Very well executed

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The audience for The Alchemist is, admittedly, limited. But those who remember hokey 80s bum-budget fare fondly will probably be fairly tolerant of this unspecial Charles Band outing.We're introduced to a hitchhiker, John Sanderford, who gets picked up by a cute waitress, Lucinda Dooling, who's been having occult visions that interfere with her driving. Meanwhile, fleshy-faced Robert Ginty, star of one of the quintessential cheapcrud vigilante films, The Exterminator, here has an even more lowbrow role as a man plagued by a werewolf-like curse. Somehow, this quasi-werewolf glassblower's destiny seems to be linked with that of the waitress, who bears an uncanny resemblance to his dead wife. Robert Glaudini, weird star of Band's lurid masterpiece Parasite, has a small role as the title character (?).If all of that sounds complicated, don't worry, because it isn't. The Alchemist is pretty casual viewing, fairly uneventful, actually, and won't appeal to people with 21st century attention spans. Those who stick with it, however, will at least be treated to a gateway to Hell, a couple of neat if not particularly formidable demons, and maybe a few moments approximating scares. Tame as a whole, The Alchemist does have some brief gross/gory scenes; my favorite is the white and green slime oozing out of a dead demon's head.A guilty pleasure - one for all you Bandites out there.

In 1871 a man gets cursed by an evil magician who basically condemns him to a life of hell where he will live forever knowing that the love of his life is no longer with him and not only does he suffer the loss he finds himself becoming a monster at times and he has no control over the transformation. 80 years later his daughter, who is now an old woman and looks like his grandmother, uses a spell to try and transfer the demon curse from her son to a new unknown source. That unknown source just happens to be a lady (who looks just like the mans dead wife) who is in town looking for a place left to her. The transformation is not entirely completed and the plot gets rather confusing, but at the end demons come out and the magicians curse is lifted...confusing!! I had watched this back in about 1990 and didn't recall a second of it except the old woman. It is extremely confusing and hard to follow at times. The hitchhiker the girl picks up adds a funny twist to it and the weird demons are kinda cool. This movie is so cheesy, but it makes it one of those bad/good sort of films.Band directed it and of course he is a horror movie icon, but he offered little here. The acting was okay, but the films production values were below standards. It is good horror cheese from the 80's though so watch it with a bit of room for mistakes, it isn't perfect and it isn't horrible, it's just fun, boring at times though. 3/10 stars

1871- Robert Ginty's wife is hexed by an evil magician, and a duel ensues. Tragically, the wife ends up dead, and Ginty is cursed to eternal life as a Jeckyll/Hyde type beast. 1955- A woman en route and her male hitch-hiker have car troubles in the remote forest...but it may be more than mere chance that they are in Ginty's "neck of the woods".What transpires is a watchable, albeit rather juvenile horror film, one that will be unlikely to surface as anyone's favorite film, but entertaining enough to be recommendable to most genre fans. Effects range from weak to fairly impressive, and performances are fairly serviceable for a minor picture of this type.All in all, not too bad...though hardly essential viewing.

semi decent horror flick has lots of blood to satisfy gore hounds cheesy acting but it does have a lot of creepy parts too the script is pretty muddy at times and doesn't make much sense and can get kinda dull but this is a mostly watchable time that is kinda enjoyable it has a really awesome ending and good photography the effects are decent but this does get a little too confusing at times and the dialog is sometimes laughable although the characters are fairly amiable i just couldn't warm up to one of the performances so if you didn't have anything else to rent at your local video store ya might as well pick this up its a semi enjoyable rainy night/afternoon watch ** out of 5