On November 2, 1990, unsuspecting audiences had their minds bent by Jacob’s Ladder for the first time.
35 years later, the cult classic has received a SteelBook 4K Ultra HD edition from Lionsgate Limited that includes a new special feature, “On the Rungs of Jacob’s Ladder,” with director Adrian Lyne, writer Bruce Joel Rubin, and star Tim Robbins.
In the a 29-minute retrospective, Rubin shares how a drug-fueled college experience laid the groundwork for what would eventually become Jacob’s Ladder.
“I had a roommate who was a very good friend of Timothy Leary, who was one of the main people with the LSD experiments at Harvard,” Rubin explains.
“A man arrived at our house in New York City on Bank Street, and he had a vial of pure lysergic acid. He said, ‘I’m gonna be taking this upstate to Tim, but I don’t want to carry it around New York City. Can I put it in your refrigerator?’ And my friend, Barry, said, ‘Of course.’
“So he said, ‘You know, we have this jar of pure lysergic acid in the refrigerator. I’ll get an eyedropper and I’ll give you a drop.’ And I went, ‘Okay,’” Rubin shrugs.
“He takes an eyedropper and he goes to give the drop and he gasps. The whole eyedropper, thousands of micrograms, goes into my throat, and there is nothing you can do. Nothing. So I said, ‘Okay, well, we’ll see where this goes.’”
Rubin recalls, “It lasted somewhere between 3 and 4 billion years. I’m not exactly sure of the time frame. It involved Heaven and Hell and way beyond all of those things.
“And then I heard a sound of something go ‘bloop.’ The whole thing came back, and I said, ‘Why am I back?’ And this huge voice came through the atmosphere, and it said, ‘To tell people what you saw.’ And that was the beginning of Jacob’s Ladder.”
Following the incident, Rubin embarked on a mystical quest around the world that is reflected throughout the film. But it was a dream that was the catalyst for the script.
“I had a dream that I was on the subway in New York, and I got off the train and there was no exit. It was locked. I crossed the track, and there was no exit,” Rubin describes.
“I was locked in the subway station, and I knew the only way out was to go on the track. I knew the track went only to one place, and that was Hell. And the only way for me to get out of Hell was to write a movie that would get me out of that horrible conundrum. And that’s what I did.”
Rubin began writing the screenplay the next morning, although it wouldn’t go into production for another decade.
In the film, Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer suffers a slow unraveling while trying to adjust to postwar life. Wracked by horrific visions, despondent over his son’s death, Jacob isn’t sure where his dreams end and waking life begins ― or whether he’s alive, dead, or somewhere in between.
Jacob’s Ladder is available on SteelBook 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital.
