Altered States (1980) Poster

Parents Guide

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Certification

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Certification

Sex & Nudity

  • Hallucination includes flashes of violent sex scene and female nudity showing bare breasts.
  • Man and woman shown sweating, finishing sex on a couch; bare chest and bare breasts seen. Later hallucination includes flashes of violent sex scene with female nudity showing bare breasts. Sex discussed.
  • Casual/non-sexual nudity. Male nude statue seen at a party with genitalia visible.
  • A scene where a man is a caveman and it shows full nudity (tough to see because of his hairy body)
  • A man taking a shower, buttocks shown.

Violence & Gore

  • A character is shown with blood while two other characters discuss what the blood is actually from.
  • Dissection of animals is discussed. At one point a wild animal is shown with its guts hanging out.
  • A character has blood drawn from a vein in his arm by another character with a hypodermic syringe. Shown relatively close up but for less than four seconds.
  • A character makes a small cut on the hand of another character, and drips a few drops of his blood into a hallucinogenic stew, which the former then drinks.
  • Beating scenes with blood and shown contact.
  • A character fights dogs with a stick. Contact is only brief.

Profanity

  • 7 uses of fuck 6 uses of shit 1 paired with bull 12 uses of hell 11 uses of damn 8 paired with god 2 uses of son of a bitch and for christ sakes 1 use of bastard, Jesus, for god sakes and frigging 3 uses of ass
  • Seven uses of the F-word
  • Eight uses of Goddamn
  • Three uses of Damn
  • Twelve uses Hell
  • Five uses of Shit
  • One use of Bullshit
  • Three uses of Ass
  • Two uses of Son of a Bitch
  • One use of Bastard

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking

  • A restaurant scene features the main and supporting characters all intoxicated from drinking wine. One of the characters is pregnant.
  • A man and woman are briefly seen sharing a joint of cannabis.
  • The whole film is almost about the use of hallucinatory mushrooms used in religious and academic settings.
  • A character is seen smoking a cigar on multiple occasions.

Frightening & Intense Scenes

  • In the basement of a hospital, a corpse covered in a white shroud is briefly shown being wheeled through a crowded hallway.
  • Scenes of a humanoid monster attacking people and animals. Intense human transformation scenes. Intense religious imagery that include crucifixions and monsters.

Spoilers

The Parents Guide items below may give away important plot points.

Violence & Gore

  • The main character (semi-)deliberately seeks to transform himself and graphic depictions of his physical transformation take place repeatedly.

Frightening & Intense Scenes

  • The theme of this film overall is about a character who seeks to challenge the pre-existing beliefs of himself and of others in a quest to find "the Original Self", "the first thought", etc. At the end of the film the main character's mind is permanently transformed by the terror of seeing the "simple, hideous nothing" at the origin of life.

See also

Taglines | Plot Summary | Synopsis | Plot Keywords


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