By Brandon Nolta

Living and working in the Big Apple can be tough on a guy, but some people thrive on the pressure. Bart Hughes (Peter Weller) is one of those hardy breed. He’s got his life well in hand: a beautiful and loving wife (Shannon Tweed), an adorable son (Leif Anderson), a freshly renovated brownstone and a great high-paying job. Bart has just been handed an assignment that will lead to an executive position, and since his family is on vacation, he’ll have the time to do a massive project that will clinch the job for him. Of course, there’s just one small problem. There always is.

Thus begins OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN, a little-known gem from 1983 that plays the nerves like a madman on the keys. Nothing frightens like the monster in your head, and the scary films that work, like this one, were made by folks that understand this basic truth. Things start slowly: we see a family comfortable in their space, a man respected at his job, the American Dream in full color. But, the promotion Bart’s up for depends on him pulling off a difficult project in a field that’s new to him in very little time, and he feels like he’s being set up to fail.

Occasionally, Bart hears scratching noises or odd little thumps in his home. Usually it comes to nothing, but one night, Bart finds his kitchen floor covered with water. An emergency call to local plumber Clete (Louis Del Grande) reveals a leaky drain hose is the problem. Clete asks if he has a rat, and Bart scoffs, although any place in New York that is missing rats or roaches is probably not a good place to live. Bart says there’s no rat in the house. But, as it turns out, there is. And not just any rat, either. Without his family around, and with the stress of the project weighing on him, Bart’s research into rats and his desire to rid his house of the little bastard morphs into obsession. The rat chews up family pictures, Bart lays out bear traps. Bart throws down poison everywhere, the rat eats his pillows. The rat snarls at him from the toilet bowl in the middle of the night, Bart starts yelling at the ceiling. Soon, Bart’s talking to his gloves while rat-contaminated food rains out of his ruined pantry, while unblinking eyes watch Bart from hiding.

There are other people in the film, but the narrative is essentially a duet for obsessive and rat, and Weller is the top draw. Bart Hughes starts the film as completely normal, but before long, he’s talking to inanimate objects and withdrawing from his life in pursuit of this thing, and Weller leads the audience down the path of madness, making the slide so gentle and reasonable that even as he falls into the abyss, he keeps our sympathies. Of course, against a foe this relentless, Chuck Manson probably would seem like a hero. For an antagonist that has absolutely no hint of the supernatural about it, this rat is one badass monster. It harasses Bart in his sleep, then kills his cat and deposits it on top of his fridge. For an encore, it eats a check Bart leaves for the exterminator and taunts him by playing in his piano. You’d think it would be cheaper to move.

By story’s end, Bart is locked up in his home, unshaven, refusing to speak to anyone and hunting the rat with a nail-studded baseball bat and a miner’s headlamp, stalking his foe in the dark while it returns the favor. George Cosmatos, the director, listed JAWS as one of the film’s influences, but the climactic battle where Weller basically destroys his home reminded me of WAIT UNTIL DARK in its intensity. Whether rats push your heebie-jeebies button or not, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN is a skin-crawling portrait of obsessive terror. If you’re tired of Michael, Jason and Freddy for Halloween, and you want to get the crap scared out of you, turn off the lights and curl up with this furball.