Ty Hickson conducting alchemical experiments in a trailer in the woods Ty Hckson – maybe having sold his soul to The Devil He is joined in several scenes by his best friend Amari Cheatom – there is one particularly funny scene where Hickson dares Cheatom to eat a tin of catfood – but most of the show involves Hickson alone in the trailer and woods. For much of the running time, there is only one character present – Ty Hickson’s Sean. The whole film is shot in an abandoned trailer in the woods and the surrounding area and lake (so small it should really be called a pond). Joel Potrykus is an independent filmmaker and it goes without saying that The Alchemist Cookbook defies commercial filmmaking conventions. Although for all the title The Alchemist Cookbook and the chemistry experiments we see Ty Hickson engaged in, it is never actually clear what he is trying to achieve.

I must admit that I was intrigued enough to watch the film by the title alone, which has clearly been intended as a play on the popular, frequently banned revolutionary manual The Anarchist Cookbook (1971) by William Powell. I had previously seen Ape at a midnight screening where it was being promoted as a cult film, although it only left me emerging from it afterwards scratching my head. Potrykus has previously made Ape (2012), Buzzard (2014) and subsequent to this Relaxer (2018), a mind-boggling masterpiece about a guy playing a videogame on a couch that defies any easy attempts to pigeonhole it. The Alchemist Cookbook was the third film from Michigan-based filmmaker Joel Potrykus.

The alchemist cookbook 2016