The Alchemist

Year releasted: 1984

by Keith Phipps
March 26th, 2003

Alchemy may have done little for the world apart from giving rise to modern chemistry, but that's cold comfort for anyone being chased through the woods by bald, pointy-eared demons, like Robert Ginty and Lucinda Dooling at the conclusion of The Alchemist. The source of their peril lies in decades past, in that hotbed of the alchemical arts, 19th-century backwoods America. There, in the film-opening flashback, John Sanderford takes a stand against Robert Glaudini, the countryside's foremost alchemist, and a man not above hypnotizing Sanderford's wife (also played by Dooling) in order to steal her away. While attempting to fight back, Sanderford kills his wife instead of Glaudini, who curses him to "forever remain an animal, forced to kill to live." (Apparently, the ability to inflict such curses comes with the territory of converting base metals to gold.) After Sanderford has been killing to live for several decades, his reincarnated wife decides to give up waitressing and head to the big city, picking up hitchhiker Ginty along the way. After a few rounds of semi-hostile flirting, Ginty watches in horror as Dooling starts blacking out behind the wheel, her car veering wildly from side to side, although never quite so wildly as Richard Band's score would suggest. When she comes to, Dooling reveals that she had a vision in which she was injured by a giant clawbut then she finds the injury is real. Shocked and stranded, Dooling and Ginty head for the woods, where they find Sanderford living with an old woman (Vida Kate Simpson) in a cabin filled with test tubes and dripping with exposition. Revelations follow: Sanderford tells Dooling of her resemblance to his wife, Simpson confesses that she's actually the immortal Sanderford's daughter, and both tell the story of the encounter that left the man immortal and bloodthirsty. Also, a heretofore-unmentioned bald-pointy-eared-demon clause is revealed, and soon Ginty and Dooling are on the run. Eventually, their problems end when Glaudini himself makes a return appearance. His struggle with Sanderford kills them both, leaving Ginty and Dooling free to make their way back to the alchemy-free urban area of their choosing.