The Wolfman
All Hallow’s Eve is a time for frightening cinema. My favorite is The Wolfman, a 1941 Universal film. It starred Lon Chaney, Jr. as Lawrence Talbot and the titular character.
Talbot returns to his ancestral home in Wales, becomes romantically interested in antique shop owner Gwen Conliffe, and buys a silver headed cane from her. On the head of the walking stick is a werewolf. That very night Gwen’s friend is attacked by a wolf. Talbot kills the wolf with his stick but is bitten. The gypsy Maleva reveals the wolf was actually her son, Bela. The curse of lycanthropy has been passed to Larry.
Talbot transforms into a werewolf—the metamorphosis is quite engaging – when the moon is full. He murders someone. Larry is eventually killed and returns to human form.
Lon Chaney, Jr. was an Aquarian born on February 10, 1906, in Oklahoma City. His father was also a very famous actor. Junior was noted for his roles in such films as Of Mice and Men (1939), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), and Son of Dracula (1943). He made appearances on television shows and a syndicated serial.
In an actor we would expect Neptune, the planet of illusion, glamour, and decay, to be prominent. In Lon’s chart it is in the imaginative sign of Cancer. Though Chaney’s time of birth is not known, his Neptune is trine Saturn, square Mars, and opposed by Uranus.
Neptune trine Saturn would have enabled Chaney to bring his imaginings to concrete form. He would have been hardworking and organized. (Parker, The Compleat Astrologer, p. 146)
Mars square Neptune would have provided an outlet for Chaney’s sensitive imagination and countered any tendency to negative escapism. (Ibid)
Negative aspects from Uranus to Neptune tend to a high emotional level. Acting would have served as a positive outlet.
The Mummy (2017)
There have been a number of movies entitled The Mummy. The first was the 1932 classic with Boris Karloff. Brendan Fraser’s series of films in the 1990s were popular. By the way, Karloff and Fraser were both Sagittarians. My favorite is the version with Tom Cruise and Sophia Boutella.
In the Cruise version his character is U.S. Army Sargeant Nick Morton, a greedy tomb robber, who accidentally sets the Egyptian princess Ahmanet free. Ahmanet is played convincingly by Sophia Boutella. Her makeup gives her a look of evil. She murders the pharaoh, her father, his second wife, and their child, a boy, who would have been heir to the throne. Ahmanet made a pact with Set, the God of death, for power. While performing a ritual to give him physical form, she is stopped by the high priests, mummified alive, and her sarcophagus taken away from Egypt to a secret place where it was thought it would never be found. After a series of harrowing adventures, Morton kills Ahmanet.
Sophia Boutella, an Aries, was born in Algeria on 3 April 1982, at 6:15 am. Her Moon is in theatrical Leo in its own house. Neptune conjoins the M.C. indicating a possible career in acting certainly buttressed by the Moon’s sign and house placement. The outer planets Uranus and Neptune are both in Sagittarius, the sign of the thespian. Her career was well-chosen.
The Fly (1958)
The final cinematic production that is a favorite of mine is the classic flick, The Fly. David Hedison plays Andre Delambre, a scientist who is experimenting with teleportation. He tries the device on himself but unbeknownst to him his supposedly empty teleporter contained a common housefly. When he transports himself, his genes mix with those of the fly. A fly has Delambre’s now tiny head. It wails, “Help me.” The scientist has an enlarged head of a fly and one insect arm. Insect instincts begin to rob Andre of his humanity. Unable to become completely human, he asks his wife to kill him.
The Fly was based on a short story by George Langelaan, a Capricorn born on January 19, 1908. George had been a spy for the Allies in World War Two who parachuted into occupied France in 1941 to make contact with the French Resistance. He underwent plastic surgery before his jump to avoid detection. Langelaan wrote a number of short stories.
George’s Moon and Jupiter were probably conjoined in Leo. His Sun is closely bound with Mercury at the beginning of Aquarius. He may have had a dramatic personality on the DSM. Plastic surgery is a kind of disguise.
I prefer movies like these because the plots are interesting, there is an element of adventure, and not very much gore and needless violence. Don’t forget your popcorn!