ecl@ahuta.UUCP (ecl) (01/29/85)
OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
This film is an unexpected pleasure. It was lost among a flood of
similar little horror films with similar unpromising premises. Bart Hughes
is a successful executive with a proven track record. He has a beautiful
wife, a beautiful secretary who has designs on him, a nice urban house, and
one extremely bright and tenacious rat in his cellar.
The film traces the disintegration of Bart's personality as he battles
the rat. Time and again he loses battles with his small foe by under-
estimating its powers. Eventually he is reduced to a primitive animal
fighting for its existence against his small adversary. This Canadian film
combines some of the better aspects of Spielberg's DUEL and Bass's PHASE IV.
Eventually the film loses its credibility as the rat just behaves too
intelligently, and in some scenes the size of the rat seems exaggerated.
Still, the film is an effective little film. Rate it +1 on (a -4 to +4
scale).
(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!lznv!mrljrathman@uokvax.UUCP (02/04/85)
I actually sat through this cinimatic atrocity (OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN) just last night and found it to be an "unexpected" farce. The basic man vs. rat idea might have been great if made for a 30 min. Twilight Zone episode, but two hours of such nonsense was too much. At one point, our would-be hero pounds the ceiling in frustration, using a copy of Moby Dick and another time he dozes in front of the TV, which is showing "The Old Man And The Sea" - any movie making such audacious comparisons of itself with some of the classic "man vs. beast" stories should as such be expected to provide some fresh insights, but instead we follow our hero through one ludicrous incident after another, showing this particular film to be the pretentious piece of garbage it really is. On a -4 to +4 scale?? I'll give it a -3 just because something this bad has a strange fascination all its own. Jim Rathman uokvax!jrathman