The Alchemist (1983)
Bad, yet genre fans might like it
22 September 2002
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.
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