Ten Days of Terror!: Altered States

Film: Altered States
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

I know I’ve seen Altered States at some point in the past, although it’s been years. I remember the vague outlines of the story and a few of the details, but I’d lost quite a bit of it. I didn’t realize that Altered States was based on a Paddy Chayefsky novel; I did remember that it was directed by Ken Russell. It’s the sort of movie that is obviously directed by Russell, or possibly David Cronenberg. It’s perhaps closer to suggest that it’s clearly Russell possibly influenced by Croenenberg’s stylish body horror.

Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) is an abnormal psychologist studying schizophrenia. This leads him to the belief that schizophrenics are not necessarily insane, but somehow experiencing a different form of consciousness. In his work with his patients, he uses a sensory deprivation tank, finding the experience to be very much like entering a hallucinatory state from which he has only vague memories. Around the same time, he meets Emily (Blair Brown), a PhD candidate in anthropology. Eventually, the two get married.

Wrestling with a Problem

Film: Women in Love
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Women in Love was one of those movies that has been unfindable for me since I started the Oscars lists. No library in my network has it; NrtFlix doesn’t have it. It’s not on any streaming service I can find. Because of this, I was thrilled when it showed up on TCM. When I finally track down a rarity, I tend to watch it right away. In the case of this movie, I have to wonder why it was so hard to find.

This is not because Women in Love is a great or even a good movie. It’s overlong and filled with the kind of excess that can only exist in a Ken Russell film. No, it’s about this film’s unique place in film history. It is the first time an actress won for a role that included nudity. It was Ken Russell’s only nomination. It was also one of the first mainstream movies to feature full-frontal male nudity. I don’t get why films with multiple nominations—and a win—get so lost. Sure, it’s not a great film, but it has history.

Tommy

Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

There are times, and this is one of them, where a summary won’t handle it. I can’t begin to explain Tommy. Ken Russell’s films are pretty fubar in the best of times, but Tommy makes movies like Altered States, The Devils, and Gothic look like Sunday brunch. This is an acid trip with a psilocybin chaser, and is very much a film that I can only imagine would be a far different and perhaps more meaningful experience if watched in a completely altered state. It also helps if you like the music of The Who.

Tommy is a rock opera in every way. It’s based on the concept album by The Who (the rock part) and has no real spoken dialogue (the opera part). It starts out pretty normal, except for the music and singing. Captain Walker (Robert Powell) and his wife Nora (Ann-Margret) spend an idyllic day together before he heads off to fly bombers in World War II. He’s reported lost, and not long after, she has a baby that she names Tommy. Fast forward a couple of years and Nora meets Frank Hobbs (Oliver Reed). The two are eventually married and life is good. And then Captain Walker returns. Shocked that his wife is remarried, a fight breaks out and Frank kills Captain Walker by beating him over the head with a lamp. Tommy witnesses all of this. Terrified, Frank and Nora tell the boy that he didn’t see or hear anything and will never talk of it. This immediately turns Tommy into a psychosomatic Helen Keller, unable to see, hear, or speak.

Off Script: The Lair of the White Worm

Film: The Lair of the White Worm
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

You just have to love Ken Russell. Even when his films aren’t that good, they’re fun as all hell. Additionally, once you’ve seen a Ken Russell film, you can spot one a mile off. I’ve seen four or five of them, although it’s been some time since I saw Gothic and I’m not sure I saw all of Mahler. Still, there are more than a few similarities between The Devils, Altered States, and today’s film, The Lair of the White Worm to suggest that Russell has a definable style, or at least an oeuvre.

The Lair of the White Worm is loosely based on the book by Bram Stoker of “Dracula” fame. As bizarre as Dracula is in places, it’s got nothing on this one, particularly filtered through Russell’s sensibilities. An archaeology student named Angus (Peter Capaldi when he was very young and blessed with a heady of playful curls) discovers an odd, giant skull on the property of a pair of sisters running a farm. Mary (Sammi Davis) and Eve (Catherine Oxenberg) have kept the farm going despite having their parents go missing the year before. Meanwhile, the new Lord James D’Ampton (a very fresh-faced Hugh Grant) throws a party to commemorate his ancestor’s killing of a legendary dragon/wyrm/worm.

Sin, or Something Like It

Film: The Devils
Format: Internet video on laptop.

After yesterday’s film, it makes a kind of sense to watch a film that is very much in the same sort of vein but with far more artistic credibility. Of course, I didn’t have anything left on The List that really fit the bill…until the news that the new edition had been released. One of those new films is The Devils, the often-banned, X-rated psychodrama by auteur filmmaker Ken Russell. Once I saw that had made it, I knew that was the film for today. You never know what you’ll get with a Ken Russell film, but there are a few things you can guess pretty accurately. Any Ken Russell film will be wildly inappropriate, flamboyant beyond all measure, disturbing, irreverent, and overtly sexual. The Devils is not only all of that, but far more extreme than any of the other Russell film I’ve seen to this point.

The prime mover of the plot is the battle between the Protestants and Catholics in France under the rule of Louis XIII. As the film starts, we see Louis himself (Graham Armitage) involved in a sort of flamboyant gay pageant on the birth of Venus, with the king as Venus. What follows is something like a power play by Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue). Richelieu wishes for increased power by destroying the walls of many of the towns under the pretense of wanting to prevent a Huguenot uprising from gathering in the towns . Louis agrees, but leaves out the city of Loudun, since he had promised to leave those walls intact.