Altered States

Part of Loft Staff Selects, a monthly series showcasing film favorites chosen by our amazing Loft Cinema staff!  This month’s film was chosen by Justin Sims!

Legendary director Ken Russell (Tommy; The Devils) gleefully applied his patented flair for cinematic strangeness to this mind-blowing 1980 sci-fi horror film, based on the novel by Oscar-winning screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (Network), about a young scientist’s dangerous obsession with discovering mankind’s true role in the universe. William Hurt (in his film debut) plays Eddie Jessup, a brilliant and rebellious Harvard psycho-physiologist who submits himself to a series of radical, mind-expanding experiments. By enclosing himself in a sensory-deprivation chamber and taking hallucinogenic drugs, Jessup hopes to explore different levels of human consciousness – a journey he believes will unlock the secrets of human evolution. But as his experiments escalate and become increasingly dangerous, Eddie plunges into the most altered state imaginable – a state from which he may never return. Also starring Blair Brown, Bob Balaban and Drew Barrymore. (Dir. by Ken Russell, USA, 102 mins., Rated R)