Of Unknown Origin 1983 123movies

Watch: Of Unknown Origin 1983 123movies, Full Movie Online – Bart Hughes has a pretty good life, a beautiful wife, a young son, a good job with promotion prospects, and a renovated brownstone in New York. When wife and kid leave for a vacation, Bart stays behind to work on a project that will earn him that promotion, unaware that a certain inhabitant of his basement has other plans for his time. Bart goes a bit bonkers trying to kill this rat, destroying most of his house in the process. Certain allegorical elements tie the household conflict to the “rat race” in his office, but the main event is certainly the night-and-day contest of wills between man and rodent..
Plot: A man who recently completed rebuilding a townhouse becomes obsessed with a rat infestation until it becomes an interspecies duel.
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Ratings:

	6.1/10 Votes: 3,333
	63% | RottenTomatoes
	51/100 | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 67 Popularity: 5.083 | TMDB

Reviews:

Imperfect, but effective little thriller
The premise of this film isn’t exactly original, but a story like this has great potential both for a psychological thriller and for a fun horror flick…but unfortunately, Or Unknown Origin doesn’t quite manage to excel at being either. The focus is more on the battle between man and rat than providing the sort of schlocky horror that the eighties produced so prolifically, which is fine; but it never probes too deep into the psyche of the central character, and the film plays out like a movie that should be fun, but largely isn’t. That’s not to say that it’s a bad film, however, as there are a lot of good ideas on display, and the film also features what may be a career best performance from Peter Weller. The plot sees a man who recently completed the rebuilding of a house being left alone when his wife and child go on holiday. He stays behind to try and win a promotion, but he doesn’t count on an onslaught of torture when it turns out that the house he put together has become infested by a rat. What follows is an all out war between man and one of the world’s most notorious pests.

Rats are one of horror cinema’s most popular animals, and it’s not hard to see why. There is a scene in this film that sees the central character make a case against rats, and it really makes you realise the reason why these animals are so often feared. Of Unknown Origin starts out slowly, but builds some momentum half way through when our hero begins his personal war against nature. I wasn’t expecting much after the first half hour, but the film surprised me somewhat by the way it eventually comes together, climaxing with an exciting sequence that sees the central character really go off the rails. Peter Weller really is superb in the lead role, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this film was the reason he went on to take the lead role in the classic Sci-Fi thriller ‘Robocop’. It’s a shame that director George P. Cosmatos doesn’t seem too keen to get fully inside the character’s head, as the potential for a great psychological thriller is definitely there. This film may have been better if it was handled by someone like David Lynch, but despite its imperfections; Of Unknown Origin is still worth seeing.

80s yuppie nightmare movie featuring a destructive rat.
Bart Hughes (Peter Weller) is living the good life in New York City. Prestigious, high-paying job with ample opportunity for advancement? Check. Attractive and supportive spouse? Check. Nice, newly-renovated three-story brownstone? Check. Infestation by large-sized, uncommonly-intelligent, extremely-destructive rodent? Che… Uh… Well life can’t always be perfect, can it?

With his wife (Shannon Tweed) and their young son out of town visiting her rich father, Bart has two whole weeks of peace and quiet to immerse himself in work in order to impress his boss (Lawrence Dane) and secure a promotion. One morning he notices his dishwasher has leaked and flooded out the kitchen. A closer look reveals a leaky hose that’s been gnawed almost in half. Suspecting either a mouse or rat as the culprit, Bart turns to the building superintendent Clete (Louis Del Grande) for help. Clete tells him about all the various ways he can exterminate the pest (“You trap ’em, you poison ’em, you knock ’em on the head, you gas ’em or you shoot ’em.”) but adds that rats are the only animal that can survive atomic bomb blasts. That’s encouraging, huh? Bart puts out a bunch of old school wooden traps with cheese bait and goes about his day. Unfortunately, those traps end up easily demolished, and his later attempts to kill it using heavy-duty steel traps and poison also fail.

All the while, the “furry f#?!er” makes Bart’s life a living hell. It pops out of a toilet, attacks him when he tries to sleep, kills a stray cat he brings in, leaves black hairs all over the place, eats his food, breaks vases and photos, chews through the electrical wiring, chews through the phone wiring, chews holes in the ceiling and walls, chews up feather pillows and essentially turns his once-immaculate home into a complete dump. It isn’t long before Bart is studying articles like “The Rat: Lapdog of the Devil,” flipping through photos of bite victims and learning everything there is to know about rats. His obsession with killing the four-legged intruder ends up potentially threatening his job, his marriage and even his sanity, until he decides he’s had enough and goes after it with a spiked baseball bat.

Though flawed (it’s essentially a one-idea film and grows repetitive and tedious at points), this isn’t a bad movie. It’s professionally made and directed and features good music, camera-work (including a neat shot inside the box springs of a mattress!) and special effects (a mixture of model rats and close-ups shots of real ones were used). Some of the writing is sharp, including a very amusing scene where Bart spoils a snobby dinner party by discussing some unpleasant facts about rats. Best of all though is Weller himself, who deserves a lot of credit for single-handedly holding the whole thing together, which is important considering his character is the only one of any interest whatsoever. It’s also slightly more interesting than your usual ‘animal attack’ flick because it eschews the cliché every-man lead for a main character who’s a not- particularly- likable dissatisfied yuppie control freak who cringes when one character sits on his pristine kitchen counter top. The makers appear to be using the rat metaphorically to represent all that threatens the uptight protagonist’s affluent lifestyle by dethroning him as king in his own self-made castle.

As I was watching this, the final segment in George Romero’s CREEPSHOW (1982) – which featured E.G. Marshall as a rich old jerk whose spotless apartment is invaded by an army of killer cockroaches – quickly sprung to mind. Both of these tales are black comedies and both feature an upper-class character that has it made being forced to confront how most of the rest of the world lives when their privileged bubble is invaded by an unwelcome intruder. What’s interesting is that both stories have completely different resolutions. Not surprisingly, Romero, whose work is typically bleak, opts for the grim finale, while Cosmatos, who’d make the raise-your-flag-and-cheer-on-Stallone-as-he-blows-away-the-bad-guys RAMBO II soon after this, goes for the positive. In other words, by watching both you get to see the same basic story told from two very specific yet completely different perspectives; one condemning and punishing what they perceive to be classism and the other taking a more optimistic stance by suggesting that anyone is capable of positive change given the right catalyst.

Other Information:

Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 29 min (89 min), 1 hr 29 min (89 min) (Sweden), 1 hr 28 min (88 min) (USA)
Budget 4000000
Revenue 0
Status Released
Rated R
Genre Horror, Thriller
Director George P. Cosmatos
Writer Chauncey G. Parker III, Brian Taggert
Actors Peter Weller, Jennifer Dale, Lawrence Dane
Country Canada
Awards 2 wins
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Mono
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Camera Panaflex Camera and Lenses by Panavision
Laboratory Film House, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Film Length 2,441 m (Sweden)
Negative Format 35 mm
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm