ASSAULTED STATE

ALTERED STATES (1980)
dir: Ken Russell

MAD #225, September 1981
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

I don't think there were Crazy Eddie stores outside the New York area (with their motto “Our prices are insane!”)

Eddie (William Hurt) and Emily (Blair Brown) are science professors that meet at a faculty party hosted by Arthur (Bob Balaban).

Who is that in the first panel there with the tag “No Names Please”? Dick Van Dyke? Roddy McDowall? What's the joke?

The mushroom ceremony gives MAD an excuse to use their tchotchkes such as the zeppelin, pouiyt, and apteryx. Arthur the pot plant isn't there though.

Charles Haid (Parrish)

He uses these ceremonies combined with the experiments with the college's isolation tank to analyze himself against the wishes of his wife and colleagues at the university.

The experiments make him undergo all sorts of transformations. A reference to the Popeye parody elsewhere in this issue is here.

In the actual film, Edward is brought home in blob form unable to change back because he has broken his tank and is taken care of by his wife. Being around him means she also gets caught up in the vortex. There are scenes of her being transformed as well before things for both of them return to normal.

For brevity, they left out the scenes of family life. It wouldn't have been considered significant then, but the daughter was the debut of Drew Barrymore, who went through her own experimental phase in real life.


LITTLE ANNIE FANNY Playboy, January 1982 w: Harvey Kurtzman a: Will Elder Playboy's Little Annie Fanny (which was drawn by MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman and founding artist Will Elder) also had a strip about the sensory deprivation fad. Isolation tanks were only a part of the movie, but inspired a brief fad in the early eighties.

Saturday Night Live had a sketch called Altered Walter, with Bill Murray as Walter Cronkite performing experiments on himself to make his news reports more psychedelic.