Stars: Peter Weller, Jennifer Dale, Lawrence Dane, Shannon Tweed, Kenneth Welsh, Louis Del Grande

Director: George Pan Cosmatos

Summary: Based on 'The Visitor' by Chauncey G Parker III. Will man's basic survival prove strong enough to overcome the creature of unknown origin?

Based on THE VISITOR by Chauncey G Parker III, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN describes the rise and fall of high-powered Manhattan executive Bart Hughes (Peter Weller, ROBOCOP, NAKED LUNCH). Bart thinks he's got it all figured out: the perfect wife (Shannon Tweed), a high paying job and a renovated brownstone to top it all off. When his wife and son leave for a vacation, he finds himself alone in the house with a roomate, a rogue rat who has taken up residence in his apartment. Things increasingly get worse and Bart finds himself less powerful than he imagined himself to be. Is it true that the meek really shall inherit the Earth

WIN DVDs by rating this DVD

Average User Rating:

WIN DVDS by being amongst the first to review this DVD. Reviewing DVDs earns you bonus entries and lets you WIN DVDs!Please login before reviewing this DVD. If you're a new user, register for free and enter to WIN FREE DVDs!

A low-rent horror flick from the early 1980s, Of Unknown Origincompletely misses the mark in the scare stakes and instead comes across like a grisly, live-action version of Tom and Jerry. Our inept hero is the ambitious, house-proud executive Bart Hughes (Peter Weller), who is left alone by his wife and son to complete a business proposal only to discover that he is sharing his apartment with a mischievous giant rat. Unable to trap or poison his foe, Hughes quickly descends into nightmare-haunted madness and thus the stage is set for a suspenseless battle of wits that is less cat-and-mouse and more idiot-versus-rat.

Finding an angry rodent swimming in your toilet might be a pretty unpleasant prospect, but cinematically speaking it's far from terrifying. Created using jerky point-of-view shots and creature effects that range from incongruous real-life footage to button-eyed glove puppets, the rat is an unthreatening villain, despite Weller's best efforts to react in abject horror when he finds the corners of his mail nibbled or his dry groceries spoiled. There are some unsuccessful attempts to make Hughes' plight more immediate to the audience by references to real-life rat problems--he visits a library to research his enemy and finds some disturbing photographs of rat-attack victims and subsequently ruins a dinner party with a genuinely unsettling rant about infestation and plagues--but it's difficult to feel sorry for him when he can't even muster the tenacity to track down a professional exterminator. By the time Weller gets caught in one of his own traps, you will probably be rooting for the rat anyway, and might take some pleasure from a ridiculous denouement in which, dressed in full battle-gear, he completely destroys his beloved apartment by clumsily chasing the elusive vermin with a nail-studded baseball bat. Gore Verbinski's genuinely hilarious Mousehuntdid it with a lot more charm.

On the DVD:Of Unknown Origincomes to DVD with a basic selection of extras. An entertaining commentary from Peter Weller and the likeable George P Cosmatos III does the film a lot of favours, even if their efforts to talk up its importance as an allegory for man's struggle against nature using comparisons with The Old Man and the Sea, Moby Dick, Alienand Jawsfail to convince. Added to this is the theatrical trailer ("If it doesn't scare you to death, it WILL find another way!"), a choice of languages and scene selection. --Paul Philpott

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Audio Commentary - 1. George P. Cosmatos - Director, 2. Peter Weller - Star, Trailers - 1. Original Theatrical Trailer, Interactive Menus, Scene Access
Year:	1983
Release Date:	September 1, 2003
Runtime:	85 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	D 024326
Keywords:	General, Unknown, Origin, Drama
Genre:	Drama