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philosoraptor42Reviews of two science fiction movies "Altered States" and "This Island Earth". The first of these films, "Altered States", contains a scene which terrified me as a child, but it's only now that I've finally come to see the whole film and understand the context.
Altered States (1980)
William Hurt stars as, to be quite frank, a hippy experimenting with the effects of combining drug use with sensory deprivation in a flotation tank, apparently to better understand the condition of schizophrenia. Hurt himself apparently experienced religious visions when he was younger which stopped when he lost his faith upon the death of his father. It seems that Hurt's character is able to see visions again as a result of using the flotation tank along with sensory deprivation and is really enjoying the process a great deal.
So far, so weird. Anyway, meanwhile he has a fairly bizarre relationship where he doesn't express any real love or commitment, but his girlfriend decides to try getting married anyway. (Guess how well that turns out.) So now our detached and distant (now married) protagonist hears about a drug in Mexico which apparently provides the exact same experience for all users. He asks what the experience is supposed to feel like and then he takes the drug. From what I could tell, what he experienced was completely unlike what he'd been told to expect and I'd have said that put a hole in the whole "common experience to all users" theory.
Anyway, he comes back home to do more tests with the drug, this time increasing the intensity with use of the flotation tank and it is at this point the film goes utterly barmy. Unfortunately, having reached this far into the film, telling you what happens would most definitely be a spoiler. I think for once I may need a spoiler section at the end of this post. Obviously I'll mark the spoilers section very clearly just be careful when scrolling down for the comments (and naturally I can't promise that all commenters will give good spoiler warnings for spoilery threads. Please use spoiler warnings if you discuss spoilers in the comments).
Since I've decided to spend my review so far snarkily outlining the plot, it should be fairly clear that I didn't like this film. William Hurt's protagonist character regularly has bizarre visions with echoes of "The Holy Mountain"-esque imagery. That was interesting enough, but you can't rely on interesting imagery and some neat visual effects. At some point we need to deal with characters and plot, both of which were utterly stupid. Not the acting and not even necessarily the central ideas of the film, but mostly the dialogue and the execution.
None of the conversations between William Hurt and his love interest, played by Blair Brown, felt like discussions by real people. I suppose that both their characters are supposed to sound like psychology essays because they are both experts in that sort of field. However, somehow William Hurt seems better able to make that stuff sound natural. Not sensible, mind you, but natural. Since his character is quite clearly a hippy, when he goes into semi-philosophical rants, it doesn't seem out of place. For example:
"She insists she's in love with me - whatever that is. What she means is she prefers the senseless pain we inflict on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves. But I'm not afraid of that solitary pain."
A more explicitly hippy line is this:
"Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear - it's still in there. There's a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I'm telling you it's in the goddamned limbic system."
It's pretty annoying, but it's said in a bar with other people in the bar calling him nuts, so it makes sense. Still, I can't help but feel that I am expected to side with William Hurt's hippy nonsense. It's rather annoying to hear him, in that same scene, describing Buddhist meditation as focus on the self, when actually Buddhist meditation is specifically principled on giving up the self i.e. the complete opposite.
Blair Brown has the arduous task of taking the same kind of self-absorbed ponderous BS dialogue and yet somehow coming across as the voice of reason. She's also expected to convince the audience that William Hurt's character somehow has some hidden charm rather than just being a selfish prick who doesn't care about her and whom she'd be better off without. The blog title quote shows this. The full quote is:
"He doesn't love me. He never loved me. I was never real to him. Nothing in the human experience is real to him." which express this.
She delivers this line crying. Somehow "nothing in the human experience" seems like an odd turn of phrase for someone who is emotionally distraught. Not only that, but the intention of the movie seems to be that such details are supposed to make me intrigued about William Hurt's character. In fact, I found that his whole relationship with Blair Brown's character made me despise William Hurt's protagonist rather than just thinking he was an idiot.
When the movie goes stupid, special effects are supposed to make up for the complete lack of realistic character development. William Hurt's exasperated boss ends up being a far more compelling character with only a tenth of the set-up (though I suppose "exasperated boss" is a typical stereotype).
The stupidity of the movie (which will remain unsaid in this spoiler-free section) was admittedly fairly imaginative. Perhaps in better hands it could have captured my imagination a bit better and have carried me through the Herculean task of suspending my disbelief when confronted by this bizarre nonsense. There are probably a lot of movies with more stupid content that I've loved, but I'm having trouble thinking of one right now.
In the end, however, this movie fails. It fails to develop engaging characters, decent dialogue or an interesting plotline. In the end, I think the entertainment side of this movie comes from its snark-value. It is mindbogglingly stupid and that can be enough to make something worth a watch sometimes..... Perhaps not this time.
So yeah, my score:
E- (Awful)
So yeah, the interesting bit. When I was younger my parents had a videotape. What often happens when you record something is that you catch the end of the programme before and in this case it must have been this movie. My parents have probably never seen Altered States, but it happened to be on TV before something they DID want to watch. Sometimes the thing recorded at the beginning of the videotape can be really hard to record over because by the time the recorder starts a few seconds have passed. As a result, for a long time whenever we wanted to watch something on that tape, those first 10 seconds or so would freak me right out. Anyway, it just so happens that the bit of Altered States at the beginning of this videotape that made me want to run out of the room terrified is available on youtube. This is NOT a spoiler. If you just watch the first 40 or 50 seconds, you won't have a clue what is going on and so it will simply mean that you'll know what one of the major effects scenes looks like before time.
So, if you don't mind knowing about one of the later effects scenes in this movie, check out the first 40-50 seconds of this clip. Try to tell me that you, as a 6 year old child, would not be absolutely horrified:
(video link)
(The spoiler section for "Altered States" will be at the bottom of the page after the review for "This Island Earth")
This Island Earth (1955)
A scientist finds that a mysterious group is taking an interest in him. First an item is sent to and him and his assistant that is far superior to their own technology. When they are sent a manual to tell them how to make a large machine, they decide to take up the challenge. The result of the construction is a special communicator allowing a mysterious figure to finally reveal himself. This mysterious figure offers to allow the scientist access to even more of this superior technology.
When the scientist takes a pilot-less plane to an isolated location he finds that he is not the only scientist being asked to work for this mysterious organisation. Slowly more details of the mysterious figure and his motivations are revealed.
Okay, so that's about as much of the plot as I can reveal and I must say that by that stage in the movie I was REALLY interested to know what would happen next. I just wished the film had progressed a bit quicker. The mysterious figure, known as Exeter, has a few too many scenes where he shocks our protagonist with his use of powerful lasers and really I was hoping for a little more genuine drama and a little less frustrating build-up. The pondering dialogue is all very well, but I often felt they were asking the wrong questions and the protagonist was all too calm about his predicament.
So a strange organisation with hugely superior technology is willing scientists to work with them out of pure curiosity, but can the organisation be trusted? Unfortunately, to make this sense of foreboding work, we really needed more focus on this part of the film. The sense of mistrust needed to be slowly revealed and the threat had to be gradually raised, whereas actually it always felt like rather too much was on the table from the beginning. The filmmakers are a little too keen to move on to the bit dealing with the motivations of Exeter and (look, there's an alien and a spaceship on the poster, do I really need to pretend any longer? Oh okay...) his "mysterious organisation", so the filmmakers can show off the fancy (and now extremely dated) effects that they've spent all their money on.
There's too much focus on the colourful effects and the covoluted backstory of the *ahem* mysterious organisation and not enough focus on actually building up a compelling story. This doesn't really rank up with "Them!" or "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers" where the plot is actually quite carefully built up. This is much more a case of "here's the story, A then B then C". It wasn't so bad, but it plods along at a slow pace and forgets to make us actually care.
D- (Not good and not very entertaining)
SPOILER SECTION FOR ALTERED STATES. LOOK AWAY IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES. SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES BELOW!!!
Spoiler Section for "Altered States" (1980)
Okay, so you want to know what was so barmy? The drug William Hurt picks up in Mexico allows him to tap into mankinds unconscious knowledge stored in DNA. (<What?> Hippy logic. Just run with it....) So he finds himself hallucinating the experience of a proto-human. A man-ape essentially. And his hallucination... becomes real! He temporarily changes into a more simian-like structure.
So he tries out the drugs again, turns into an ape-man properly. He then goes rampaging around town and decides to kill a goat. The whole scene was laughable.
The scene which terrified me as a child is him unable to control the effects of the drug as it makes real the primordial beginnings of the universe (<all contained in our DNA?> Um.... yeah apparently). But naturally he is saved.... by the power of love. *facepalm*
If I was to give a one-word review for "Altered States" it would be "facepalm" in massive bolded letters. I never imagined from that clip that the actual film would actually have me laughing out loud. However, I don't think anyone can deny that the clip, on its own and out of context, is pretty scary.
End of Spoiler Section for "Altered States" (1980)
SPOILER SECTION FOR ALTERED STATES ABOVE. DON'T LOOK AT THE SECTION ABOVE IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES. SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES ABOVE!!!
Altered States (1980)
William Hurt stars as, to be quite frank, a hippy experimenting with the effects of combining drug use with sensory deprivation in a flotation tank, apparently to better understand the condition of schizophrenia. Hurt himself apparently experienced religious visions when he was younger which stopped when he lost his faith upon the death of his father. It seems that Hurt's character is able to see visions again as a result of using the flotation tank along with sensory deprivation and is really enjoying the process a great deal.
So far, so weird. Anyway, meanwhile he has a fairly bizarre relationship where he doesn't express any real love or commitment, but his girlfriend decides to try getting married anyway. (Guess how well that turns out.) So now our detached and distant (now married) protagonist hears about a drug in Mexico which apparently provides the exact same experience for all users. He asks what the experience is supposed to feel like and then he takes the drug. From what I could tell, what he experienced was completely unlike what he'd been told to expect and I'd have said that put a hole in the whole "common experience to all users" theory.
Anyway, he comes back home to do more tests with the drug, this time increasing the intensity with use of the flotation tank and it is at this point the film goes utterly barmy. Unfortunately, having reached this far into the film, telling you what happens would most definitely be a spoiler. I think for once I may need a spoiler section at the end of this post. Obviously I'll mark the spoilers section very clearly just be careful when scrolling down for the comments (and naturally I can't promise that all commenters will give good spoiler warnings for spoilery threads. Please use spoiler warnings if you discuss spoilers in the comments).
Since I've decided to spend my review so far snarkily outlining the plot, it should be fairly clear that I didn't like this film. William Hurt's protagonist character regularly has bizarre visions with echoes of "The Holy Mountain"-esque imagery. That was interesting enough, but you can't rely on interesting imagery and some neat visual effects. At some point we need to deal with characters and plot, both of which were utterly stupid. Not the acting and not even necessarily the central ideas of the film, but mostly the dialogue and the execution.
None of the conversations between William Hurt and his love interest, played by Blair Brown, felt like discussions by real people. I suppose that both their characters are supposed to sound like psychology essays because they are both experts in that sort of field. However, somehow William Hurt seems better able to make that stuff sound natural. Not sensible, mind you, but natural. Since his character is quite clearly a hippy, when he goes into semi-philosophical rants, it doesn't seem out of place. For example:
"She insists she's in love with me - whatever that is. What she means is she prefers the senseless pain we inflict on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves. But I'm not afraid of that solitary pain."
A more explicitly hippy line is this:
"Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear - it's still in there. There's a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I'm telling you it's in the goddamned limbic system."
It's pretty annoying, but it's said in a bar with other people in the bar calling him nuts, so it makes sense. Still, I can't help but feel that I am expected to side with William Hurt's hippy nonsense. It's rather annoying to hear him, in that same scene, describing Buddhist meditation as focus on the self, when actually Buddhist meditation is specifically principled on giving up the self i.e. the complete opposite.
Blair Brown has the arduous task of taking the same kind of self-absorbed ponderous BS dialogue and yet somehow coming across as the voice of reason. She's also expected to convince the audience that William Hurt's character somehow has some hidden charm rather than just being a selfish prick who doesn't care about her and whom she'd be better off without. The blog title quote shows this. The full quote is:
"He doesn't love me. He never loved me. I was never real to him. Nothing in the human experience is real to him." which express this.
She delivers this line crying. Somehow "nothing in the human experience" seems like an odd turn of phrase for someone who is emotionally distraught. Not only that, but the intention of the movie seems to be that such details are supposed to make me intrigued about William Hurt's character. In fact, I found that his whole relationship with Blair Brown's character made me despise William Hurt's protagonist rather than just thinking he was an idiot.
When the movie goes stupid, special effects are supposed to make up for the complete lack of realistic character development. William Hurt's exasperated boss ends up being a far more compelling character with only a tenth of the set-up (though I suppose "exasperated boss" is a typical stereotype).
The stupidity of the movie (which will remain unsaid in this spoiler-free section) was admittedly fairly imaginative. Perhaps in better hands it could have captured my imagination a bit better and have carried me through the Herculean task of suspending my disbelief when confronted by this bizarre nonsense. There are probably a lot of movies with more stupid content that I've loved, but I'm having trouble thinking of one right now.
In the end, however, this movie fails. It fails to develop engaging characters, decent dialogue or an interesting plotline. In the end, I think the entertainment side of this movie comes from its snark-value. It is mindbogglingly stupid and that can be enough to make something worth a watch sometimes..... Perhaps not this time.
So yeah, my score:
E- (Awful)
So yeah, the interesting bit. When I was younger my parents had a videotape. What often happens when you record something is that you catch the end of the programme before and in this case it must have been this movie. My parents have probably never seen Altered States, but it happened to be on TV before something they DID want to watch. Sometimes the thing recorded at the beginning of the videotape can be really hard to record over because by the time the recorder starts a few seconds have passed. As a result, for a long time whenever we wanted to watch something on that tape, those first 10 seconds or so would freak me right out. Anyway, it just so happens that the bit of Altered States at the beginning of this videotape that made me want to run out of the room terrified is available on youtube. This is NOT a spoiler. If you just watch the first 40 or 50 seconds, you won't have a clue what is going on and so it will simply mean that you'll know what one of the major effects scenes looks like before time.
So, if you don't mind knowing about one of the later effects scenes in this movie, check out the first 40-50 seconds of this clip. Try to tell me that you, as a 6 year old child, would not be absolutely horrified:
(video link)
(The spoiler section for "Altered States" will be at the bottom of the page after the review for "This Island Earth")
This Island Earth (1955)
A scientist finds that a mysterious group is taking an interest in him. First an item is sent to and him and his assistant that is far superior to their own technology. When they are sent a manual to tell them how to make a large machine, they decide to take up the challenge. The result of the construction is a special communicator allowing a mysterious figure to finally reveal himself. This mysterious figure offers to allow the scientist access to even more of this superior technology.
When the scientist takes a pilot-less plane to an isolated location he finds that he is not the only scientist being asked to work for this mysterious organisation. Slowly more details of the mysterious figure and his motivations are revealed.
Okay, so that's about as much of the plot as I can reveal and I must say that by that stage in the movie I was REALLY interested to know what would happen next. I just wished the film had progressed a bit quicker. The mysterious figure, known as Exeter, has a few too many scenes where he shocks our protagonist with his use of powerful lasers and really I was hoping for a little more genuine drama and a little less frustrating build-up. The pondering dialogue is all very well, but I often felt they were asking the wrong questions and the protagonist was all too calm about his predicament.
So a strange organisation with hugely superior technology is willing scientists to work with them out of pure curiosity, but can the organisation be trusted? Unfortunately, to make this sense of foreboding work, we really needed more focus on this part of the film. The sense of mistrust needed to be slowly revealed and the threat had to be gradually raised, whereas actually it always felt like rather too much was on the table from the beginning. The filmmakers are a little too keen to move on to the bit dealing with the motivations of Exeter and (look, there's an alien and a spaceship on the poster, do I really need to pretend any longer? Oh okay...) his "mysterious organisation", so the filmmakers can show off the fancy (and now extremely dated) effects that they've spent all their money on.
There's too much focus on the colourful effects and the covoluted backstory of the *ahem* mysterious organisation and not enough focus on actually building up a compelling story. This doesn't really rank up with "Them!" or "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers" where the plot is actually quite carefully built up. This is much more a case of "here's the story, A then B then C". It wasn't so bad, but it plods along at a slow pace and forgets to make us actually care.
D- (Not good and not very entertaining)
SPOILER SECTION FOR ALTERED STATES. LOOK AWAY IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES. SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES BELOW!!!
Spoiler Section for "Altered States" (1980)
Okay, so you want to know what was so barmy? The drug William Hurt picks up in Mexico allows him to tap into mankinds unconscious knowledge stored in DNA. (<What?> Hippy logic. Just run with it....) So he finds himself hallucinating the experience of a proto-human. A man-ape essentially. And his hallucination... becomes real! He temporarily changes into a more simian-like structure.
So he tries out the drugs again, turns into an ape-man properly. He then goes rampaging around town and decides to kill a goat. The whole scene was laughable.
The scene which terrified me as a child is him unable to control the effects of the drug as it makes real the primordial beginnings of the universe (<all contained in our DNA?> Um.... yeah apparently). But naturally he is saved.... by the power of love. *facepalm*
If I was to give a one-word review for "Altered States" it would be "facepalm" in massive bolded letters. I never imagined from that clip that the actual film would actually have me laughing out loud. However, I don't think anyone can deny that the clip, on its own and out of context, is pretty scary.
End of Spoiler Section for "Altered States" (1980)
SPOILER SECTION FOR ALTERED STATES ABOVE. DON'T LOOK AT THE SECTION ABOVE IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES. SPOILERS FOR ALTERED STATES ABOVE!!!
