal project for his visual imagination. And any potential pretentiousness is offset by lots of humor. But when Hurt reverts to the primal state and becomes a human-ape hybrid, the film does start to feel like a silly monster movie. And for all its weird, hallucinogenic visuals, it's ultimately a didactic movie AGAINST experimentation and barrier-breaking; the ending is particularly conventional. **1/2 out of 4.

Predrag If there is such a thing as genetic memory, than all the phases of human evolution must lie somewhere in our genetic code. What if there was a way we could tap into that stream of information through consciousness? What would we see? What would we learn? Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt in his debut role) is intrigued by the data being produced by the use of isolation tanks to induce altered states of consciousness, and decides to undergo the experience himself. What he discovers at first is the ability to relive with total clarity experiences of his childhood. As he continues these experiments, his visions become more acute and filled with religious illusions. Years go by and Jessup has become sedated with the trappings of academia, leaving him unfulfilled and longing for the good old days of experimentation and wonder. He visits a tribe of Mexican Indians that use a hallucinatory drug to evokes a common experience in all users and has the trip of his life! What might he learn inside an isolation tank while being under the influence of this drug? Would he be able to peel away the layers of evolutionary time back to early man and beyond? Perhaps even back to the first thought? I think it's a classic example of the genre & demonstrates that as weird & unlikely as a plot might be it can still come across as convincing genuinely eerie if handled right i.e. good acting, good script, compelling story line & maybe some decent special FX. All to often these days the special FX seem to be put before everything else & as such films of this genre lack substance & usually don't amount to much outside of the box office. For me the special FX in this film still stand up & look good. The trip sequences are extremely surreal & somewhat disturbing in parts but there are some great sequences that definitely start to mess with your head! The only reason this movie still works today is because the movie makes clear that in some tribes, there are substances that are traditionally and successfully used in spiritual rituals, and it is one of these that Hurt uses, in combination with sensory deprivation techniques, to try to get in touch with his own "genetic memory", for lack of a better term.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

pippolomeo I liked the beginning very much. the story starts to become a bit grotesque at the middle, but I think that for a sci-fi movie from year 1980 this can be acceptable.what really disappointed me is the end, so abrupt and willful to be "romantic" in some sense, but really disrupted all the pathos of the movie, at least for me.the hallucinations are really stunning (although they didn't touch me to the same point of "The devils" my the same director) and the visual effects are really great for the time.a pity that everything is ruined by the last 15 seconds..

Roger Burke The few films of Ken Russell I've seen are all grounded in reality as we know it (Billion Dollar Brain, Women in Love, The Music Lovers), more or less. Recently, I finally saw this film from 1980.Altered States is significant for a number of reasons: it was William Hurt's first movie; it was writer Paddy Chayefksy's last movie; and it was, arguably, Ken Russell's first attempt at fantasy. Of the three aspects, I was happy to see Hurt in his first role. Beyond that, the story and film are less than I expected from such a director.With more than a nod to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the story concerns a behavioral scientist and academic, Eddie (Hurt), who, while testing mind altering drugs, appears to regress for a while to an ancient, primitive, human-like state – not just mentally, but also physically. What's Eddie really looking for? True love.Along the way to that goal, he marries an associate, Emily (Blair Brown) who is unable to actually live with Eddie, being occupied with her own scientific endeavors in the animal world. What's Emily really looking for? Security with a husband.Mix that together with a lot of psychological mumbo-jumbo, deep water-immersion sequences, whiz-bang special visual effects bound to please some viewers, and much screaming between scientists at times, this viewer was left, at the end, with a singular response: so what? Others, no doubt, will find deeper interpretations.In sum, this film is one for die-hard Russell fans. It's well produced and acted, for sure, but it's just plain silly, like many fantasies. I'm now trying to decide which is worse: Billion Dollar Brain or this. Let me put it this way, I guess: I don't recommend BDB at all.But I give this one only five out of ten. Recommended for fans of Russell only.June 1, 2013.