Just Say Magh-Bagh-Gagh-Bagh!
Just the other week, I watched Altered States. I must have had come across some truly primo shit, back in the day, because I remembered next to nothing about this film. I had the image of a naked scientist, in my head, floating in a sensory deprivation tank. I also had some vague, trippy, residual visuals from the film. But when I slid the disc into my laptop, I was pretty sure I'd be watching a film that, in one way or another, had some kind of statement to make.
I now suspect I might've been guzzling psilocybin tea while first watching it, so many years ago. Or perhaps I sustained a closed head injury immediately after the first time through.
At bottom, it's a mad scientist won over by love story. In this case, the mad scientist is convinced he can locate and apprehend the basis of human consciousness through self-exploration. He spends hours at a time in a tank, hallucinating. This much I remember. The visuals are. . . okay, at this point, in the film. Religious in nature. You get to see a guy with a ram's head crucified. The ram's head has thirteen eyes. Lots of flaming crosses scaling into the lens, too.
Then the mad scientist goes down to South America and falls in with some mountain tribe. They give him some sacramental potion they'd spent a week concocting and BLAMMO! he's tripping balls. Let's just say the representation of Hell, at this point, is top of the line. You should watch this film just to see the director's take on Hell.
So, the mad scientist goes back to Harvard with his mountain tribe, vision quest stash. He starts doing up massive doses in his tank. However well-intentioned the film may have been up to this point, whatever semblance of verisimilitude it might have had, it suddenly takes a very wrong-headed and unintentionally comic turn.
See, the mad scientist's psyche gets so close to the bane of our existence his physical form actually devolves into that of a protohuman. Nancy Reagan couldn't have penned a better metaphor.
Best line of the movie, from the coming-down mad scientist to his wife, totally straight-faced: "I suppose getting a call at 2:30 in the morning from the police to the effect your husband has been found sleeping naked in the city zoo might've caused you some concern."
This, after we watch a naked protohuman hunt down, kill, and eat a ram.