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Altered States

Altered States

List Price: $9.97
Your Price: $6.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THOSE 70s FLATLINERS! WHAT CARDS!
Review: Perhaps the final 70's voyage into academic hallucinatoria, has the heroes subjecting themselves into regressive transformation. Ending is a Must See for lovers of the a-ha video TAKE ON ME, and for anyone wanting to compare the Julia Roberts film FLATLINERS (also good) with another film. Hypnotic, prophetic, influential. I geuss you can tell we liked it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good movie, great sound transfer
Review: I enjoyed this movie then and now even though Paddy C. did not. The 5.1 sound transfer was great. Could have provided some additional bonus features. I made the mistake at buying this at BEST Buy for $14.95. I could have had a V8...I mean I could have purchase it from Amazon.com for less than $10. Even with shipping and handling it would have been cheaper.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great Movie, Fair Transfer
Review: Great movie but the transfer to DVD is not very good. If you love this movie it's worth the money otherwise get it on VHS. Not much in the way of extra's but worth the 14 bucks.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Alterations
Review: The sci-fi film Altered States, is on the one hand, a landmark for the genre, while at the same time, it's not quite a classic either...

Research scientist Eddie Jessup (William Hurt, in his first film role) believes other states of consciousness are as real as everyday reality. Using sensory deprivation, then adding powerful, hallucinogenic drugs, he explores these altered states and endures experiences that make madness seem a blessing.

While Altered States features a solid cast that also includes Blair Brown, as Jessup's wife Emily, Bob Balaban as Arthur Rosenberg, and Charles Haid as Mason Parrish, Professor of Endocrinology at Harvard Medical School, as well as stunning visuals. Thanks to problems with script and the original novel's author Paddy Chayefsky displeasure with the way things were being done, the film does have a certain amount of choppiness to it at times--covered up by those effects I mentioned earlier--the impact of the film is less than it could have been. Director Ken Russell fortunately uses his best asset, the cast, to their full potential.

The DVD has very limited extras. There are only a few production notes and the theatrical trailer on the disc. On the technical side, the film boasts a soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 that sounds awesome. Viewers can watch Altered States in either the full-screen or widescreen formats.

The DVD is recommended, but the film's fault lies in covering up its weaknesses with albeit good looking eye candy.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Dont Believe The Hype!!!!
Review: I'd happily soak up endless gallons of SWAK with my tongue, rather than watch this festering pile of crappola ever again!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Either Love or Hate
Review: I don't want to bash this film, but honestly, if i knew what it was before renting it i wouldn't have gotten it. It was a waist of time and money. I almost turned it off 3/4 of the way through.

In viewing it, i thought to myself that was made buy a group of people that used a little too much LSD in the 70's. If you're a "true", "hardcore" Sci-Fi fan, you may appreciate this work, but for me there is no logic or even a remote sense of linked reality. It's a film you probably either love or hate.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An exhilarating cinematic experience!
Review: 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? His scientific curiosity will not let him resist this challenge. With Ken Russell's visuals and the incredible musical effects of John Corigliano, this film can be absolutely exhilarating.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: 2.0 stars! Okay movie at best.
Review: William Hurt's character is so vain and conceited that it makes this fairly entertaining movie hard to like. The visuals in this movie are very good, but overall the movie is ridiculous in the storyline.

If you have absolutely nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon then watch this movie. Make sure you don't pass up the opportunity of watching the grass grow first. That is probably more entertaining.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Suspenseful film!
Review: Sometimes in any moment of your life maybe have decided to cross the line and explore the dark side of your brain . A group of scientists are involved in this potentially dangerous journey of the deepest places of the mind .
The film is visually stunning and terrifying . A good point to Ken Russell who was living his moist creative decade .
This film marks the debut on screen of this gifted actor : William Hurt .


Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A white guy patronizes everyone/ finds self
Review: This is the most embarassing thing I have ever seen.

Notice that when Doctor Jessup emerges from the box for the first time, having regressed to apehood and come back, he's wearing the Mexican tribal makeup. Ha! Ha! Isn't that whimsical?

Or, for example, that there is a YING YANG painted on the wall during the ancient tribal rites in Mexico.

God. This movie had so many mistaken assumptions, and those two are just some of the examples. It is relatively easy to forgive a movie about "what it means to be human" for being over-earnest, or even for being light on facts. But I seriously can't deal with how reductive and racist a view of humanity this director takes:

Look, it's a person with a different ethnic origin. They're an older prototype of the one real race, the white one. Noble savages are so pure, aren't they? Oh, look, there's a woman in the movie too. She doesn't really understand god, she has kids so she busy with that. 19th Centry eugenics meets foul, foul cheesy false mysticism. Take your pick, this movie has it all.


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