[1980] ALTERED STATES: My only problem with this one is that the love story part never quite matches the phantasmagorical imagery part--shouldn't the love for Blair Brown that brings William Hurt back from the brink of madness/devolution/evolution/whatever be stated a little more clearly? It's one of those situations where you would like the movie to show you why these two like each other, instead of just having the characters announce their love sometimes. It needed more sentiment, but I don't think Ken Russell does sentiment. But in terms of mood, and imagery, and crazy over-the-top soundtracks, this thing is one of a kind. Not that the imagery exactly makes sense in terms of the story--like, if he's regressing, shouldn't Dante's Inferno come before the crucifixion and not after? But the imagery itself, though....for some reason Tron comes up a lot in reviews of Altered States, and I guess (besides the 80s connection) both are flawed movies with absolutely unique sets of visuals. Like the amoebaman, or Hurt banging into the walls trying to put the amoebaman back in his place in the evolutionary sequence. Or the multi-eyed goat. Or when the lizard becomes his wife and then they both get eroded away in the sands of time. Even the ape man wasn't that bad, though it's the one stretch of the movie that gets a little mundane. Yeah--aside from the cheapness of the romance that's supposed to be holding everything together this is a bunch of good stuff.