Rating: 
Summary: ARE YOU SERIOUS????
Review: This movie was boring as all get out!!!! The Muppets Show have better special effects! William hurt should be forced to watch this film over and over again until he wets himself and promises never to do it again!!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: It had unreached potential
Review: OK, I'm gonna make this short and sweet. This movie has some of the best potential of almost any movie out there. At the beginning it would seem that it is gonna be really interesting and thought provoking. But as the movie wears on, one realizes how little the writers actually delved into their own story's theory; the idea of altered mental states transcending the mental into the physical. Now this could be overlooked if they had still done a good job with the rest of the movie (very interesting visuals in the beginning of the movie), but once the main character turns into a primordial ape-man, one comes to the conclusion that this was simply another cheap '80's monster flick.
Anyway, like I said, this movie had great potential, and the ideas set forth were interesting - though, in my opinion, not very original. If I were you, I'd go out and rent the movie, just to see it, but don't waste your money buying it...
Rating: 
Summary: you're a flake, jessup
Review: if you like this movie, you're a flake...
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre and captivating
Review: I love sci fi and fantasy movies and this one is very thoughtful and entertaining. For the age of the film, the visuals are really spectacular.
Rating: 
Summary: Has it's moments ... but will leave you disappointed
Review: Altered States is a movie that I always wanted to see. Could never find it on video rental, so when I saw it at a reduced price on DVD I thought I'd grab it. Afterall, I quite like Ken Russell films. I had read mixed reviews on this film but was prepared to give it a fair go. Firstly, it was made in 1980. Secondly, it's important not to take it too seriously. By 40 minutes into the film, friends looked up and said "this is complete garbage, can we please turn it off". Well, we did. A day or so later I watched the rest, and then some good moments came up. The scene where Hurt becomes an apeman and roams the city is quite enjoyable. After that, the film continues its downward spiral. The ending really lets the movie down too. It is so sudden, it makes you feel [taken advantage of]. If you're a Ken Russell fan though, you'll want this movie in your collection to complete it.
DVD Summary:
The 5.1 soundtrack is the best part of the movie. In fact, it is so fantastic in many scenes that I can't applaud it enough - good use of the subwoofer. Amazing that they spent time remastering this soundtrack when the film itself was rather disappointing.
The picture quality is ok, not alot of grain. Both widescreen and full frame versions are provided on the disc.Overall Comment:
A disappointing film with some moments of impressive special effects for the time (1980).
Rating:
Summary: Run !
Review: This is one of the most senseless pieces of junk I have ever watched! Someone was trying to hard to make a movie to get some attention from the media and felled! The movie looks really retro the effects look like grade school absurbity! There isn't a plot just a fool that doesn't know when to stop tampering with his health and the laws of nature. This movie is so ridiculious it gave me a headache and I had to lay down. Watch this at your own risk...its just something thrown together and not very well done or thought out in my opinion! And of coarse there is always the supportive wife that doesn't know how to just run! This guy turns into a monkey and then he still doesn't stop. So he turns into a big blob looking thing with one arm..trust me this is just awful! Then check this out! After he turns to this Jabba looking thing he touches his wife and she turns to some Lava image looking thing. Then she jerks around into a seisure until he snaps out of his state and he touches her and she is back to normal? Then the whole showing them for 5 mins turn to sand out in the desert was Preposterious! And the monkey wasn't him nor was it a monkey, it was a totally different actor and it looked [contrived]! It looked like a man with hair all over his body and he was of Afro American decent and Willian Hurt is caucasian? Please people that is a bit much I could take or believe! I watch alot of phycological thrillers and this is just not very good... This is just plain awful[]
If you want to see something that is better done than this and makes a bit more sense but similiar see "The Cell" Arish
Rating:
Summary: Altered States vs. The Serpent and the Rainbow
Review: The movie Altered States offers a much more esoteric methodology towards the medical improvment of the human state of mind, utilizing sensory deprivation.
The Serpent and the Rainbow explores a pharmacalogical approach to sensory perception.
Sensory deprivation provides for the elimination of all sensory stimulus, where as sensory perception focuses on a particularly strong stimuli, without excluding other secondary influences.
I think this is a happy accidental link between the two movies because you don't really see it unless thought about in extent. Simply because the two movies made me think, not to mention the wonderful acting and directing, they are two of my favorites in my extensive collection of DvDs.
Amy Davies.....12-13-02 (Btw, I'm 30 years old, but the options listed wouldn't let me go above 12.)
Rating:
Summary: too Flaky sci-fi
Review: William Hurt is Jessup, a brilliant flake who spends just about all of the 1960's pontificating about "race memory" - the theory that memory is passed down genetically along an unbroken line from the dawn of life on the planet. (Race memory was probably a popular idea in the '60's, but to Jessup, it's and obsession since it would satisfy his intellectual compulsion to disregard humanity and its emotional entanglements as being that far removed from the apes; it would also erase any inhibitions he has against free love and drug experimentation). Jessup is a major flake - even the pot-smoking, free-love, pseudo-intellectualism spouting colleagues that populate the film's early scenes realize that. While time passes, and Jessup's friends attempt to outgrow the '60's, that decade never ends for Jessup. Instead, he loves then discards Emily (Blair Brown), a beautiful and brilliant woman who never stops loving him. And he continues searching for evidence that will back up his theories. Divorcing Emily, Jessup travels to South America where indigenous shamen claim to have discovered the secret of "first flower" - a hallucinogen allowing those who take it to see back to the beginning of time. In a move that seems inexplicable (not to mention unscientific), Jessup tries the "flower" himself, and falls into a chasm of horrible visions. Too much of a scientist to admit he believes the visions, at first, Jessup takes more of the flower with him to Chicago, where he continues experimenting on it...and himself. Using a sensory deprivation tank to enhance the effects of "the flower" he has already taken, Jessup experiences visions of primordial humans. And then the visions begin to externalize and become a part of his reality'and everybody else's. With Jessup's reality breaking down, only his love for Emily can save him from oblivion. This was a frustrating flick - skirting over why anybody, let alone a smart guy like Jessup would risk his health and mind on the odious, conciousness altering brew. (If a substance can look evil, the first flower would fit the bill perfectly). Though "States" wants us to believe that Jessup is too smart for his own good, it seems wholly unscientific to be both the subject and observer of an experiment. While Jessup is supposedly searching for race memories of mankind's hominid (and thus godless) origins, the imagery of some of his visions (which include hellfire, crucifixes and director Ken Russel's trademark serpent) look downright fundamentalist. That would make some sense if the script gave us any other hints of Jessup's fears of divine besides his visions (the film makes an explicit point that the conflict isn't between faithless intellectualism and anti-intellectual faith, but between loveless intellectualism and love). The whole primordial-man and race-memory theme soon become as muddled as Jessup's way-out hallucinations. Worst of all is the language in which the main characters - all avowed whizkids - speak to each other, a sort of gibberish you'd expect to hear in a Robert Altman movie about a bunch of stoned NYU academics at a party in 1967. It's a stream of psycho-babble that isn't so much understood as withstood. Jessup's supposed to be the last flake left alive, but all of the characters here sound like him. Trying to look past the flick's unlikable characters and incredible plot turns only reveals a gaping hole in its sci-fi premise - there's no attempt to explain how Jessup's hallucinations actually become his (and our) reality. But worst of all is that Jessup is not merely an unlikable character - after suffering his gibberish and watching him abandon the loving and lovely Emily for a string of grad students, you'd think everybody would be better off with him as a hominid. Subjecting himself to the "first flower" shows his depraved indifference to his own welfare, making it easy to understand why he has little care about anybody else's.
Rating:
Summary: Sentimental Head Trip
Review: Paddy Chayefsky had a lot of high hopes for ALTERED STATES but, after clashing with director Ken Russell, he was despondent enough to pull his name from the credits (the screenplay is attributed to "Sydney Aaron")--a major blow that the author of MARTY, THE HOSPITAL and NETWORK would disown his own creation. Chayefsky was especially enraged that Russell had the actors cramming their mouths with food while rapidly running through the scientific exchanges. This has always been a sentimental favorite and it definitely has more imagination than most of the sci-fi/horror films I've seen since then.
Every time I've watched it, the movie makes me wonder about a variety of thoughts and experiences, what should be reached for and what should be valued.
How many movies can do that for anyone?
Rating: 
Summary: Mind altering.
Review: William Hurt plays the mad scientist in this creepy film about what can happen when you mess with evolution. While conducting an experiment on different states of consciousness, an ugly truth begins to reveal itself. Our protagonist believes from the very beginning of the film that there is one basic elemental truth inside of our own minds, and that if he just sifts long enough through 600 billion years of memory he believes is stored in the human mind, he will learn forever the true meaning of life. He proudly carries out these experiments while he is floating vertically in an isolation tank filled with water, while Kurt Russel monitors the electrodes attached to him. One day, what comes out of the tank is not a man. What comes out - well, I'll leave that for you to see - but suffice to say that man's primal nature externalized is not a very pretty thing. A good movie that will keep you sitting for the duration.
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