Horoscope (1991) User Reviews

Nothing can predict what you're about to see

[StevePulaski · 6/10 · 30 April 2015]

The same thing can be said about Richard Kern's Horoscope that was said with X is Y in that this particular short is respectable on the principles of being an anarchic product of the No Wave cinematic movement but not so much on the merit of being a successful short film. The short's plot is entirely vapid, showing three people (Holly Adams, Bob Drywall, and Squeak Wilnetz) dancing around almost entirely naked set to Kern's scuzzy videography. Thankfully, whenever Kern makes these small little shorts he seemingly believes are different and revolutionary, he keeps them short and doesn't turn a two or three minute idea into twenty minutes of redundant activity. He saves the real ideas for longer shorts and exercises these kinds of momentary pieces of amusement as nothing more than that.

Starring: Holly Adams, Bob Drywall, and Squeak Wilnetz. Directed by: Richard Kern.

Less unusual than he usually is.

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 3/10 · 21 March 2003]

'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.