Horoscope (1991)

Director:

Richard Kern

Writer:

Richard Kern (writer)

Genre:

Short

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Holly Adams
Bob Drywall
Squeak Wilentz

Runtime:

5 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Less unusual than he usually is.

'Horoscope' is one of the short movies made by underground filmmaker Richard Kern. All of Kern's movies are unusual: intentionally transgressive, and often violent. But 'Horoscope' is unusual by Kern's standards because it's LESS unusual than usual, for him. There's very little transgression, and the mood is (by Kern's standards) sweet-natured. Typically, Kern's eroticises the female body: on the rare occasions when his films feature erotic male images (as in 'Submit to Me'), those images are usually briefer and less intense than female-centred images in the same film. 'Horoscope', unusually (perhaps uniquely) for Kern, features more male than female nudity.

Holly Adams plays an attractive but rather repressed young woman who shambles homeward from her dull office job, checks her horoscope (not very promising) and promptly falls asleep in front of the tv. Two naked young men appear in her living room and begin dancing naked for her pleasure. I assumed that this was a sexual fantasy the woman was having in her dream state, but the film's structure is so illogical that there's no way to be certain of this: perhaps these naked men have actually teleported into her flat, just for the hell of it.

The men dance for the woman for a while, and then eventually she joins them and they all have fun together. As this is a Kern film, I was expecting gunshots or bloodshed or both, but these things don't happen. A surprisingly pleasant film from this unusual director. It's rare for a male underground filmmaker to make a movie in which male characters cater for a female protagonist's sexual fantasies, instead of just the other way round. I'll rate 'Horoscope' 3 points out of 10. Kern was a unique and talented filmmaker who could have become a major director if his talents had been channelled more carefully.