Altered States

1 9 8 0 (USA)

William Hurt made his film debut in this sci-fi/horror flick, playing Dr Eddie Jessup, a college professor who conducts  experiments with hallucinogenic drugs and a tank full of lukewarm water in order to tap into the existence of early man. 

At first he sees sex as a mystical experience, then imagines himself crucified on a cross, then emerges in a state of rapture. 

Years later, in Boston, he's married to a fellow student (Blair Brown) and is the father of two kids (one of them is Drew Barrymore in her movie debut). Jessup is still crazy and, between teaching classes at Harvard Medical School, he's still determined to follow in the footsteps of such early experimenters with drugs as Timothy Leary, Aldus Huxley, and Dr. John Lilly to see just how far a man can go in altered states of consciousness to bridge the gap between genetic chemistry and total madness.

Dr. Jessup, sacrifices his marriage, his children, and almost his own sanity by eating hallucinogenic mushrooms, regressing in the water tank to a simian state, then to that of an anthropoid, and then to that of a caveman.

In the last transfer, he reverts to the womb and achieves an embryonic state that unravels the clues to evolution-and he almost loses his life in the process. 

Based on the novel by Paddy Chayevsky and directed by the usually uncontrollable Ken Russell. This is one of Russell's best films - ambitious, frightening, visually exciting-absorbing without overreaching or overstating, he found the perfect formula for blending all the right elements of drama, fantasy, science fiction, melodrama, and horror in a single film.

TRIVIA NOTE
A few years later, the music video for Take On Me by A-Ha ripped off the final scene of this film.