Spectrum was important for peppering my film growth. It was like film school to me, albeit I was only in about the 4th grade. My film experience before we subscribed consisted of TV-edited car chase movies and the occasional sci-fi epic. We borrowed a boat-anchor VCR a few times which peppered in the infrequent Cheech & Chong or Bruce Lee flick, but there wasn't much there but a slightly dusted blank slate as a film history for this boy. While Spectrum broadcast first-run films just off their theatrical jaunt, it believed in variety and most importantly films of historical importance, despite their audience size or box office cume. As I stated in the explanation of this blog series, whoever ran the show down there at Spectrum was ahead of their time. Some of the fairly recent movies it peddled at the time of the subscription, are now deeply regarded as cult classics.
Ken Russell's Altered States was fresh off of its theatrical run, but nonetheless fit into the pretentious art-film mind-funk category just as easily. A very young William Hurt plays a scientist who decides to dabble in sensory depravation in a quest for exploring the depths of the human subconscious and manages to drive himself a few versions of crazy in the process. Lots of psycho-medi-babble is bandied about by various actors-as-scientists, and I'm quite sure I remember Hurt being one of those driven men of groundbreaking ignoring warnings by his peers! At the time up-and-comer (and red-haired Jacqueline Kennedy look-a-like) Blair Brown played Hurt's put-upon lifemate in this inordinately weird opus, and I seem to remember her suffering at the altar of near-subservience, a character trait very common for females of the genre in this era.
William Hurt is now a frequent supporting actor, but his punch is still felt. His uber-bastard "Thunderbolt" Ross is one of the great baddies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he plays the role with great relish, having lost none of the power he possessed as an actor over 30 years ago. The character he plays in Altered States doesn't seem far from the type of scientific mega-geeks Ross torments with regularity in the name of the government and national defense in the MCU. But I digress.
The seeds for future films like Jacob's Ladder and The Doors were sown here, and it is obviously a movie designed to get under your skin and it does so successfully. Mind you, at the age I was, I was probably processing about 20% of what was happening, and understanding even less, but was still affected and wanted what was happening to Hurt's character to stop. Didn't anyone else in the room see my head snapping to the left and the right during the most obvious scenes, looking for an explanation or at the very least to be armed with a way to deal with it?
To hell with it, I was probably watching it alone anyway. That still isn't clear, but I did truly give myself whiplash anyway. A smarter boy would have simply run from the room. (once, and I'm not sure what prompted it, a friend, the quirky Neil, said to me: "I never run from a room" with a straight face, no hint of irony, humor, or even malice. It was one of the most hilariously glorious moments of my life) Those moments from Altered States, so easily avoided had I the gumption to do what the heroic and obviously suffering-for-all-of-us Neil never stooped to doing, are vividly implanted in my memory.
Altered States may not be a horror film by definition, but it sure as hell felt like one, and it was one of hell of a mark-leaving introduction to the class, edge, and nasty of the still undervalued William Hurt. (and the stubborn deer-in-the-headlights movie watching I subjected myself to.)
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