Altered States Blu Ray

For the psychological term, see Altered states of consciousness.
Altered StatesTheatrical release poster
Directed byKen RussellScreenplay byPaddy Chayefsky[a]Based onAltered States
by Paddy ChayefskyProduced by

• Howard Gottfried
• Daniel Melnick

Starring

• William Hurt
• Blair Brown
• Bob Balaban

CinematographyJordan S. CronenwethEdited byStuart BairdMusic byJohn CoriglianoProduction
companies
Cinema Research Corporation; Laser Media Inc; Optical House Inc; R/Greenberg Associates; Warner Bros. Pictures
Distributed byWarner Bros.Release date

• December 25, 1980

Running time
103 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBudget$14.9 million[1][2]Box office$19.9 million[3]Altered States is a 1980 American science fiction‌ body horrorfilm directed by Ken Russell, and based on the novel of the same name by playwright and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. The film was adapted from Chayefsky's 1978 novel and is his final screenplay. The novel and the film are based in part on John C. Lilly's sensory deprivation research conducted in isolation tanks, under the influence of psychoactive drugs like mescaline, ketamine and LSD.

It marked the film debuts of William Hurt and Drew Barrymore. Chayefsky withdrew from the project after disputes with Russell and took his name off the credits, substituting "Sidney Aaron," his actual first and middle names.

The film score was composed by John Corigliano (with Christopher Keene conducting). The film was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Sound.

Plot[edit]Edward Jessup, a Columbia University‌ psychopathologist, is studying schizophrenia, and begins to think that "our other states of consciousness are as real as our waking states." He begins experimenting with sensory deprivation using a flotation tank, aided by two like-minded researchers, Arthur Rosenberg and Mason Parrish. At a faculty party, he meets fellow "whiz kid," and his future wife, Emily.

Seven years later, Edward and Emily have two daughters, are on the brink of divorce, and reunite with the couple who first introduced them. When Edward hears of the Hinchi tribe whose members experience shared hallucinatory states, he travels to Mexico to participate in their ceremony. During the climb up into the Hinchi hill country (a plateau covered in spectacular mushroom-shaped ventifacts) Edward is told by his guide, Eduardo Echeverria, that the Hinchi use in their ceremonies a potion containing the sacred mushroom Amanita muscaria and the shrub Sinicuiche (Heimia salicifolia), which they are collecting for next year's ceremonies. The tribe calls Heimia salicifolia by a Hinchi name meaning "first/primordial flower" in recognition of the deep memory states which it can evoke. An indigenous elder ("the brujo") is seen with a root (presumably intended to be a Heimia root) in his hand, which he asks Edward to hold, before cutting it in order to add some drops of blood to the mixture he is preparing. Immediately after consuming the mixture, Edward experiences bizarre, intense hallucinations, including one of the petrifactionand subsequent erosion by blown sand of Emily and himself. The following morning, Edward leaves the Hinchi plateau under a cloud, having killed, while in his intoxicated state, a large specimen of the Hinchi's sacred monitor lizard (which a petroglyph shown in the dream sequence shows that they believe to have given them the sacred mushroom in the mythic past). He returns to the U.S. with a sample of the Hinchi potion for analysis by his colleagues and further self-experimentation, and continues taking it in order to take his exploration of altered states of consciousness to a new and higher level.

When toxic concentrations of the substance make increased dosage dangerous, Edward returns to sensory deprivation, believing it will enhance the effects of the substance at his current dose. Repairing a disused tank in a medical school, Edward uses it to experience a series of increasingly drastic visions, including one of early Hominidae. Monitored by his colleagues, Edward insists that his visions have "externalized". Emerging from the tank, his mouth bloody, frantically writing notes because he is unable to speak, Edward insists on being X-rayed before he "reconstitutes." A radiologist inspecting the X-rays says they belong to a gorilla.

In later experiments, Edward experiences actual, physical biological devolution. At one stage he emerges from the isolation tank as a feral and curiously small-statured, light-skinned caveman, going on a rampage through some streets in town and breaking into a zoo before returning to his natural form. Despite his colleagues' concern, Edward stubbornly continues. In the final experiment, Edward experiences a more profound regression, transforming into an amorphous mass of conscious, primordial matter. An energy wave released from the experiment stuns Edward's colleagues and destroys his tank. Emily arrives to find a swirling maelstrom where the tank had been. She searches in the vortex for Edward, finding him as he is on the brink of becoming a non-physical form of proto-consciousness and possibly disappearing from our version of reality altogether.

His friends bring Edward home, hoping that the transformations will end. Watched over by Emily, Edward begins to regress uncontrollably again, the transformations no longer requiring the intake of "first flower" or sensory deprivation. Urging Edward to fight the change, Emily grabs his hand, immediately being enveloped by the primordial energy emanating from Edward. The sight of Emily apparently being consumed by the energy stirs the human consciousness in Edward's devolving form. He fights the transformation and returns to his human form. Edward embraces Emily, as she returns to normal.

Cast[edit]

• William Hurt as Dr. Eddie Jessup
• Blair Brown as Emily Jessup
• Bob Balaban as Arthur Rosenberg
• Charles Haid as Mason Parrish
• Thaao Penghlis as Eduardo Echeverria
• Drew Barrymore as Margaret Jessup
• Megan Jeffers as Grace Jessup
• Dori Brenner as Sylvia Rosenberg
• Peter Brandon as Alan Hobart
• Francis McCarthy Obispo
• Jack Murdock as Orteco
• George Gaynes as Wissenschaft
• John Larroquette as X-ray Technician

Production[edit]This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2021)
Development[edit]The film had its origins with a meeting Paddy Chayefsky had with his friends Bob Fosse and Herb Gardner at the Russian Tea Room in 1975. They were feeling "disgruntled" and as a joke conceived a movie they could make together. They wanted to pitch something to Dino De Laurentiis, who was making King Kong. After discussing a version of Frankenstein they decided to do a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.[4] Chayefsky went home and wrote a three-page "dramatic statement and I have never seen something come together so fast."[5]

Chayefsky decided to write a serious film on the American scientific community and the archetypal man in his search for his true self. A producer at Columbia Pictures, Daniel Melnick, suggested that Chayefsky turn a treatment he had written into a novel first, and he agreed. He did extensive research with scientists and anthropologists.[5] The novel was published in early 1978.[6][4] As was the case with his previous films, Chayefsky was granted full creative control over the film version of Altered States.[4]

Film rights were sold to Melnick, who had greenlit Network while the head of production at MGM, and who had a deal with Columbia. In April 1978, he turned in his script to Columbia.[7] In June 1978, Melnick became the head of production at Columbia, but under his deal, he was still allowed to produce Altered States.[8]Melnick wound up resigning in October, taking Altered States with him.[9]

Casting[edit]The film's original director was Arthur Penn. He cast the movie, including the relatively unknown leads William Hurt (in his first movie) and Blair Brown.[10] At one point, Scott Glenn was a contender for the male lead.[11]Another key role went to Bob Balaban.[12] Miguel Godreau, a dancer and teacher with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, was cast as Jessup's caveman incarnation.[13]

Change of director[edit]Filming was to begin in November 1978. However, during rehearsals Penn resigned[2] after a dispute with Chayefsky.[14] Penn later recalled that the only way he could leave the project and get paid for his work was to be fired. But he and Chayefsky remained friends thereafter.[15]

The eventual director was Ken Russell, who had struggled to find feature film work since the box office failure of Valentino (1977). Russell later recalled that "they wanted a director who has a very visual imagination, and they knew I had that."[16]

Russell later said his agent told him directors who had turned down the project included Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Sydney Pollack, Robert Wise, and Orson Welles. He says his agent told him he was the twenty-seventh choice.[17] Filming was then set to begin in March 1979 for Columbia with Howard Gottfried as producer.[18] The film would eventually be done for Warner Bros, in part because the cost rose from an original budgeted $9 million to $12.5 million.[19] It would eventually come in at just under $15 million, with $4 million of that going on special effects.[1]

Russell later replaced special effects expert John Dykstra with Bran Ferren, who is credited for Special Visual Effects in the front titles, and created the VFX actually used in the film.[20][21]‌ Dick Smith worked on the groundbreaking special makeup effects, which made extensive use of his pioneering air bladder effects.[22]

It was the first time Russell made a film in Hollywood. He later said, "I thought I would hate Hollywood, but I rather liked it. Everyone there is supposed to be terribly materialistic, but Altered States was the first movie I ever worked on where nobody—not Warner Bros., not Dan Melnick, the executive producer, or Howard Gottfried, the producer—ever mentioned money."[23]