Altered States
Altered States is a film starring the late actor William Hurt as Dr. Eddie Jessup, a brilliant and mad scientist obsessed with "breaking through" the barrier separating man from his "primitive, real self." To this end, he devises the use of various "sensory deprivation" tanks, which are like boilers he floats in with scuba helmets (at least in one case) while his partner, Bob Balaban (as "Arthur Rosenberg") monitors his vitals. Fellow research scientific bigwig, the loud and bellicose Mason Parrish (Charles Haid), advises him, "You're a freak, Jessup." Jessup goes to Mexico to dabble in psychedelic mushrooms with the Hinchi Indians. His psychedelic trip is an explosion of visual and auditory fireworks, depicting shimmering dual entities floating in space, the explosion of worlds, and two people, Jessup and lover Emily (Blair Brown) sitting in a garden having a quaint Victorian tea, right before walking into an atomic explosion.