At first I was going to say that this is one of the worst films I have ever seen but now that I have had a chance to think about it a bit that is not the case. It is however, one of the strangest films that I have ever seen, for certain.

The film was made in 1980 and is the first time that both William Hurt (who plays the lead role) and Drew Barrymore (an extremely minor role just a bit above an extra) had ever been on the silver screen.

The movie deals with something that actually happened (although not in the way it is presented) about how sesory deprivation research was conducted in isolation tanks under the influence of psychoactive drugs such as LSD. The idea behind this was to achieve some level of heightened access to brain capacity. This film presents these sorts of experiments as being successful, but with various unintended side-effects.

This film was praised for being quite daring, especially for the time period that it was released in. The musical score and bizarre sound-effects are the products of the experimental directorial tactics that were employed by Ken Russel, who is quite well-known for carrying on with controversial methods of film-making.

This movie is not necessarily difficult to follow, it is just at times a bit over the top strange and when the film ends I wouldn’t say that it expanded my mind at all, I just kind of thought It was boring and weird with intentionally complicated dialogue to nail the point home about how the people involved are all intellectuals of the highest order.

If you are the type of person that likes a movie to be a puzzle, with bizarre imagery and multiple ways of interpreting the various scenes, perhaps this film would be for you. For me anyway, I found myself turning on my DS during a lot of the dialogue. I am granting the movie as many points as I do simply because of the bold and daring methods employed given the relatively puritan nature of the early 80’s.