Man Bats Rat: Of Unknown Origin

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

Those who have dared to read Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick or, The Whale (1851) know that it is a daunting task. Its immense details describing the nautical lifestyle of whalers are particularly challenging. The sailors who sign up to join the ship Pequod do so for a voyage of enterprise; instead, the whale hunters’ induction into a journey of revenge becomes the novel’s narrative. Yes, if stated simply, the plot of Moby-Dick is about a man trying to kill a whale. But such a simplification undermines the novel’s many themes, including obsession. Likewise, Of Unknown Origin (1983) is about a man trying to kill a rat. But this clever horror film is really about the lead character’s Ahabian obsession with both his rodent opponent and with his career success.

Man’s obsession to defeat creatures, whether natural or fantastical, is a tale that dates back to the time of antiquity storytelling and throughout literary history: Heracles fights a variety of monsters like the Lernean Hydra during his Twelve Labors; Beowulf battles Grendel; and of course, Ahab’s combat with Moby Dick. There is even a moment of metafiction during Of Unknown Origin when the lead character watches Spencer Tracy battle the marlin in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Thus, Of Unknown Origin joins a long narrative legacy with its depicted struggle against a terrorizing rat.

Bart Hughes (Peter Weller) is a typical 1980s American businessman, a successful, career-driven professional with a happy family living in a completely renovated house. He boasts of his home’s hardwood floor, “I did all this by hand myself. Not one machine touched this floor.” Bart realizes early in the film that there is a rodent intruder in his residence, but he does not immediately hire an exterminator as he does not want his handcrafted-home torn apart again. Instead, he believes he can handle the issue himself through the common strategy of traps. The superintendent of a neighboring apartment building, Clete (Louis Del Grande), provides Bart with sound advice of his opponent: that “a rat is a survivor” and is “spending hundred percent of [its] time figuring out ways to outsmart you.” Thus, the theme of competition inspires the career businessman to take his adversary as seriously as he would any work assignment.

The conflict over the whale in Moby-Dick is enhanced by the debate between Captain Ahab, who is driven to destroy the creature at any cost, and his First Mate Starbuck, who is more concerned with the fiscal success of the voyage. A similar conflict is pressed upon Bart in a smart plotting of characterization. At work, Bart is given the opportunity of career advancement but under a tight schedule. Thus, his need to destroy the terrorizing rat is not just for the sake of home maintenance but also to make his business deadline. To survive against the rat is to survive against his work rivals who are hoping to take away Bart’s assigned project while he is so distracted at home.

Bart researches rodents at work like he would a corporate competitor. In a fantastic scene, Bart relays the extent of his research at a business dinner party of how dangerous rats are to the world in both commerce and existence. Bart shares the evils of rats to an executive whose business his company is bidding for, passionately describing how rats destroy billions of pounds of food each year and were the carriers of the bubonic plague flea that killed one in three individuals in the Middle Ages. Interestingly, Bart’s fellow diners never discourage him from relaying such information. Instead, they obviously lose their appetite or begin nervously scratching at the table in sheer shock from the stated facts. The rat becomes not just Bart’s opponent, but perhaps the deadliest enemy the civilized world has ever known. 

At no point in the film does Bart ever consider his rodent flippantly. From his due diligence at research, he knows he is facing an adversary that can eat through lead and can multiply by the millions in just a few years of reproduction. Bart knows more is at stake than just his home if he allows his rat to survive and thrive. Thus, the pressure builds upon Bart as does his obsession. He is not going to “pamper some animal whose only contribution is famine, sickness, and death.”

Of Unknown Origin succeeds in building its suspense through the quick hints and glimpses we have of the rat. From shadow reflections to disappearing tails to a bulging figure moving underneath bed sheets, there is effective dread throughout the film to have the audience fear a creature it never fully sees. Certainly, the moment when Bart lifts up the toilet seat in his bathroom to relieve himself, only to be surprised by the snarling rodent, inches away from his exposed member, will scare “the willies” out of any male viewer. Yet the lack of a full shot of the rat, perhaps due to budget or special effect restrictions in its production age, is a fair criticism. While the film does provide close-up shots of a live rat’s face, they are not as impressive as one would hope. Even in the multiple film adaptations of Moby Dick, one does eventually see the white whale emerging from beneath the sea, after all.

Bart goes through the gambit of many failed attempts to destroy the rat. From traps to poison to even enlisting an adopted cat from the streets, Bart fails to vanquish his opponent. A sales clerk that supplies Bart with his rodent-fighting weaponry remarks, “The city is an open sewer. The rats are just waiting to take over.” Meanwhile, the rat continues to terrorize Bart, prompting him to destroy his renovated home bit-by-bit in his obsessive quest to defeat the rodent. The only winner in this battle is the survivor, either the evolved Homo sapiens or the creature that has survived atomic explosions.

Towards the climactic battle between Bart and Rat, the corporate businessman fashions himself his final weapon, a baseball bat adorned with nails and broken traps. The creation of this deadly instrument is not unlike Ahab having a special harpoon made for him to defeat Moby Dick. The final combat between the two opponents features Bart hunting after the rodent in his basement. When Bart swings down the spiked bat upon the rat’s last hiding place, a miniature model of Bart’s now-destroyed home, it is a moment of meta-symbolism. Of Unknown Origin is indeed about the obsessive rat race for success. As Aerosmith once sang, “Goin’ under, rats in the cellar.”

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