L'alchimiste

No wonder why this is a forgettable Empire picture by director Charles Brand, because it's unsuccessfully lifeless and uneventful. It's quite a shame, as when this cheap-jack b-grade production gets going it's ultra-bizarre and has a dramatically airy, tuneful Richard Brand music score. The problem fell on the patchy script, as it was goofy and largely ponderous. This led to the oddly subdued premise (delving into the courageous act sacrifice and fulfilment) not building up to anything much. Leaving it monotonous and half-baked. Even that in mind, something about it had some sort of pull over me. Energy levels kind of picked up in the last half hour, where some rubbery demons with gooey make-up, tatty gore FX (body cut in half) and bright optical work presented some fun. Performances are extra ordinary. Robert Ginty (known for his role in "The Exterminator") plays it in an understated manner, and pines a lot. Lucinda Dooling mechanically goes through the motions, and John Sanderford looks bemused more often. Robert Glaudini as the evil alchemist gets nothing really to do, but look evil. Viola Kate Simpson constantly nags away. Nothing about these characters draws you in, or makes you feel anything for them. Charles Brand's blotchy direction has some peaks in choosing a gorgeous, but eerie woodland backdrop for the chaos and there are some tight, dark passages of shuddery images. But these limitations spoiled what was a better than usual idea.

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.

I have an interest in Charles Band's pre-Full Moon work. He produced great films like 'Troll', 'Dolls', 'Ghoulies II', 'Crawlspace', and more. 'The Alchemist' has it's moments, but will leave must viewers scratching their heads. It's got loose ends and a serious consistency problem at the end. Dull scenes don't help keep the viewers' minds on the movie, adding to the confusion. The hitch-hiking scenes towards the beginning of the film are painfully long and sappy plus the stars are not offering particularly stellar performances. In fact, I don't really care for the characters.

The moments of horror are kind of fun for the fans though. There is some creepy (satanic?) sorcery in the woods and demons are released through a portal in a grave yard. Oddly the demons spend more time getting the crud kicked out of them than doing damage, but hey, blood and guts are fun wether of human or demon origin. Gore effects and spooky sets will please fans.

All in all, sad to say, I'll probably forget almost everything about this film within a month.

This movie doesn't have a clear plot and seems almost patched together. I saw it in theatrical release in 1986 and noticed that the film was copyrighted in 1981 - and the IMDB lists it as 1984. Obviously something got fouled up with this movies production, and the resulting film shows it. There is one good 20 minute segment involving some spooky goings on on a lonely, dark road - but that seen seems to be out of place in the movie.

I rated this movie a "2" - so that is almost, but not quite as bad as it gets.

For twenty years, a friend and I have been going to movies every Sunday. We had seen everything when The Alchemist was released. Without seeing a review, we said to each other "How bad can it be?" That is now our catch phrase for movie going, and The Alchemist gave us the answer: "Not as bad as The Alchemist..."