Jacob's Ladder (1990)

Post-traumatic stress disorder manifests in many forms, among the harshest of which is visited upon the Vietnam War vet who must climb up from the depths of a living hell in Jacob’s Ladder (1990). Decades before PTSD entered the public consciousness, the film centered around Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), a man who remembers ending up on the wrong end of a Viet Cong bayonet. Waking up in NYC unsure of how he was rescued or rehabbed, the mailman gallantly shrugs off flashbacks to his first marriage, but the horned creatures that attempt to slay him in the subway are not so easily put aside. His son Gabe (Macauley Culkin) died before he shipped out to Nam, but while fighting off a dangerous fever he hops in an ice bath and wakes up in a world where he's still alive. Convinced he's gone crazy, an old platoon mate named Paul (Pruitt Taylor Vince) reaches out to assure him he's going through the same thing, so they must've been part of some experiment the Army carried out. Eventually they'll meet a scientist named Michael (Matt Craven) who tells them they've been dosed with a drug called "The Ladder" that was designed to heighten aggression but may well be causing their psychosis. On the other hand, a palm reader named Elsa (S. Epatha Merkerson) will tell him he's already dead, which is also a possibility. One of the trippiest mindbenders in cinema history, speaking of flashbacks, Tim Robbins gets plenty of opportunity to flash his back in the bathroom. First when he steps into a hot shower, and later when he's forced into an icy bath. Long and lean, we'd drink that bathwater after seeing this tall glass of water lie in it! He'll make you want to scrub-a-dub-dub! If only we'd gotten less PTS, and more D in Jacob's Ladder!