***“Night of the Apeman” mixed with some pretty heady material***

In the late 60s and mid-70s, a psychopathologist (William Hurt) from the New York/New England area honestly seeks ultimate truth and the origins of humanity through dubious experiments with sensory deprivation mixed with drugs, including a potent mixture used in ceremonies by Mexican AmerIndians. This leads to altered states of consciousness and amazing primordial revelations. Blair Brown is on hand as his romantic interest while Bob Balaban and Charles Haid appear as his colleagues, the latter a scientific version of a Pharisee.

Directed by Ken Russell, “Altered States” (198o) is a mature sci-fi drama with elements of mystery/horror. It comes across as a meshing of movies like “Wolfen” (1981), “An American Werewolf in London” (1981), Russell’s later “The Lair of the White Worm” (1988) and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). One of the fascinating things about the movie is that it shows how a person can reach other realms while in an isolated location through the power of the mind/spirit, albeit in this case with the assistance of drugs.

I can relate to a degree. For instance, eleven years ago I was sleeping in bed (during the day) having an intense dream when my wife burst into the room to wake me up. The smoke alarm outside the door was blaring like crazy, but there was no smoke or fire (or heat). The intense energy evoked by my dream obviously set it off because, as soon as I woke, it suddenly stopped. This happened again the next week. What can explain this except the untapped power of the mind and focused energy?

Anyway, the apeman sequence is one of the best parts of the movie and recalls those werewolf flicks noted above (of course “Wolfen” isn’t really a werewolf picture). But “Altered States” is so much more than a standard creature feature or nature-runs-amok flick. The apeman make-up is great and the bizarre imaginings are similar to the same in “The Lair of the White Worm.” While I disagree with the evolutionary nonsense (humans didn’t evolve from apes, rolling my eyes), this is a fantasy about finding the truth by Ken Russell and so I don’t expect those kinds of details to be accurate anyway.

Blair is winsome in a girl-next-door kind of way and Russell doesn’t fail to capture her beauty (and I’m not tawkin about the top nudity), although that’s there too, if you’re interested.

I suggest using the subtitles since a lot of the jargon is pretty technical. It helps the viewer to stay with the story if you can understand what the characters are saying and discussing.

The movie runs 1 hour, 42 minutes and was shot in New York City (including the Bronx Zoo); Boston; Sierra Tarahumara, Chihuahua, Mexico (the rock formations); Burbank Studios and a VA hospital in Los Angeles.

GRADE: B

"Altered States" is a film that I really had to think about before I decided if I actually liked it. I was initially put off by the ever so smart scientists. All of their musings and soapbox speeches seemed entirely unnatural. Then again maybe I just hang around a lower IQ'ed crowd. Eddie and Emily seemed too smarmy and self-centered for me to really feel anything for as characters. In fact I didn't like them. Later I began to sympathize with Eddie. He went from conceited to just driven...driven to find out the secret of life. The characters of Arthur and Mason were thankfully there to keep the story grounded in any sort of reality. Eddie's hallucinations were at times spectacular to watch. Many of them made no real sense but then again I was stone sober when I watched it. There is some religious symbolism early on primarily visions conjured up from the Book of Revelations. SPOILERS AHEAD...I thought that the special effects were pretty good for 1980 especially Eddie's transformation into a "caveman". The later hallucination sequences were quite long and of course reminded me of some of the drawn out sequences in "2001: A Space Odyssey". The final experiment results in some imagery that is either symbolic or impossible to fathom ever actually being physically possible. This more than anything else bothered me. How could Emily have possibly rescued Eddie from the regressive state that he was in simply by reaching into some whirlpool of fog? SPOILERS DONE...At any rate the ending of the film seems rushed but it is satisfying though I prefer dark endings to weird movies like this.