What if Paddy Chayefsky wrote the third act of 2001?

Yet another of the movies that I watched because it sounded interesting was Altered States. And then I actually sat down to watch it. Interesting is certainly an accurate word for this one.

The movie was released in 1980, but the opening scenes are set in the late 1960s. Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) and Arthur Rosenberg (Bob Balaban) are a couple of postdoc students studying psychiatry. They've found a disused sensory deprivation tank, and decide to do the great scientific method thing of experimenting upon themselves. Eddie especially spends long periods in the tank. The results are interesting, but inconclusive. One night, at a party, Eddie is introduced to Emily (Blair Brown), a doctoral student herself. The two fall in love and get married.

Fast forward several years. Eddie and Emily are married with two daughters (watch for a very young Drew Barrymore as one of the daughters), but the marriage is falling apart in part because the two don't get to spend that much time together what with all the research they're going out in the field. Edward hears about the Hinchi, an indigenous group in Mexico who still carry out the old rituals, some of which include taking hallucinogenic drugs. Edward is intrigued by this, so goes down to Mexico and wants to participate in one of the rituals.

The ritual includes cutting Edward's hand to include some of his own blood in with the ground roots and whatnot that he's going to be ingesting, and the results are really interesting, as he has a very intense hallucination. Too intense even for the Hinchi, who force him to return to the States, although at least he still has a sample of the potion that the Hinchi prepared for him.

At this point, Edward gets a really wild idea, which is to combine taking that potion with going into the sensory deprivation tank, with his good old friend Arthur montoring his condition. This time, the experiment doesn't go so well, with Edward bleeding, foaming at the mouth, and not able to talk, having had hallucinations that looked a lot like de-evolution. After cleaning Edward up, Arthur has him X-rayed.

The result is shocking: the lab tech, not having any idea that the X-ray was of Edward while he was still under the effects of the experiment, says that the X-ray is of a gorilla, something that seems scientifically impossible to normal human beings. But Edward figures out the thing to do is experiment further, taking more of the drug and spending a longer period in the sensory deprivation tank, which as you might guess threatens to destroy him and everything he holds dear.

As you might have guessed from the title of the blog post, Altered States has a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, and is radically different from everything else he wrote, or at least everything of his I've seen. William Hurt does a good job, although the material really veers into the ridiculous in the second half of the movie. As I said, it's definitely interesting, although the movie may not be a success to everybody because of how crazy it gets.

But because of how interesting it is and how the flaws are fascinating, Altered States is definitely worth a watch even if you wind up not liking it.