As a rather hardline skeptic, I have little tolerance for nonsense masquerading as science. I was of the right age at the end of the 1970’s to be aware of such trends of the time as biorhythms and astrology. The latter was quite popular, though I suspect largely because asking somebody for their sign was such an easy pick-up line. If practicing astrology is a science, then I’d like to know why it doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of the scientific method. There’s a reason you don’t see people in lab coats wandering around CERN doing “zodiacal” research, as it is described in 1975’s The Astrologer. It is why there are prohibitively expensive facilities devoted to radio astronomy while radio astrology isn’t even a thing.
And yet, ponderous opening narration over footage of rockets and objects in space somberly tells us this is a science suppressed over the ages: “For 400 years, the ancient art of astrology had slumbered, ignored by scientists, feared by the church, the tool of gypsies, charlatans and thieves, waiting for the astrologer.” I was nearly doubled over from laughing so hard. Also, I think Cher’s hit “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” should have been “Gypsies, Charlatans and Thieves”, except it doesn’t fit the meter.
We’re only in the first minute of the runtime and it already may be one of the most 70’s movies I have seen. The titles are in that font which is still used for the numbers at the bottom of checks, and I secretly love that lettering. The sound is all Moog farts, and I would rather listen to the soundtrack than watch this picture again.
There’s even a Brutalist corporate facility from which Bob Byrd runs his operation, using supercomputers to process zodiac info for everyone in the world. That data is then used to predict various outcomes and even manipulate events to one’s advantage. Actually, only the exterior is obviously that building and, even then, it is only a still image. I seem to recall all we see of the interior is a single room where Byrd is frequently on the phone, and usually in any number of rather uncomfortable looking positions. It is almost like his true calling is finding unnatural ways of sitting in chairs, even managing to do so in a seat on his private jet. Between his awkwardness and his facial structure, I thought he might be Mark Zuckerberg.
Also on his plane will be an agent played by Alison McCarthy and a senator played by Al Narcisse. She and Byrd are discussing a mass murderer in India, played by Mark Buntzman, whose zodiacal profile suggests he is pure evil. McCarthy will interrupt and ask Narcisse if any of this makes any sense to him. If it does, I think the senator should have to explain it to the rest of the class. The only info he can give is he tells Byrd “there’s a strange aura around you on Capitol Hill, like nobody is allowed to ask questions about you.” Holy shit. He’s not Zuckerberg…he’s Elon Musk!
All of this supposedly concerns the coming of the Antichrist. Or maybe they’re awaiting the second coming of Christ. Maybe it is both—it is hard to tell when so many pictures of that era were concerned with one, the other, or both. But this is like The Omen as written for the kind of people who believe what they read in supermarket tabloids. Come to think of it, that is The Omen.
Byrd is worried wife Monica Tidwell will be the bearer of either of those. Given it has to be a virgin birth, that doesn’t speak well of their marriage. I don’t know which zodiac sign represents blue balls, but that must be Byrd’s, because we will see a great deal of Tidwell, who had been a Playboy centerfold in real-life.
The first instance of her disrobing here is unexpectedly on the premises of a shady fortune teller she visits (now try to picture a reputable fortune teller). The woman angrily tells Tidwell to strip before she will do the reading because she caught her out in a lie about her age. A woman lying about her age—perish the thought! And Tidwell was caught out on the lie because she gave her birthdate and then the wrong age. Those are some amazing powers of prognostication the psychic has, being able to do basic math. Admittedly, the date Tidwell gave was one from the correct birth certification Byrd supposedly found (?) after he claims to have discovered the one she had was wrong (?!).
In addition to the amount of time Tidwell spends in various states of undress, there is a general porniness about the entire endeavor. My wife observed the poor quality of the acting, and the subpar sets, gives a feeling like almost every scene is one of the bits in such a film that is just filler before the, um, meat of the picture. When this picture does get around to people getting busy, it is too lame to even be described as softcore material. In fact, some of the couplings are so awkward that it recalls The Room. For both of these movies, it was like somebody thought they knew how sex was done by mashing together Barbie dolls.
That is far from the only craziness on display. There is a professor obsessed with finding the Madonna’s true birth date, and we all know we will never truly know Madonna’s date of birth. Byrd believes some are zodiacally (and how I hate that term) destined for greatness while the rest of us are, in his words, “fighting against the clay”. I admire anybody who would willingly take on Cassius Clay, and I didn’t realize Mohammed Ali would fight any and all challengers back then. Also, prepare to go slack-jawed with amazement at the complexity of McCarthy’s plan to kill Burtzman, which involves shooting him with a tranquilizer, sending video imagery directly into his brain and then hoping he will kill himself the next day. Since her plan begins with shooting him with something, why not with an actual fucking bullet and just be done with it?
But this is all just wackiness, and it is enjoyable when in the right frame of mind. Unfortunately, we also see footage of real-life atrocities supposedly committed by Buntzman. I find it completely acceptable when the suffering of real people is exploited for entertainment, and it is that aspect of this which keeps me from recommending it to the curious.
That’s a shame, because there is some spectacularly goofiness on tap in The Astrologer. The film is also strangely prescient, with the various outcomes calculated by Byrd’s computer feeling a bit like how A.I. might be used today. Even that technology McCarthy intended to use to put a video feed directly into Buntzman’s brain has a contemporary analogy, with efforts to enable the blind to see without their eyes. Alas, the way the film is most like today is something I just learned Netflix rolled out, and that is titles curated for customers by their zodiac signs. We may not have supermarket tabloids anymore, but that doesn’t mean a large part of the population is any smarter.
Dir: James Glickenhaus
Starring Bob Byrd, Monica Tidwell, Mark Buntzman
Watched on Severin blu-ray