Altered States

A scientist wonders how far back consciousness can be pushed. He gets into a sensory deprivation tank, uses a plant brought back from a ritual in Mexico, and as the experiments go on his body begins to change too. The source is Paddy Chayefsky's own novel. The film became a disaster for him. The first director, Arthur Penn, left; by his own account the only way to leave and still be paid was to be fired. His replacement, Ken Russell, could not tolerate Chayefsky's interference and had the writer barred from the set. Chayefsky then tried to have Russell removed, failed, and finally took his name off the picture. That is why the script is credited to Sidney Aaron, which are Chayefsky's real first and middle names. The result is two films fighting inside one body: Chayefsky's dense scientific dialogue and Russell's deranged visual passages. It is William Hurt's first film, and Drew Barrymore appears in it too. Valuable for anyone who wants to see experimental American cinema at the end of the 1970s and how hallucination sequences were built with practical effects. For anyone wanting coherent science fiction, it stays split in two.