The Alchemist (1981)
Director: Charles Band
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
One of a host of movies sold on the back of the ultra-gross(ing) The Exterminator. The connection here is Ginty, a potato-head mumbler with a passing resemblance to Lon Chaney Jr. So too, its familiar plot owes much to the werewolf genre. Ginty is the victim of a century-old curse that keeps him young but means he goes on the blood-trail nightly (sans make-up: costly stuff, hair). Its other debt (Chaney again) is to Mummy movies, with a reincarnated lover drawn into the plot in a battered but still handsome red-and-white Plymouth that's a ringer for Stephen King's Christine. The auto and some amusingly inept demons - whack 'em with a tyre iron, they're out for the count - must be considered the highspots in this spectacularly low-energy multi-pastiche.Author: GD
Cast & crew
Director: Charles Band
Producer: Lawrence Appelbaum
Cast: Robert Ginty, Lucinda Dooling, John Sanderford, Viola Kate Stimpson, Robert Glaudini full cast
Genre(s): Horror
Duration: 84 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
Holiday gift guide
Instructions on how to get your own customized soda machine (and other, slightly more rational gifts for your film-loving friends).
Holiday film preview
Are you more interested in seeing the Daniel Craig movie, the Steven Soderbergh movie or the Freddy Rodriguez movie? Answer carefully.
Boyle's orders
The director of Slumdog Millionaire talks about the joys of filming on the cheap in India after having worked under Hollywood's thumb.
Time and again
Wong Kar-wai spruces up his underseen martial-arts epic, Ashes of Time.
Mergers and acquisitions
A new deal between the Underground Film Festival and IFP pays off.
Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema
The films we previewed offer very few reasons to kvetch.



What do you think?
Post your review now