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In one corner was Paddy Chayefsky, arguably the most powerful and celebrated pure screenwriter in Hollywood at that point in time. Even 40 years after its release, it boggles the mind that something like Altered States could have ever been produced in the first place, much less as an expensive A-level project for a major studio. Oddly enough, it’s the viewer who ends up feeling concussed.

Both combatants are unrepentant sluggers through and through, determined not just to win but to knock the other right out of the metaphorical ring. Altered States (1980) isn’t so much a movie as it is a cinematic boxing match between two singular and diametrically opposed talents, duking it out to see whose approach will triumph in the end.