Altered States(1980)

Name: Altered States
Director: Ken Russell
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Released: Dec 25, 1980
Cast: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid, Thaao Penghlis

Warner Bros.

R
1h 42m

Release Date: Dec 25, 1980 | Limited

A psycho-physiologist experiments with drugs and a sensory-deprivation tank and has visions he believes are genetic memories.

Releases

Original Release | Dec 25, 1980

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Box Office Results

Updated as of Jul 13, 2026 11:17 AM ET

Results

Opening Weekend US & Canada:
$174,650
Total US & Canada:
$19,853,892
Total International
$6
Total Worldwide:
$19,853,898

Current Showtimes

orround

Mon Aug 10
Tue Aug 11
Wed Aug 12
Thu Aug 13
Fri Aug 14
Sat Aug 15
Sun Aug 16

Director & Top Cast

Ken Russell
Director

William Hurt
Eddie Jessup

Blair Brown
Emily Jessup

Bob Balaban
Arthur Rosenberg

Charles Haid
Mason Parrish

Thaao Penghlis
Eccheverria

Miguel Godreau

Primal Man

Dori Brenner

Sylvia Rosenberg

Peter Brandon

Hobart

Charles White-Eagle

The Brujo

Drew Barrymore

Margaret Jessup

Megan Jeffers

Grace Jessup

Jack Murdock

Hector Orteco

Francis X. McCarthy

Obispo

Deborah Baltzell

Schizophrenic Patient

Evan Richards

Young Rosenberg

Hap Lawrence

Endocrinology Fellow

John Walter Davis

Medical Technician

Technical Specifications

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States

Language: English,Spanish

Summaries

Plot Summary

In 1967 New York City, psycho physiologist Edward 'Eddie' Jessup (William Hurt) spends time floating in an isolation tank, researching sensory deprivation. He hallucinates religious allegories and cries while re-experiencing his father's painful death. His friend Arthur Rosenberg (Bob Balaban), a pharmacologist, record his EEG tracings. Jessup admits he doesn't know what he's searching for.At a party, Jessup meets Emily (Blair Brown) a doctoral candidate in physical anthropology. After they make passionate love, he reveals that has a child he believed in God and had visions... until his father died and the visions stopped. Emily realizes that he is someone willing to sell his soul for Truth. She tries to convince him that "life doesn't have truths. And that for Jessup's fanatical search for 'Truth' all he has done is replace God with the Original Self.Both Jessup and Emily get teaching positions at Harvard University. Emily suggests that they get married. He agrees, although he cannot reciprocate her great love for him.In a jump forward to 1974, Arthur and is wife Sylvia (Dori Brenner) move to Boston. They learn that Eddie and Emily Jessup, whom have two daughters, are separating. Jessup has no time for a family and sentimental feelings when he must find his Original Self. Emily travels to Nairobi, Kenya to study baboons. Jessup goes to South American to participate in a mushroom ceremony held by a backward tribe of Maya descendants. All who partake are supposed to have a common experience. When Jessup drinks the ceremonial liquid, he hallucinates he is propelled into a crack into Nothing, from which, the Mayan chief explains, comes one's unborn soul.After returning to Boston, Jessup resumes isolation tank experimentation while Arthur and his friend Mason Parris (Charles Haid) record his words. He injects himself with the mushroom solution and has amazing hallucination and blackouts while in the tank. At one point, he tells his assistants that he has become an ape man and is killing a sheep. He emerges from the tank with blood on his mouth; X-rays reveal that his skull has temporarily take on the shape of a gorilla skull. At night, Jessup briefly experiments genetic changes, and hair grows on his body.Emily returns to Boston from her trip to Kenya in which she is still in love with Jessup and worried that he is cracking up. He goes to the tank along and emerges as an ape man. He brutally beats a guard before escaping to the zoo. There, he kills and eats a sheep. Jessup is discovered by the police... in his human form. Jessup insists that he go back into the tank with Emily, Arthur and Mason present to witness the realty that he can really turn into an ape man. There is an explosion that knocks out Arthur and Mason. A whirlpool vortex forms in the lab and Jessup, in en embryonic state, is sucked toward the moment of creation. Emily pull him out.Jessup tells Emily he know that what all that is important is human life, not terrible moment of creation. Only her love is keeping him from being pulled back to that time. Suddenly, he changes into his embryonic form. Emily tells him to fight it if he loves her. They touch and she becomes an energy form. Jesusp slams his arm into the wall over and over. Suddenly, human again, he hugs Emily, who also reverts to her human form.

Storyline

In the late 1960s, just for a lark, graduate student Eddie Jessup, known for being unconventional, brilliant and slightly mad, conducts experiments with an isolation chamber, using himself as the subject. His experiences in the chamber cause him to hallucinate, much of the imagery being religious-based although he's not religious. Seven years later, he is a respected full professor in the Harvard Medical School. Believing he has lost his edge and fallen into an unwanted state of respectability, Eddie decides to resume his work with sensory deprivation, this time using hallucinogens, specifically untested ones used in mystical Mexican rituals, to enhance the isolation-take experience. After initial tests, he claims he entered an alternate physical and mental state. Although unbelieving of Eddie's claims, his colleagues Arthur Rosenberg and Mason Parrish, as well as Eddie's wife Emily, herself a respected academic, are concerned for Eddie's well being. However, if Eddie's claims are indeed true, he could do irreparable harm to himself and others around him, especially if his altered states are uncontrollable. — Huggo Respected scientist and psychology professor Edward Jessup decides to combine his experiments in sensory deprivation tanks with powerful hallucinogenic drugs, convinced it may help him unlock different states of consciousness. The experiments are a success at first, but as Jessup continues his work he begins to experience altered mental and physical states. As he spends more time in sensory deprivation, his grip on reality slips away. — Anonymous The brilliant Eddie Jessup has PhD in medicine and is conducting experiments with students with an isolation chamber. He decides to be the subject of his experiments with the support of his colleague and friend Mason Parrish and has religious visions. Then he goes to a party, where he meets Emily, who falls in love with him and asks him to marry her. Seven years later, they are married with children and both work in Harvard Medical School. Eddie believes he is too conventional and respectful in Harvard, and decides to travel to Mexico to meets Prof. Eccheverria and participate in an Indian ritual with mushrooms and other hallucinogens. When he returns home, he brings the drug and uses an isolation chamber to increase its effects under the supervision of Mason and Arthur Rosenberg. But soon he becomes uncontrollable and Emily, Mason and Arthur fear for his fate. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Eddie Jessup is a research scientist with expertise in psychopathology. He has devoted much of his career to studying altered states of consciousness, including the religious experiences of schizophrenics. During a trial marital separation, Jessup travels to Mexico and participates in the mushroom ceremony of a native tribe. Under the effects of the sacred mushroom Amanita muscaria and the shrub sinicuiche, Jessup experiences bizarre and intense hallucinations. The tribe kicks him out of the area the following day. While in his intoxicated state, Jessup killed a large specimen of the Hinchi's sacred monitor lizard. Jessup takes a sample of the Hinchi potion with him, and he soon starts a series of experiments which would supposedly allow him to unlock genetic memories from ancestral life forms. He has actually started a process of physical biological devolution. — Dimos I