"Altered States" is a film that I really had to think about before I decided if I actually liked it. I was initially put off by the ever so smart scientists. All of their musings and soapbox speeches seemed entirely unnatural. Then again maybe I just hang around a lower IQ'ed crowd. Eddie and Emily seemed too smarmy and self-centered for me to really feel anything for as characters. In fact I didn't like them. Later I began to sympathize with Eddie. He went from conceited to just driven...driven to find out the secret of life. The characters of Arthur and Mason were thankfully there to keep the story grounded in any sort of reality. Eddie's hallucinations were at times spectacular to watch. Many of them made no real sense but then again I was stone sober when I watched it. There is some religious symbolism early on primarily visions conjured up from the Book of Revelations. SPOILERS AHEAD...I thought that the special effects were pretty good for 1980 especially Eddie's transformation into a "caveman". The later hallucination sequences were quite long and of course reminded me of some of the drawn out sequences in "2001: A Space Odyssey". The final experiment results in some imagery that is either symbolic or impossible to fathom ever actually being physically possible. This more than anything else bothered me. How could Emily have possibly rescued Eddie from the regressive state that he was in simply by reaching into some whirlpool of fog? SPOILERS DONE...At any rate the ending of the film seems rushed but it is satisfying though I prefer dark endings to weird movies like this.