Product Details

• Actors: Peter Weller, Jennifer Dale, Lawrence Dane, Kenneth Welsh, Louis Del Grande
• Directors: George P. Cosmatos
• Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: August 22, 1995
• Run Time: 88 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300270254
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,894 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A low-rent horror flick from the early 1980s, Of Unknown Origin 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 than idiot-versus-rat.

Finding an angry rodent swimming in your toilet might be a pretty unpleasant prospect, but cinematically speaking it is 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 is 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 roo! ting 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 Mousehunt did it with a lot more charm. --Paul Philpott

From the Back Cover

When not mired in the corporate rat race, Wall Street executive Bart Hughes is king of his sleek Manhattan brownstone. Suddenly his castle is under siege. Bart takes a stand--with his survival and sanity at stake!

Peter Weller ("Robocop," "Odyssey 5") plays Bart in "Of Unknown Origin," an eerie and nerve-tingling suspense thriller directed by George P. Cosmatos ("Tombstone," "Cobra") and the winner of the Paris International Film Festival Awards (1983) for Best Picture and Actor. Cleverly and compellingly, the film draws us into yet another rat race, namely one with an intruder that is formidable, persistent and clever enough to draw Bart along an unwitting path to self-destruction. In the battle of man vs. beast, push has come to scream.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent must see underated horror film, September 14, 2000

By 

Z. Snygg (Fort Lee, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Of Unknown Origin [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie is one of the most underated horror films that I have ever seen. Beautiful use of the long take and voyeuristic photography. It's very "Roman Polanski esque". Weller is perfect as the upscale New Yorker who becomes obsessed with a rodent invading his beautiful apartment. If you ever lived in a large city, this movie is a must see.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quirky Vintage Weller, May 8, 2001

By 

Liz "L." (PA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Of Unknown Origin [VHS] (VHS Tape)

An urban "Moby Dick"! Suspenseful yet humorous with some purposely overblown rat scenes. (ONE rat, not "hordes.") The film is not a scary rat flick, (though it has some fright moments)--it's a psychological thriller about a man being drawn into obsession.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Robocop vs. Huge Rat, Round 1 Fight!!!., December 11, 2007

By 

Puzzle box "smockey_421" (Kuwait) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Of Unknown Origin (DVD)

Peter Weller (Robocop) turns his home into a battleground in this fun little b-movie horror film. The film starts of with Peter Weller's character who has a beautiful wife and a son who live in a classy New York apartment as hes ready to go to work, soon both his wife and son leave to visit some relatives during the weekend so he will have some time to get some office work done, unfortunately for him there seems to be a little problem. There seems to be a huge rodent roaming around the apartment and it has really become a nuisance of course he calls the exterminator but that doesn't help infact it seems like things are getting much worse as this disgusting rodent seems to outsmart its opponent and Peter's character can't take it anymore so he has to go to extreme measures in order to get rid of this problem and he becomes totally obsessed it seems to have taken over his life and sanity. Of Unknown Origin was a pretty good horror film even though there were some corny parts I still liked it its sort of like a guilty pleasure movie so I watch it when theres nothing else on T.V..