The Astrologer (1975) — Triskaidekafiles

THE ASTROLOGER

WRITER: Jim Glickenhaus

DIRECTOR: Jim Glickenhaus

STARRING: Bob Byrd as Alexei Abarnel

Monica Tidwell as Kate Abarnel

Mark Buntzman as Kajerste

Al Narcisse as Congressman Harwell

Alison McCarthy as Rhav

Julie Raggio as The Child

QUICK CUT: A man uses his vast knowledge of astrology to predict when his wife will have a child.

THE MORGUE

Alexei - A man of science who has used his knowledge to turn the ancient art of astrology into more of a science, able to predict the potential with enough information.

Kate - Alexei’s new, and considerably younger wife. She’s smart, curious, and loving, but also concerned that her husband has not been intimate since they married, and feels trapped in these early days of their marriage.

Kajerste - An Indian man who may well be the next great tyrant of our times.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Now, in February, I normally have certain guidelines understandable to only myself, for what movies I'll be discussing. Mid month is always a "just wrong love story", but this year I am shaking things up with two movies loosely connected, but they are both what you would call passion projects, so that works for Valentines! The first movie is from 1975 (ish, y'all know dates are subjective with these things) and is called The Astrologer.

The movie opens with some narration about how astrology has struggled and been misunderstood, until the coming of Alexei Abarnel, the titular astrologer. He used computers and science to refine the art into something more, and formed the agency, Interzod, to monitor the "zodiacal potential" of everyone in the world.

Alexei's greatest attempt though, has been to try and find someone with the same "ZP" as the virgin Mary, because he believed this could lead to a second coming. But of course, there are other, more evil groups, trying to bring about the second coming for their own goals.

The movie tells us it starts "ten days before the second coming" and the hunt is on for Mary 2.0! Note, not a reincarnation, just someone with the same astronomical likelihood to be that kind of special.

Oh, also, the opening credits list the crew, but not a single cast member. Really weird how a movie called The Astrologer, has no stars!

They set up Alexei's abilities with him calling someone to check in, and give them info on a woman running for city council. He says she's nothing to worry about, because her "zodiacal potential" indications she'll self destruct in one way or another. If campaigning doesn't drive her mad, a defeat surely will, and that can be arranged.

Y'know, I could go on and on about how...sinister, this all is, predicting lives, making back channel conversations about political rivals, and manipulating events to go their way JUST in case, but I am just gonna set that aside because it's a bit too much to think about here.

We next go to a briefing about an Indian man named Kajerste, whose potential for evil makes him evil. This organization can know from birth if someone needs looking after, because thaaat's not creepy at all. Sorry, sorry, said I wasn't gonna harp on it.

Ahem. We move on to New York City and meet Kate, Alexei's younger wife, who is going to a tarot reading. The fortune teller asks her a few questions to fine tune her cold reading...er, her sight, and gets very offended when Kate lies about her birthday.

Somehow, this prompts Madame Xanadu to send Kate behind the curtain to remove her clothes and get into a robe, to "strip away the pretenses" or some such nonsense.

We briefly jump to India where Kajerste has been captured, and the cops leave him with some rando while they go get the magistrate.

Back in Maryland, on April 1st, Kate tells her husband about her tarot trip, and he has a bit of a fit at her just stripping for her. Also, I find it amusing that he doesn't quite 'understand' fortune telling, but I think that might be all an act for him to seel what Kate might have learned about herself, since she doesn't know about Interzod.

We learn that Kate has two birthdays, the one she always knew, and a newer one that Alexei told her about when he *ahem* found her real birth certificate. To cut to the chase, he gave her a new birthday and convinced her it was real, so no one would know her true date of birth and could use it to find out her ZP.

Alexei takes a trip to England to try and get documents about Kajerste to fine tune their predictions, and through a series of events, he meets Congressman Harwell who missed his flight. Alexei offers him a ride on the private Interjet.

Which is the least he could do, since this entire thing was engineered so they could meet.

This has all been to recruit another congressman to their side, and use them to their ends and secure more funding. Again, the good guys.

We jump back to India, where a woman is seeing to Kajerste, and it immediately jumps to him being free, shit burning down, and him boning a chick right then and there in front of these people. Well, that escalated quickly.

I presume this is supposed to be the evil forces trying to give birth to their version of the second coming. I dunno. Shit got wild.

As Harwell comes to visit, we see an Interzod agent tampering with skis of another congressman, and he goes tumbling down the mountain and injures himself. Alexei asks about him, and acts like it was just an accident.

Once again. THE GOOD GUYS.

As they wander through Interzod HQ, we get the exposition dump of what ZPs are, and how unless they're extremely strong, that's all they are, potentials. How a person lives their life, their environment, has just as much important on who a person becomes. And I kinda like this take on astrology.

That night is the fifth month anniversary of Alexei and Kate, and she's very eager, but he holds her off at bay. They're both frustrated, she wants her husband to love her, but he thinks she might be the next virgin mother, so uh, kinda doesn't want to ruin that.

Alexei is desperately searching for info to narrow down Mary's birth, to see if he can rule out Kate's being Mary 2.0.

We then are back at Interzod and get treated to them watching movies of the aftermath of Kajerste's latest bacchanalia, and the bodies it left in its wake.

So Alexei and Harwell travel to India to see what they can do, and get shown one of the dead bodies, after being taken into the cellar. Oh sure, right this way, Montressor.

The woman's body is mutilated, and they use it to illustrate Kajerste's evil and brutality. In case you don't get the point, they compare him to Hitler for good measure.

Our duo meet up with another agent, Rhav, and she has a plan to capture Kajerste and use new techniques to set up a videotape of someone made up to look like him fake killing themselves to prove how powerful and blessed he is, which will hopefully confuse him, seeming like a dream, and he'll be inspired by this to do it the next day, pick up a real poisoned dagger, and real kill himself.

I... Hoo. There is a lot to unpack there. And a lot that can go wrong and...THE GOOD GUYS!! Just...if your plan doesn't fit on a 3x5 index card, it is too complicated, people. There has to be easier ways.

So Rhav and the congressman head downriver on a raft and...this seems like something you wouldn't send a sitting member of congress to do but eh, what are ya gonna do.

Where is a killer crocodile when you need one?

They find the torched village Kajarste left behind, and stop amidst the ruins to have a bite to eat, before hiking through the jungle. And Rhav talks a bit freely about some of the things she and/or Interzod have done or manipulated. It's half joking, but...

Reaching Kajarste's camp at night, Rhav sneaks into his tent with the trank gun, and tells Harwell to stay behind, and run if she's not back in 12 minutes.

Unfortunately, Kajarste wakes up, and tells Rhav she's been used. This has nothing to do with India, this has nothing to do with Interzod, and Alexei doesn't really think a tribal lord in the middle of nowhere will take over the world, this is about none of that.

Well, for the love of Sukenick, could someone please tell me WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS ABOUT THEN??

Hey is that a gun in yo…oh, whoa, okay, that IS a gun.

He tells Rhav this is about a child waiting to be born, and then hands her a knife. And I guess we're supposed to believe this guy has mind powers, or is just so damned charismatic that she kills herself.

Not surprisingly, Harwell does not follow Rhav's orders and comes looking for her, and ends up finding her in the worst way possible when he is killed by Kajarste and his followers.

Meanwhile, Alexei gets a call his surveillance lost Kate, and he should get back there. He rushes as fast as he can on the back roads of India, and eventually has to stop for gas.

The gas station attendant asks if he found Kajarste, and in the course of their conversation reveals the man was not born where Alexei has long believed him to have been, but somewhere and somewhen else entirely. So someone pulled the same trick by hiding his birthday, the same way Alexei was hiding Kate's destiny.

Which begs the question; if Kajarste was NOT born with the ZP to be the new Hitler...why is he acting like one? Living down to expectations? Is his new real birthday MORE evil? Only 99% as evil? If he's doing the evil deeds of the evil potential, does it matter??

Back in New York, Kate is getting another tarot reading, that gets interrupted by someone who wants her money. The fortune teller sees SOME of the girl's destiny though, and it puts her on her back foot.

Kate ends up at a Romani camp, and that is not how this movie refers to them, but I'm better than that. She gets caught up in the frenzied dancing, and suddenly, somehow, Kajarste is there?

And in all the commotion, the fortune teller comes up to them, and kills Kajarste. So uh, problem solved? I feel like I missed a big chunk of movie.

The astrologer finds the tarot reader, and asks her what she told his wife. She's reluctant to say anything, not being very trusting, but he reveals he knows the truth about her, and has been protecting her.

She doesn't really reveal anything, since she never told anything, but there's a sense that just having someone to confide in is a relief for both of them. And so Alexei returns to Interzod.

This is where he reveals the truth about Kate and her connection to Mary, and why he married her to protect her, yet is definitely in love with her, to Agent Wembley.

He also asks Wembley if he thinks they might have Kajarste's charts (kacharts?) wrong, and Wembley recalls how he heard that if someone was born on a specific mountain in the Himilayas on a specific date, they would have a graph of the infinite potential for negative actions. So...he's Mega Hitler, then. And yet, has done nothing but kill a few villagers? Again, questions.

Oh, but also, there was such a storm that day, that no child would have survived!

To keep this long story from getting any longer, they find Kate, she's brought back to Interzod, and Alexei asks her if she's still a virgin. Kate reveals she is not, she had a child at sixteen, doesn't know who the father is, and gave it up to the church.

Wembley tries to find the child through the church, but there are no records of where Jesus II: The Christening is.

Further bombshells drop as Kate tells Alexei about the birth, and she eventually gets around to revealing that she did things the way she did to keep things hidden and avoid questions. Because it turns out, she had the child without having had sex, and it WAS a virgin birth.

She tried explaining to people she couldn't be pregnant, but everyone thought she was lying, or losing her mind, or any number of assumptions about her moral character, so she just started saying she didn't know, and had it in secret to avoid the questions as best she could.

Check it out, Alexei, the virgin birth already happened, and you missed it, astrologer.

Kate doesn't remember any details of when she gave birth, it's all a fog, so no help for Alexei calculating his charts, and we cut from there to a park, and the presumed Christ 2.

And the movie ends with her being watched by a not so dead Kajarste, leaving many many questions up in the air.

Personally, I would have loved to see the ultimate evil try and throw down with the ultimate good right there on the playground. That would have been awesone.

Also, I bring us back to the opening line of the movie after the setup, telling us we were ten days away from the birth of the second coming. But they were actually born five years ago. So this movie is just full of lies.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks pretty good for mid 70s fare.

Audio: Solid enough

Sound Bite: "What does any of us know about ourselves? None of us has the gift for that."

Body Count: For a movie whose big bad is supposed to be Super Mega Ultra Hitler, there is a distinct lack of bodies. Kinda. We get a few stills of the aftermath here and there, but finally things kick off…

1 - Dead body show to the Interzodians around 42 minutes

2 - Rhav kills herself at the behest of Kajerste

3 - Congressman Harwell is killed

4 - The tarot reader stabs Kajerste, but it gets undone.

Best Corpse: Calling this one a wash, since there’s no real stand outs, and most of them are barely even shown.

Blood Type - D: A few trickles here and there, and that’s about it.

Sex Appeal: Kate gets naked a few times

Drink Up! Every time Mary gets mentioned

Movie Review: Overall, I actually quite like this. You can tell it’s made on the cheap, but there’s some passion and drive behind it. As you might have been able to tell though, the plot does get a bit muddy at points. Knowing this was based on a novel, I would genuinely love to read it, and see if things are more fleshed out and understandable there. But it’s not a great movie. It struggles to find a voice, and really take off, but there are big ideas here I really really love, and I suspect with a few tweaks, in more capable hands, it might just work. This is all setting aside the politics and unintentionally sinister nature of Interzod. It was definitely made in a time when people were far more trusting of the government, and it shows. A remake of this would be fun to see. Three out of five zodiacal potentials.

Entertainment Value: The biggest problem of the movie is that there’s not a super lot here. The plot has a lot of ideas, but they’re brought through with a LOT of talking, and the ideas require a lot of exposition. So it’s an overly talky movie, with a lot going on that is rarely disconnected, and needed more to pull the threads together. The acting though is top notch though, and presents interesting ideas, so while it’s not so bad that it’s entertaining, it’s presented well enough. Two out of five birthdays.