Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Blistering performances.

A wicked magician, a curse, reincarnation, a doorway to hell, demons with glowing eyes: The Alchemist is a hokey hodge-podge of supernatural horror clichés that might have been fun if it hadn't been for the terrible performances and torpid direction from Charles Band (hiding behind the pseudonym James Amante). The action trundles along at a sluggish pace: scenes go on far too long and repetitive shots pad out the runtime (the same shot of four bulrushes is shown three times).The film opens in 1871 with Aaron McCallum (Robert Ginty) trying to rescue his wife from the clutches of evil magician DelGatto (Robert Glaudini). During a struggle, Aaron accidentally stabs his wife, and is cursed by an angry DelGatto to forever live forever as an animal.The action then cuts to 1955, with waitress Lenora (Lucinda Dooling) driving cross country, picking up hitch-hiker Cameron (John Sanderford) along the way. While at the wheel, Lenora suffers from visions that force her to crash her car. Travelling on foot, followed by a concerned Cam, Lenora arrives at a graveyard where she meets Aaron, still young, who recognises her as the reincarnation of his dead wife. What follows is a hoary mess, told with zero verve, with weak special effects and total lack of scares.

This 80's horror is great, if you really wanna see some beautiful glass making, great f.x. and some heavy gore. Otherwise, there's not much else, in this B grade offering. Ginty, is great, as a guy, who's lover was taking by the devil. When trying to knife him, he mistakenly knives her. He's cursed for a hundred years, to live in pain and suffering, never aging. He lives with his daughter, I'm pretty sure, who's aged normally, now in her eighties. A girl, (Lucinda Dooling) obviously the same actress as Ginty's taken lover, who for Ginty, is freakishly familiar, keeps seeing horrifying visions, of this devil like creature, while cruising through the country. She has a pick up, Cam Rollins, (John Sanderford) who soon wished he wasn't, as he senses some strange behavior in this girl, as well as her, flashing out, creating danger behind the wheel. This soon has him suggesting she should go see a shrink while obviously being attracted to her, also. When they go off the road, into the woods, at her opting, something drawing her there, the two are soon acquainted with Ginty and company. Ginty, soon scraping the underneath as to Dooling's part in this, tells her those flashes of those events were real, where it's time for her to confront her demons so to speak, and put revenge Ginty at peace, as the gates of hell are about to open once more, the devil after Dooling. The Alchemist, it's movie cover, engaging, is really a facade, where this intriguing B grade flick, doesn't gather much interest, in 'movie happening land' especially in it's slow start, although I must admit the scenery was nice. It's worth really lies in Ginty's compelling performance.

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.

It was not that awful. Saw in right after I got my first VCR here in Norway, and I was scared. Scary movie for me who was not used to much horror on my TV. You Americans were probably spoiled. Haha.. And I thought that Bob Ginty was a hunk. I have seen him in The Exterminator, Bodysnatcher, I think he was there anyway. And he was my leading man in those early days of video-watching. Probably not the most serious actor , but still. A lot of B-films as we call it here. But anyways...The movie was not so bad at all. You cannot make gold out of everything! I only remember that my boyfriend and I kept this video for days just to watch it over again.And I would love to get a hold of it today. So many years later. Have not seen Bob Ginty for a while thou..