R.I.P. Dick Smith

                           06/26/22 - 06/30/14

"Altered States" (1980) d/ Ken Russell

Time to tune in, turn on, and drop out here at the Wop with tonight's review, a sometimes dazzlingly perceptive inward journey into man's baser self through the abuse of heavy hallucinogenic drugs and sensory deprivation tanks, as documented through the artful lens of Ken Russell, no stranger himself to bizarre visuals. I walked down to the American Theater for this one, upon release in 1980, and though I was expecting something more from the production, the one sheet still ended up on display in my room for years, as the black sheep of my collection ( long since been replaced  by 'Student Bodies' and 'Poliziotto superpiu', if you're keeping score at home).FX god Dick Smith provides some unforgettable work, as usual, in supplying amorphous face-trippers, cracked bodysuit bitches, schitzy proto-humans, and more, for a game cast headed by William Hurt and Blair Brown, .

"...now cue that copy of "Burnt Weenie Sandwich", maaan, I'm peaking balls!"
Ed Jessup (Hurt) is the local college's Abnormal Psych professor extraordinaire, and as such he's the envy of his colleagues, Arthur and Mason (Bob Balaban, Charles Haid) and the love object of fellow brainiac, Emily (Brown), who somehow convinces him to marry her amid his exhausting studies on schizophrenia and much sweaty couch sex. While grooving his days away in a sensory deprivation tank he surmises that even sleep states of consciousness can be brought to the surface, and pisses off to Mexico to partake in a hallucinogenic Indio mushroom party to prove his point. After tripping his face off in the middle of the jungle (hard, bro), the violent fungal roller coaster ride awakens a sudden desire to devolve into a naked, howling caveman in the prof. His desire quickly becomes obsession, as he ignores the pleas of reason from his assistants, and his now ex-wife and kids in favor of a canning jar fulla the stuff the tribe's medicine man must've let him bring home(!).


I'm not exactly sure what she's doing here, but I like it a lot.
Before too long, Eddie's running around, screeching like a monkey on bath salts, clobbering campus guards to near-death (Ohhh, that explains how Jessup and Co. are allowed back into the campus lab afterwards, he only nearly killed people in a drugged-out haze, gotcha.) and biting antelopes at the zoo, which naturally leads his wife and assistants to 180° their positions on the potentially deadly experiments, now enthusiastically supporting his decision to go ahead and fuck with his inner chemistry like a mad Russian Roulette player. He begins to lose control of his transformations, leading to a knock down, drag out orgy for the eyes as he becomes a shapeless lump of humanity, while his ex-wife naturally realizes that stripping nude and becoming a neon lightning-being is the only way she can rescue him from the mental abyss...


There's something you don't see every day...
A wee Drew Barrymore briefly appears as Hurt's daughter, and since we've never mentioned her before here and she's clearly too hot for such an injustice to continue, I threw that in. Schizophrenic as Syd Barrett in a cellar full o' psilocybin, States never seems certain of its own identity, mixing appropriately trippy imagery and lengthy moral tirades about the dangers of undertaking such a reflective journey, with mixed results in the end. Normally, reporting on Russell's usual level of artistic flair in the director's chair plus solid performances from Hurt and Brown and the Kafkaesque Smith effects work would merit a higher ratings scale score than the pedestrian deuce, but the meh feeling I'm left with afterwards, even after repeated viewings over the years, demands that I give it such. That said, I'll still watch it again sometime in the future, and you should probably give it a look, as well, if any of what I've just discussed grabs you.


Three decades later, we finally see the devastating long term effects of repeated exposure to Lipps, Inc.

"Spasms" (1983) d/ William Fruet

For a genre nut like ol' Woppo, tonight's review first reared it's ugly head to me upon the grisly cover of Fangoria #28, with meaty gore effects by the master himself, Dick Smith. Having missed the theatrical run for whatever reason, I must've trolled the new release shelves of every video store in the valley for months before the clam shell Thorn-EMI VHS finally turned up...Oh, there will be spasms, as promised by the 1983 Fruet effort's ad campaign, but not as brought on by the potent neurotoxins of snake venom,  but instead catalyzed by the poisonous effect of a laughingly bogus screenplay as penned by Don Enright upon the viewer's sanity, compounded by a gimpy lead performance out of cult icon Oliver Reed, who inaudibly hisses most of his lines below whisper-level, and an even more shambling supportive effort from grindhouse vet Peter Fonda, who phones it in here, with missed marks and wooden deliveries a' plenty.


"Hey Mr. Bubble, the way you tickle my vadge almost makes the UTI worth it!"
After a hokey-looking magic ritual around a bonfire, some ornately decorated abbo's are chased around by a tinted crane shot, (which we later find out is really the guardian to the gates of hell...ahem) we see some poachers capture a whole lotta nothing in their massive nets (translation: aforementioned shnakety-shnake) to be transported to the San Diego (translation: Toronto) estate of millionaire hunter and whisperer extraordinaire, Jason Kincaid (Reed), whose brother was killed by the reptile on a hunt years earlier. Kincaid was also bitten by the snake, but instead of dying from the venom, now shares a psychic link with the monster, seeing through it's eyes every time some curious jackass opens the refrigerated container the snake is being transported in, and eats fang-driven death, in the process. Kincaid enlists the services of one ridiculously named Dr. Brazilian (Fonda), a psychologist who agrees to study the strange phenomenon but quickly blames it all on the millionaire the second that plans go awry.


"Sod all this deadly envenomatin' for a lark, Ollie, let's fuck off for a pint a'!"
Unknown to Kincaid and company, the snake is also highly coveted by the local sect of snake-worshipping Satanists(!), who are planning to steal the creature away at first opportunity. And when the container finally reaches the university, the cultists deftly snatch it under the cover of darkness, or rather simply open it up, freeing the snake to terrorize the campus with tinted snake POV-ferocity. Oops. After loosing Hell's fury upon the unsuspecting populace,  including the obligatory sorority house where foxy blondes may or may not be in the shower, the Satanists inexplicably disappear altogether from the film, leaving Brazilian and Kincaid to witness the boil-producing bladder effect aftermath of the snake's violence and face the damned thing on their own, using the hobbled hunter's mental link with it to track it down and end it's reign of latex terror. There you have it.


...And finally, monsieur Creosote, a wafer-thin mint.
The soundtrack was provided by Tangerine Dream and this guy. I've heard everything from script revision to production funds running out before filming wrapped, as to the reason why this one stinks like a fart party fulla bean eaters. Either way, that sentence should well have provided you with the three main words you ought to have taken away from this summary: This, one, and stinks. One wop.


"Psssshpsssssshpsssssssh.", whispers Jason Kincaid (Oliver Reed).