I'm a big fan of Body Horror. David Cronenberg is undoubtedly the king of the genre. He pretty much created it, and he certainly popularized it (Shivers, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, eXistenZ, etc.). I love 'em all. But director Ken Russell did a fine job in 1980 with William Hurt's film debut, Altered States. Let's start with the opening shot of Hurt floating in a steampunk-ish tank, followed by the sliding title sequence. Really cool. But I'm a sucker for a good title sequence. The sound in this movie is excellent, and quality sound really does make a horror movie. Sound builds tension. Images release the tension. Another thing I like about this movie: it's a genre blender. It's science fiction. It's horror. But it's also a love story wrapped in an adventure story. Only the adventure is inward bound. Hurt plays a brilliant scientist who drinks a hallucinogenic mushroom soup down in Mexico and experiences a mind-altering trip back to the origins of human consciousness. Peachy keen! So he takes the soup back to his Harvard lab and experiments with it in his isolation tank. Every time I see this flick, I want one of those tanks. The score of this movie is creepy. And there's a great ensemble cast including Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, and Charles Haid. The film has a gritty realistic look, which always helps when you're going to introduce a lot of weirdness. That's exactly what Altered States does. Now the movie isn't perfect. The dialogue sounds pretentious -- but hey, they're Harvard professors! And the overly serious mumbo jumbo about finding the Truth comes across as silly. But there's a really infectious energy going on here, too. I want to be a part of this pseudo-scientific research project. Luckily, the movie doesn't spend too much time explaining the science part, because that's the weak link. The atmosphere and effects are genuinely frightening. Hurt's mad scientist, determined to explore humankind's ancestral self despite the risks to his transmogrifying body, provides the thrills. It's more intriguing than a bunch of high school hotties running from a madman with an ax (not that I'm knocking madmen with axes). Altered States overreaches, but it does so with gusto and visual zest. If psychedelic fringe science run amok is your thing, revisit this classic. Get naked and devolve!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Altered States
I'm a big fan of Body Horror. David Cronenberg is undoubtedly the king of the genre. He pretty much created it, and he certainly popularized it (Shivers, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, eXistenZ, etc.). I love 'em all. But director Ken Russell did a fine job in 1980 with William Hurt's film debut, Altered States. Let's start with the opening shot of Hurt floating in a steampunk-ish tank, followed by the sliding title sequence. Really cool. But I'm a sucker for a good title sequence. The sound in this movie is excellent, and quality sound really does make a horror movie. Sound builds tension. Images release the tension. Another thing I like about this movie: it's a genre blender. It's science fiction. It's horror. But it's also a love story wrapped in an adventure story. Only the adventure is inward bound. Hurt plays a brilliant scientist who drinks a hallucinogenic mushroom soup down in Mexico and experiences a mind-altering trip back to the origins of human consciousness. Peachy keen! So he takes the soup back to his Harvard lab and experiments with it in his isolation tank. Every time I see this flick, I want one of those tanks. The score of this movie is creepy. And there's a great ensemble cast including Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, and Charles Haid. The film has a gritty realistic look, which always helps when you're going to introduce a lot of weirdness. That's exactly what Altered States does. Now the movie isn't perfect. The dialogue sounds pretentious -- but hey, they're Harvard professors! And the overly serious mumbo jumbo about finding the Truth comes across as silly. But there's a really infectious energy going on here, too. I want to be a part of this pseudo-scientific research project. Luckily, the movie doesn't spend too much time explaining the science part, because that's the weak link. The atmosphere and effects are genuinely frightening. Hurt's mad scientist, determined to explore humankind's ancestral self despite the risks to his transmogrifying body, provides the thrills. It's more intriguing than a bunch of high school hotties running from a madman with an ax (not that I'm knocking madmen with axes). Altered States overreaches, but it does so with gusto and visual zest. If psychedelic fringe science run amok is your thing, revisit this classic. Get naked and devolve!
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