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Hallucinations!
June 2006
I have been eager to put this home film fest on my site since I started. There’s not much more consistently fun than cinematic approximations of hallucinations. Especially if you are in an enhanced viewing state yourself. What’s more, these are things that can be done effectively on a low budget, opening them up to anyone! Yay!
What I didn’t realize is that there really aren’t THAT many movies that do effective hallucinations, so we’re going to have to open this one up to dream sequences as well. On the plus side, however, the four hallucination movies listed here are all quite good. The dream sequence movies are fair as well. You will note how I drew the line at movies with trippy visuals that are neither hallucinations or dreams, for the specific purpose of saving myself from having to watch What Dreams May Come.
HALLUCINATIONS:
Altered States
The granddaddy of them all, this movie has some serious and extensive drug hallucinations, all delightful and many of them religious in nature. This movie, about a man taking drugs and performing sensory deprivation experiments on himself until he regresses into a caveman, has both OTT trippy hallucinations, and also slow, surreal hallucinations, like when our hero and his girlfriend freeze solid and are slowly worn away by the high wind. These hallucinations will also make wicked use of your surround sound, if you’ve got it.
Brain Damage
This little movie from my beloved Frank Henenlotter [Basket Case, Frankenhooker] is about a confused young man who plays host to a worm [but come on, EVERYONE knows it’s really a penis] from outer space that injects hallucinogenic drugs into his head so long as he lets the little bugger eat other’s brains. Aside from a fascinating story that really seems to be about a man in the process of coming out as gay [see also A Nightmare on Elm Street II below], it has some awesome hallucinations, including my personal fave, the plate of spaghetti with pulsating, sighing brains.
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Bill Pullman is a psychopharmabiologist or some shit in this movie where he is sent to Haiti in order to secure some of the powder that turns people into zombies [the slave kind, not the flesh-eating kind]. He consumes some drugs at the beginning, but the real problem is that the Haitian voodoo master is sending bad juju into his dreams, causing Bill to have visions of desiccated brides that shoot snakes out of their mouths and corpses chilling in his soup. Not to mention a snuggly jaguar, his totem animal.
Disco Godfather
A Dolemite movie in all but name, here Rudy Ray Moore plays “the godfather of the disco” who strives to put some weight on the scourge of angel dust overtaking his community. His nephew Bucky was lured into the back of this amazing pimpmobile and given the drug, which causes him and others to all share the same hallucination, a horrifying African figure. You will note the innovative mixture of animation and live action in the hallucinations. But be warned: if you want to join the godfather’s disco squad, you’ve got to get down and get funky.
DREAM SEQUENCES:
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A series whose whole reason for being is freaky dream sequences resulting in spectacular murders, this one features some decent ones, like a person being sucked into a bed and a huge burst of blood shooting up to the ceiling. The story follows high schooler Nancy, who has an ineffective alcoholic mother and a distant but hot father. Nancy does what any sensible girl would do and arranged her mother’s demise so she can have daddy all to herself. You go, girl!
A Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge
A thinly-disguised gay coming-out story, it tells the story of Jesse, a pretty boy who bonds with a male buddy after the guy rips his shorts down, is drawn to a gay bar in his sleep, and deals with all sorts of strange impulses that he can’t tell his parents about, all the while fending off the advances of uber-mousy Lisa. This movie DOES contain a scene in which Jesse is about to be coerced into shower-room bondage with his coach, just before the coach is assaulted by balls. You heard me.
Prozac Nation
Savvy writers know that if you’re a narcissistic waste of life you can easily parlay your noxiousness into a book about how SOCIETY made you a narcissistic waste of life. In this psychological horror movie, Christina Ricci plays Elizabeth Wurtzel, who runs around abusing those closest to her, then blaming them for not caring to ‘understand’ why she would do such a thing. We SO need to have Wurtzel and Neil LaBute collaborate. Anyway, Elizabeth does a bunch of uppers and various other things, resulting in visions of Lou Reed softly stroking her face during a concert. But be warned, there’s much more psychological torture here than actual freaky visions.
Return To Oz
This movie has a similar structure to The Wizard of Oz, which means that the entire middle is a dream sequence, this time with menacing talking rocks, queens who change heads like they change outfits, and walking jack o’lanterns. The whole thing is a very dark, inspired and creative kids’ movie for those who can take a little [or a lot] of terror and horror in their kids’ entertainment.
