Of Unknown Origin (1983)

Episode 105, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, this month is request month where we fulfill all of our loyal listeners’ every desires. And as it turns out, our listeners are pretty boring, and they just want us to watch movies and jabber about them for an hour. Who knew?

Craig:  Who knew?

Todd:  Today’s movie comes from our listener, Nick S, and, he recommended an old movie I’d never ever heard of before. It’s a Peter Weller and Shannon Tweed film called Of Unknown Origin. Man, I knew nothing about this movie. And even when I went online to find out more about it, there’s really almost nothing there.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  I didn’t know anything about it either. I’d never heard of it.

Todd:  This turns out to be a 1983 film, directed by George P Cosmatis. I think that’s how you pronounce his name. He’s a pretty prolific guy. He’s directed stuff you know, Tombstone Yep. Rambo First Blood part 2, a couple of Cobra, that other Stallone movie back, that Leviathan, kinda one of my favorites, which Peter Weller was also in as a master. I’d forgotten that. Yeah. So, he’s a pretty prolific for what he’s for what he’s done. And then the writer of this film, the film was actually based off of a novel, apparently, a best selling novel called The Visitor, Brian Taggart. And Brian Taggart, you will know from such classics as Visiting Hours, poltergeist 3, episodes of V, The Omen 4. That’s funny. Stuff like this. So, not the most prolific. You know, when I was watching this movie, there was times that I was watching it that I thought I was watching more or less a big budget Hollywood film. There were other times I watched it, I was thinking I was watching a made for TV movie. Kinda. Right? It just kinda depended on the scene, depended on the circumstance. But what this movie really did for me was transplanted me back to the eighties. I mean, the the portrayal of this guy’s job and these people’s haircuts and their outfits and their clothing and their glasses, it could not be more eighties than this. Even the house that this, guy is in, And, the guy’s name is Peter. His house the first shot in the movie is kind of a pan up this house. And from the outside, it looks like this very old it’s like a mansion that looks like a castle, but it’s kinda smack dab in the middle of the city. Right? There’s gotta be a term for that kind of architecture.

Craig:  It’s a it’s a brownstone, and like I

Todd:  I don’t know that.

Craig:  It’s a 3 it’s a 3 story brownstone which is amazing and like that, you know, it’s very New York. It’s especially, you know, like you said, it’s this movie paints the picture of what we all thought New York was like in the eighties. Like, I don’t know if it was really like that, but you know, you know, these business people in power suits walking down the street, and everybody lives in these brownstones. You know, these brownstones in New York, only famous people or the very very wealthy live in them. Yeah. Because, like, they’re they’re kinda like these standalone buildings right in the middle of the city. I mean, they’ve Todd, I mean, they have to be worth 1,000,000 upon 1,000,000 of dollars and we’re kind of just supposed to believe that this kind of, I guess, he’s kind of upper level business financial guy. I don’t know, but supposedly he bought this place and refurbished the whole thing himself, which alright. I mean, willing suspension of disbelief that this guy could afford this huge standalone building right in the middle of Manhattan, but okay. Yeah.

Todd:  Manhattan, which at times looks like Canada because, that’s where it was filmed. Yeah. This guy, Peter, is a Again, like you said, I’m an up and coming businessman, business executive. We meet him and his wife is Shannon Tweed. Now, Shannon Tweed, I mean, I’ve been every other up all night movie that wasn’t a horror film. Shannon Tweed was pretty much it in the nineties. She’s a former, Playboy centerfold, and this was her very first film role. She did a I don’t know. I think she did a couple episodes of Falcon Crest and some TV series before this, but this movie came out, like, 2 years after she posed for Playboy, and then she just took her top off for, I don’t know, over a 100 100 of movies, basically, between the eighties nineties. I knew more the nineties, Shannon Tweed, and this is the much younger, like, I don’t know, like, twenties or early thirties Shannon Tweed. And, yeah, she’s pretty stunning, but she doesn’t have a lot of airtime in this movie.

Craig:  No. No. And that’s, like, when I was reading about the movie, there everything I saw was, like, it’s Shannon Tweed’s first movie, and, she gets, you know, she gets the and introducing Shannon Tweed Mhmm. In the opening credits. And she’s the main guy’s wife. So I was expecting her to have more of a role, but when I was looking at the IMDB page, she’s listed like 5 characters down.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And it makes sense because she’s really not in it. Like like, she shows up in the first 30 seconds so you can look at her boobs. Yep. And then and then after that, I can only imagine that she probably could have filmed all of her stuff in a couple of days.

Todd:  Yeah. And and on somewhere far, far away because she’s hardly with her husband in most of it.

Craig:  Yeah. She’s on the phone for, like, 90% of her screen time.

Todd:  Yeah. Where you could see her in a swimming suit or Yeah. In a tennis outfit. In either case, we don’t get to see her boobs, but we get to see her nipples poking out pretty hard. It’s so bald on its face.

Craig:  Yeah. That you

Todd:  you have to smile.

Craig:  And it’s funny because I didn’t I knew nothing about this movie, and I had no idea what kind of movie it was gonna be. And then so you get that that the opening, you know, the opening shot is of this building or whatever and then it goes inside and the husband I feel like is maybe, I don’t know, laying on the bed or getting dressed or something. And then it goes to her in the shower and I’m like, oh, well, it’s gonna be this type of movie. No, it’s not. It’s just like, we got Shannon Tweed, so let’s just show her boobs real quick, and then we’ll move on. Exactly.

Todd:  It was like Craig Lord’s, Todd Girl and not of this earth. You know? Same deal. Gotta get the boobs in there. And then, well, in Shandtweed’s case, you know, there was a boob there were at least 2 boobs in every movie she did. Anyway, alright. We don’t have to keep talking about she had Todd eat boobs. Let’s Well,

Craig:  we might need to because Well, they’re there. Because there there’s there’s not a whole lot to talk about with this movie. Like that’s what I kept thinking when I was watching it was like, oh my gosh, what are we gonna talk about? And I usually take like pages of notes and I’ve got like 3 quarters of a page of notes here, because what this movie is about is this guy okay, so his wife and kid go on vacation without him. They’re going to visit her dad, and he kinda acts like he’s a little bit annoyed about it. But he has to stay because there’s this new project going on at work that he’s been assigned and if he gets this project done, then he’s gonna get this big promotion. So he can’t go. So we get them out of the picture and then basically the rest of the movie is he realizes that there’s a rat in the apartment and he battles the rat for the rest of the movie and that’s it.

Todd:  Thank you for listening to another episode of You guys in the chainsaw. If you like this podcast, please share it with a friend.

Craig:  And you know, we can get into details and there’s some interesting stuff to talk about, but seriously that’s it. Like Todd me it felt more like an episode of The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Craig, where if they had wanted to, they easily could have squeezed this into a half an hour.

Todd:  And maybe they should have. I mean, it’s actually, the way when I was watching it at first, and I knew nothing even, you know, going into it at all either. I didn’t look up a thing. I didn’t know it was about a rat. Did you? Did you know it was about a rat?

Craig:  Well, okay. So you sent me the link, because I watched it on YouTube. You can rent this movie on YouTube. That was the only place we were able to find it. And in the link, when I clicked on it, the the trailer played. So so I saw the trailer, and I saw that it was about a rat, but the the trailer makes it look like it’s gonna be like, there’s gonna be some kind of big twist. Like, the the very end of the trailer shows the the brownstone being all lit up from behind, like, there’s, like, a spaceship behind it or something. So I I thought there I thought that there was gonna be some big twist like these were alien rats or something. Oh, no. You were waiting.

Todd:  You were waiting for the whole movie, weren’t you? Oh, man.

Craig:  It’s just a just a regular old schnauzer sized rat.

Todd:  I didn’t even realize at first it was gonna be about a rat because there’s a there’s a couple shots at the beginning where he’s making toast or whatever. Mhmm. Standing, and there’s his toaster is there, and you see just what looks like a shadow Mhmm. Creep across the toaster and the reflection and go away. I thought, oh, that’s creepy. It’s, like, like, sinister or something, you know? And, there’s another scene when he comes home from work. He’s been put on this big project. There’s there’s all kinds of unimportant banter about this project that he’s he’s been moved from this account to this other account.

Clip:  Why in the name of Job did you pitch that pyramid thing to James Hall? Man, I was flying with that green beep. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Look, I need a hands on guy, Bart, who’s right to handle the reorganization of all of the branch offices of this trust company. Somebody with new ideas, not old ones with a face lift. Well, this is the topic of the day. I mean The topic is over. I need a package for the board of directors meeting in 2 weeks. In 2 weeks? Can you do it? I have to ship some things. Which is why I gave Pyramid Todd Hall. And Laurie can handle whatever else you’ve got. I’ll give it a shot. It’s yours, kiddo, because you know what’s riding on.

Todd:  You know, it’s just all bunch of office finance gobbledygook that we don’t need to understand. We just know it’s really important. And so, he comes he comes home from his job and he’s walking around the the darkness and and there’s a lot of music throughout this film that plays. It’s really creepy. And again, you see this shadow, this really big shadow kind of almost it was almost like the shadows slinking away from him or away from his shadow, and I was like, oh, this is this is gonna be sort of creepy haunted house kind of things in the shadows kinda movie. Then you just start seeing a lot of close ups of, of rats.

Craig:  Yeah. Like, the first one you see it’s like an I mean, I guess maybe it was a real rat paw, but it’s such an extreme close-up that it looks huge. And so it looks like, you know, scary evil rat hand. And so, like, I thought maybe it was gonna be, like, demon rats.

Todd:  We put that

Craig:  on. In a sense, it kind of is because this rat that he battles is, like, the most wicked, vicious, horrible rat you can imagine. Like, I I was when it wants Todd be yeah. When it wants Todd be I was I was talking to my partner about it last night Todd, like, he was rolling his eyes like, I don’t care. I don’t I don’t Todd to see this movie. I don’t want to talk about it. Save it for the podcast. But I was telling him I was like, so the rat, when you act like, when it attacks, because eventually it does, like, it starts attacking him and stuff, it’s the size of a small dog. Like, it’s it’s huge. But but any but then they show all these close ups of it, and it’s just these extreme close ups of real rats. Like, real and real rats are not the or at least none that I’ve ever seen in movies or anything are are are that big. So, like, there’s just kind of this discrepancy, like Yeah. Like when you when you see the footage of the rats, they look I mean, they’re dirty and wet and gross. Like, they try to make them look as gross as possible, but they just look like rats. And then when this thing attacks him, it’s this huge thing that he’s fighting with, and it makes, like, squealing pig noises, which is kind of hilarious.

Todd:  That’s one of the problems with the movie is the scale is not consistent at all. And you don’t even realize you you really want it to be a big rat. You know? Like, the whole time I’m watching this, I’m like, okay. I hope this rat is huge. I hope this rat is huge. And and you’re seeing these close ups of it. You’re like, well, of course, they had to close-up film a rat, but, you know, there’s no context. You know? So it’s it’s like the attack of the giant ants, you know. They film these rats really close-up. It’s what they had to do. But then you get these shots that are point of view shots of, like, the rat scurrying between the walls where it hit his chewed through the 2 by fours, a little passageway for itself. And, I mean, it couldn’t be more clear that this rat is smaller than the width of a 2 by 4. Right. And so, like, what is it? You know? It’s just very disappointing. And it can get into the, you know, the closet. It could be on shelves in the closet or shelves in in a small cabinet or cupboard. It can come up through the toilet. But at the same time, like you say, it it’s like bashing itself against the door like like a dog, and I don’t think we were we were working with 2 rats here. That was not the twist at the end was that there were 2 rats. There was just 1. So, yeah, that was a that was a problem with the movie, I thought, was the general, I don’t know, kind of confusion, which leads to a little bit of lack of terror. Does that make sense?

Craig:  Yeah. I I I feel like the movie okay. So, gosh, you know, we’re just kinda all over the place, but it’s because we can’t really talk about plot because seriously, the plot is he just fights this rat in his house. And, like, there’s, you know, it starts out normal, like, he tries to set out, you know, regular rat traps and and that doesn’t work because the rat just chews through them. And so then he gets, like, these big medieval torture chamber.

Todd:  Rat traps. Where you get these things, but I don’t even think they’re legal.

Craig:  I can’t like, they look like bear traps. And he’s and he sets those around, and it doesn’t work. And then, like, the rats just, like, tormenting him, and, like, you know, eating his food and chewing up his mail. Like, that was another thing that I loved. Like, it was like this rat really had a vendetta against him. Yeah. Because at at one point, he calls and it’s like, he doesn’t wanna call an exterminator at first because the super of the building next door

Clip:  Come on. Exterminator, what are you kidding? It’s for little old ladies, and people don’t wanna get their hands dirty. You don’t have any problem with that, do you? Getting your hands dirty? No. I got no problem getting my hands dirty. See, I renovated this house from the bottom up. See? Jeez. Very nice. Very nice. Be horrible if an exterminator came in here and unrenovated it from the bottom up. Tear out your cabinetry over here, took this out, maybe got behind the wall because that’s what they do, man. They wreck the place.

Craig:

But eventually, when things have gotten really bad and obviously this rat is out to get him, he eventually calls an exterminator and he says to the exterminator: Okay, I won’t be home, but I’ll leave you a key in the mailbox or something and then I’ll leave the check underneath the hood of the turntable, like the record player. Yeah. And he does and then he comes back and the rat is still there. It’s playing the piano. It’s like, I guess it’s supposed to be like on the on the chords or the strings of the piano and this is the piano is playing. And he calls the guy and he’s like, what are you doing? You came and you took my money and the rat’s still here. And the guy’s like, you butthole, there was no money. And, like, he looks around, and he founds that the rat has taken the check and chewed it up.

Craig:  Like, the rat like, the rat knew that this was the check for the exterminator. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

Todd:  It’s pretty funny. It’s pretty funny to talk about. I honestly felt like you could take the sinister music out of this movie, replace it with comedic lighthearted music, and this movie would play as a comedy. And in fact, as I was going through it, I was bouncing back and forth. I was like, is this supposed to be funny? Is this supposed to be a black comedy? Because it’s taking itself awfully seriously at points. But yet, at other times, you know, like, there’s a moment where he’s, he’s in the living room reading, and it’s really late at night. And the he hears the rats scurrying up above him, and he stands up on a chair, and he takes the novel he’s reading and slams it against the ceiling to try to get it to stop. And, And, of course, it’s Moby Dick.

Craig:  Moby Dick. Yeah.

Todd:  And I think the Todd man in the sea is, like, showing on TV, like, once. Yes. It’s just so there are these little nods, these cute little funny things. And, again, it just it’s it’s really so comical by the end of it. And I think part of what helps too is this guy, this super. It reminded me a little bit of fright night, you know, how, the kid thinks there’s a vampire living next Todd. So he goes to his friend who’s, like, the vampire expert. Right. Right? And then he keeps going back to him, and he keeps telling him all this new information or lost boys or whatever, you know, the same kind of deal with Corey Feldman’s character.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  Right. This guy was like that. It’s like, yep, you got a rat. You you got to take care of it, but can’t just, you know, bring exterminators and okay. So then he puts out the traps. I tried the traps. It Todd work, and he’s like, oh, no, you can’t use those traps. Those are my grandma’s traps, you know. You gotta get so he gets the bigger ones. And he keeps going back to this guy for information or for advice. And eventually, he goes to, like, an army surplus dude, and and he’s buying, like, heavy duty equipment, like, leather jackets and, lights to put on his head and and, it gets again, it it just it ups the stakes, but it ups the stakes in a way that a comedy ups the stakes where this guy is going to more and more extreme measures, towards this rat in the house. Yet, I feel like the movie just is really trying hard to make this seem so sinister Uh-huh. That it just doesn’t work either direction. You know what I mean?

Craig:  Yeah. Well, and you know, like you said there, he’s trying all these different things and like it it’s it’s so extreme, like, we talked about the medieval torture rat traps. And and then he goes and he buys poison.

Todd:  We got 2 main kind. This one thins the blood, and this one works with water. What’s the difference? That’ll turn him into a walking Hemri.

Clip:  Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don’t want him to bleed all over my furniture. How about the water torture?

Todd:  Steer clear of him for this one. It’ll give him a powerful thirst. He’ll run for water. Keep your toilets closed and no water around. He’ll aim straight for the sewer and drink until he bursts. Pop like a balloon.

Clip:  Really?

Todd:  You watch out, steer clear of him,

Craig:  you get in his way and he’ll go right through you. What was kind of funny to me was when he gets this poison, he just, like, sprinkles it all over the house. Like, that can’t be right. I don’t think that’s how rat poison works. Like, I don’t think you

Todd:  The rats just go up. Oh, here’s an interesting powder I haven’t tasted. Yeah.

Craig:  Oh, right. And and the rats, like, always watching him, like like, I see what you’re doing, mister. I’m not gonna eat that stuff. And and you just see that like the tail slither around a corner or something. It really is funny. I mean, there was a movie I feel like they’re in the mid nineties or something with Nathan Lane that was called like mousetrap or mouse house or something, which was basically the same premise except it was a kids movie and they were trying to get some mouse out of the house. But like, it’s the same it’s the same thing and the other thing that I thought was was comical was I think that this is supposed to be kind of a psychological movie kind of in the vein of like Edgar Allan Poe with, like, the telltale heart or something where your main character is getting increasingly more crazy as the tale goes on. But the crazier he gets, the funnier it is. Like Yeah. His crazy is funny. Like, it’s like wide eyed, shifty eyed, putting on military gear crazy. And and it doesn’t it doesn’t play it for the humor at all. Like you said, like it takes itself very seriously, but it’s pretty darn funny.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. It is. And what also kind of is is a little silly about it is that he gets all this gear. Right? And I think for the last half of the movie, he’s got a baseball bat he’s just carrying around with them everywhere he goes. And anytime he actually is at a moment where he knows where the rat is, he just runs away from it. Right? Or he doesn’t pursue it. Like, for example, here’s the rat. It’s obviously inside of the piano, you know, walking on the keys or whatever. Right. He sneaks up to it. He slams the lid of it down and and to trap it inside. And you’re like, okay. He successfully trapped the rat inside this piano. Right. Then he just like slowly lifts it and sticks his hand in.

Craig:  Yeah. And I didn’t understand that at all. I don’t I what what was even re what was he reaching in there for? I didn’t even understand what was happening.

Todd:  He was reaching in there for a rat trap that he put in. So he reaches his hand in, He pulls out the rat trap that’s already tripped, and he’s like, damn it, and throws the rat trap. And I’m like, what? Like, the rat is presumably still in there. Like Right. And and and things like that just happen through the whole movie. I mean, if he’s gonna carry this baseball bat around, then when the rat comes into to view, you gotta run after and hit it. Instead, he gets scared by it, and he lets the rat go off. And and he doesn’t even follow it, you know, most of the time. There’s there’s a scene where he’s in the bathtub. Right? And he’s falling asleep. He has a funny dream sequence about his wife and his son. Yeah. And, when he wakes up, the rat has is is attacking him. And so he just runs out of the bathroom, knowing that it’s still in the bathroom, and leaps up onto a hammock that is strung up across his son’s room. And I don’t know if that’s a hammock he put up there, if it was a hammock that had a stuffed animals in it or something or what. Was it a hammock in their bedroom? Was that their sex hammock? I don’t even know. I don’t know. Come to think I don’t know. I don’t know what the hammock was doing there. Anyway

Craig:  I I also don’t really understand the I mean, I get that this is supposed to be it’s it’s it’s a standalone building. So they have the whole building, But I never really understood the geography. Like, I never really understood where he was in relation to other places. Like, because, at at some point he goes down into well, the the super, the next door super tells him, well, did you check the boiler room? And he’s like, no. I put stuff in the basement, but I didn’t check the boiler room. Like, you’ve got, like, a sub basement?

Todd:  Like, I don’t even understand what’s happening.

Craig:  And and so then when he when he goes down there, he finds, like, this sewage pipe that the cap has been screwed off of. So I guess and he’s like, oh, now I know how you got in here, like the rat screwed off this thing. I don’t know and and like and I feel there is stuff peppered throughout, like you mentioned Moby Dick and the Todd man in the sea, like we’re supposed to get these references. So he finally figures out that the rat is, I guess, you know getting in through the basement or whatever and he finds a whole nest of baby rats and that’s the first time that the rat, like, attacks him, like, squealing like a pig. I guess, like, it’s protecting its young or whatever. And he just, like, he just drops all the rats and and runs. And seriously, this rat that we never really see, I mean, we kind when it’s big and attacking, I mean, we kinda see it just looks like he’s kind of wrestling with a stuffed animal. But, like it it’s got a hold of his his pant leg and it’s like pulling him like a dog would pull him and and he gets out of there. But there are just so many holes, like, okay, so you found this whole nest of rat babies and yet we’re led to believe that you’re only dealing with 1 rat. Like, that’s not how rats work. Like, the

Todd:  the the movie

Craig:  the movie even takes the time to tell us that.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  My favorite scene in the movie, well, it’s twofold. First of all, he goes and he does research on rats and so we get to see all these gross pictures of rats, like, eating their babies and eating each other and like just all these nasty videos and things. And then he goes to this big important business dinner where he just goes off on this huge monologue about rats.

Clip:  Did you know that over 1 fifth of all the grain on this planet is destroyed by rats? And that’s more than drought, flood, or even insects destroys. Did you know that?

Todd:  No. I didn’t.

Clip:  That’s over 5,000,000,000 pounds of food alone in this country. Now can you imagine how many mouths that would feed? Not to mention the possible fiscal loss it must mean Todd the company like this?

Todd:  No. I can’t.

Clip:  Yes. It’s extraordinary. In the 14th century, the rat carried the bubonic plague flee that killed 1 out of every 3 people from India to Iceland. Yeah. It’s true. Can you believe that? The most horrible catastrophe in history. Over 1 third of the entire population of the civilized world is struck by rats. Not bombs, not guns, but rats. You take your average rat, it can wriggle through a hole no bigger than a quarter, swim half a mile and tread water for 3 days. They can eat through lead and concrete with these teeth that are like chisels that exert an unbelievable £24,000 per square inch per tooth.

Craig:  Really?

Clip:  Yeah. They can survive being flushed down a toilet, enter a building by the same root. They can fall 5 stories down to the ground, run off unharmed. And 2 rats, mind you, 2, just 2 give you 20,000,000 rats in less than 3 years. And they say now there’s many rats on this planet now as people.

Craig:  And it’s hilarious. And everybody is listening to him and they’re, like, trying to eat their food. He’s talking about how disgusting rats are.

Todd:  In some cultures, how they eat rats and it tastes like stringy chicken, and they’re all, like, pulling the chicken out of their mouth. Yes.

Craig:  It’s funny and I feel like it’s all supposed to lead, you know, we’re supposed to see that his mental state is deteriorating, but it really just plays really funny to me and and it’s funnier to talk about it than it is to watch it. Like watching it, it’s just I wouldn’t say it’s boring, but like I said it could have been condensed into half an hour, and I think that it would have been more entertaining.

Todd:  Well, you know important account that’s at work, and this is obviously interfering with that. Like, he’s not able to get his work that’s at work, and this is obviously interfering with that. Like, he’s not able to get his work done, and he every time he comes into work, the secretary is getting more and more worried about him. He’s getting more pressure from his boss like, I’m not sure you can actually perform. You know, you gotta take care of whatever’s going on at home and he’s falling asleep at his desk. So there’s that aspect of it. Then, Then, of course, there’s that natural thing where nothing he’s doing to the rats, these successively bigger and bigger things are are getting resolved. And then he starts having these nightmares, these dreams kind of where his kid and his wife are involved. Mhmm. Like, his kid’s eating rat poison or his wife gets attacked. And I’m thinking, well, there are a couple of things I’m thinking throughout this whole thing. First of all, I’m waiting for the stakes to to finally get that high, you know, beyond the one guy in this house against this rat that seems content to let him sleep at night and do his work when he needs to, but tortures him endlessly whenever the the film calls for it, basically. But then I’m thinking, okay. Yeah. But then his wife and his kid are gonna come home, and they’re gonna subjected to this, or maybe they’re gonna come home early, and they’re not gonna know about the rat. So there’s gonna be, like, some serious danger here. How’s this gonna come to a head with his account at work, especially after this what had to be like an embarrassing, you know, business dinner? There’s even a scene where his, secretary comes home with him and ostensibly, just to drop him off, and he says, oh, yeah. Come in and have a look at the house. And they have this very short and kinda strange scene where they have an intimate moment. And it’s like he’s complaining about his wife a little bit and about how maybe she’s a little distant from him. Their expectations are a little are a little different, and she comes up close to him. And they lean in and they have a kiss, and then the noise from the rat, you know, makes a sound, and he says, I think you need to go home. So now there’s an additional thing apparently with his secretary and some you know? I I mean, there’s infidelity happening, right, potentially, at least the the the marks of it. And so there’s all this web of stuff that ends up every bit of it just kind of falls away. Right? Yeah. The the kid and mom never come home until the very end after everything is finished. Nothing ever happens with this infidelity. His his boss at work at some point, it turns out that the people who they were supposed to meet from, you know, the other clients or whatever from the big city from the other cities couldn’t make it in. And so he says, oh, I guess you got 2 more weeks to work on this.

Craig:  Yeah. Everything just kinda falls into place. Those dream sequence scenes now, initially, at with the first dream sequence, it was, like, the kid’s birthday or whatever and and the the wife, like, puts down the birthday cake in front the kid and then the rat jumps out of it and everybody screams. At that point, I was thinking, oh, okay, well they’ve come back. But then after that happened, I thought they’re not coming back. They’re not gonna come back and be a part of this. And so then later when there was another dream scene where he dreams that they come home and, like, the wife, like, immediately mounts him while the the kid is in the kitchen making up some rat poison cereal. I knew that they weren’t going to really come back and at least until everything was taken care of, like you said, which is what happens. But then that whole scene with him and the secretary, and I and I don’t even know if she’s a secretary or if she’s a part I don’t even know who

Todd:  she was. Yeah.

Craig:  That’s true. But, Assistant

Todd:  at the very least.

Craig:  Yeah. It seemed like it. I really didn’t like that scene because it just served to make him unlikable and like gross, like and and that’s it. Like Todd doesn’t go anywhere like

Todd:  No. And it comes out of nowhere because you don’t see this kind of chemistry between them in any of the other office scenes where they’re it’s all business. Right.

Craig:  I just didn’t like that scene. And again, it’s just another example of you could that’s something you could have cut to make this a little bit shorter. And it’s not like it was a long movie, it’s only an hour and a half movie and I I would I wouldn’t say that I was bored necessarily, it was fine. It just was just okay and you know, we’re doing requests this month and we’ve got some interesting requests, and it just I I I find myself sitting here wondering what is it about this movie that made somebody want us to talk about it. And I’m happy I’m happy to talk about it. I’m happy to talk about it, but I don’t know. Nick Seibel, is that he said? Yeah. Yeah. Nick. Nick, chime in in the comments. Why did you want us to watch this movie? I mean, it’s fine. We did. I’m happy to talk about it, but love to hear your take

Todd:  on it. Well, it’s just it’s just kinda middle of the Todd. You know? Again, that’s what that by the end of it, I did feel like I’d seen a made for TV movie in a way. It was just so middling. Nowadays, made for TV movies are pretty good. But back in the eighties, made for TV movies were just kinda, oh, that was nice, usually. And then he does all these kind of strange and completely unreasonable things, and I think that made it more difficult to to buy the whole psychological breakdown of this person because well, let’s be honest. Peter Weller, he’s kinda stony faced in every role he plays. He doesn’t seem to have a lot of range as an actor. Maybe I’m wrong, but, you know, I’m thinking of him from, like, Robocop and from

Craig:  He’s done a lot of TV work lately. His name is so familiar to me, but I feel like I just haven’t watched a lot of his stuff because he wasn’t really that familiar to me. He was the star in Robocop. He was in Naked Lunch if you saw that.

Todd:  Star in Robocop. He was in Naked Lunch if you saw that. But, played the kind of the same kind of guy there. He was Adventures of Across the 8th Dimension, which is something I’ve I haven’t ever seen a 100% through, but, you know, popped in and out of it. He just has a look to him and a way of acting that’s not terribly emotional.

Craig:  Mhmm.

Todd:  He always tends to be the dark, broody guy or in the case of Robocop, the robot. Right. And in this movie, you don’t really see anything but dread from him. It’s dread from work. It’s dread from the rat. And so where can you go? How do you get more dread? You don’t. You just get more stony faced, except this time, you have a lot more gear, You know? It’s just sitting around the house. And and to be fair, it does culminate at the end like it’s supposed to in a huge showdown with the rat. But, honestly, that even at this point, it’s just a rat. Right. It’s only 1. And up till now, it hasn’t killed anybody.

Craig:  It has Except the cat.

Todd:  Except the cat. Yeah. That was another thing. Let’s come back to

Craig:  the cat. Let’s come back to the

Todd:  cat in a second. But except for the cat, it hasn’t killed anybody. It hasn’t tried to gut him in his sleep. It’s basically left him alone except for a few moments, and, otherwise, it just tears stuff up. You know, at one point, it tears up his work, and I think, oh, great. All hell’s gonna go loose, and that gets dropped. At the end of the movie, when he’s going crazy and he’s got his bat that he has nailed nails into Mhmm. And his completely leather geared up outfit and his helmet and the whole 9 yards. I’m sorry. Even a rat the size of the dog is not gonna get through this guy before he could kick it or whack it with this thing. You know? It’s just not gonna happen. It’s not this rat that we’ve seen. You know? Right. And so it seems to me when he’s running around the house, destroying his own house to get to this rat, the rat was on the defensive pretty much the whole time unless he brought the house down on him somehow. That was the other thing. I thought maybe he’s secretly chewing through all the 2 by fours, and the house is gonna come down on him or something, you know. But I I was looking for anything.

Craig:  Well, and and that’s the thing. Like, I feel like the guy if we I don’t even feel like we I don’t even think we said his name Bart. His name is Bart. Bart thinks that this rat’s like out to get him and you know the movie kind of goes out of its way to make it seem like it is, but really it’s just doing rat stuff. Like, it’s just you know chewing through the walls, eating the food. At some point, it finally chews through the electrical wires and Bart’s like, I wondered when you’d finally get to that. Like I get it, but, you know, you think this rat’s out to get you, but that’s what rats do. And that was the the other thing that I kinda kept thinking about. Like, this is in New York City, there are rats,

Todd:  like like we’re gonna make

Craig:  a whole horror movie out of one guy’s battle with 1 rat? Like, I could just imagine people living in New York being like, yeah, buddy. You poor thing. You’ve got 1 rat in your house. I’ve got 14 living in my pantry.

Todd:  For sure. Right?

Craig:  I know it’s silly. But then you you talk about that last, the the final battle is is really just funny. I mean, I wasn’t laughing at it. I I wish that it had been funny enough that I could laugh through it, but really I was just kind of stone faced watching it. But that’s when he’s got his big bat and he’s got his shin guards on and he’s got, you know, all of this protective gear on and really I knew what was gonna happen. You know, he was so concerned about preserving his home in the beginning and then we were supposed to have seen him go through all this mental deterioration, where he’s totally blown off his work and he’s made everybody at work mad, and and he’s just obsessed with this rat. Well, he kind of has to be because it keeps messing with him. But I knew that it would get to the end and the end would just be him totally destroying the house, and that’s what it was. Like he he has that bat and he like he starts in the basement and the the rats down there and like he bust open a pipe and so there’s water shooting everywhere. And then he just goes through the house just destroying everything. Yeah. You know, presumably chasing this rat who, you know, we see the tail scamper away every time he swings the bat or whatever, but he he just destroys the house. And I feel like this was supposed to be symbolism, but it was so heavy handed that I just could hardly handle it. In the basement, there’s like a scale model of their brownstone. Like a dollhouse version of their brownstone. And at one point the what the point that I was getting to was that he destroys that with his bat. Like, okay, I get it. You’re gonna destroy your house. But one of my favorite stupid parts of the movie was when he had all these medieval traps set and he set one of them in the dollhouse and then I guess he’s going to retrieve it or check it or whatever, but it’s been moved a little bit. But like he’s just fumbling his hand around inside the the dollhouse like, where is it? Where is it? I’m like, you idiot. You’re gonna spread

Todd:  it on yourself. And he did. Like Yeah. Really stupid. Really dumb. Yeah. Stupid as reaching his hand into the, piano. You know, another moment of supposed attention that led nowhere that also didn’t make any sense was, at some point, his secretary, I think it’s then maybe the night before his his work is due or something, decides that she’s going to break into his house. Right? She just rifles through his desk and finds clearly marked it says desk set, which I think just means the set that you keep in your desk. Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe I’m too young for this reference. Anyway, so, she takes it, and she instead of knocking on the door, she just lets herself into his home. And then I mean, remember, she has no idea that any of this is going on. Mhmm. She the only idea she has is she seemed like rat, like well, obviously, him talking about the rats at the dinner. I think she was there. And, you know, she seemed like magazines and things about I mean, he’s clearly, he’s got some weird rat obsession. Right. But, anyway, she doesn’t know what what he’s facing at home. In fact, from that earlier scene, the only thing she can logically think that he’s facing at home is some kind of depression about his wife and son. At least, I think that’s what the movie was trying to set up. So she comes into this house and is, like, meekly hello? And then spends the next 10 to 15 minutes quietly prowling around like she’s expecting something to jump out around the corner any moment. It makes no sense, a, why she’s there, b, why she just didn’t announce herself, and then, c, why she’s creeping around the house like there’s something to be scared of.

Craig:  And she’s and she’s walking around in her stocking feet, and so we we just we see her feet, like, just walking right by these medieval rat traps like, like, yeah. She’s gonna step in one of the scary rat traps, but she doesn’t. She just finds him and he’s crazy.

Todd:  There’s no payoff there whatsoever. She doesn’t get attacked by a rat. She doesn’t step into the rat trap. She sees him on the stairs, and he’s like, you need to leave.

Craig:  Yeah. He’s, like, in squatting position with, like, an army helmet on. Yeah.

Todd:  And so she goes, and that’s it. Another scene that clearly could have been cut. So let’s go back and talk about the cat Because the cat comes into play after the first seed where they almost made out, and he drops her off or lets her go. Then he turns around, and he sees a cat on the stoop of the house and is like, You’re gonna help me out. And he picks up this cat, brings it in, and has a charming little conversation with this cat on the kitchen counter.

Clip:  Hey. Look at this sweet taste. What do we got in here? That’s a saucer. Yes. Over here, would you like some old ketchup for me?

Craig:  You like the lime? Mhmm.

Clip:  Oh, okay. How about a cucumber or a banana? What’s in here? Let’s see what we got in here. Did you know that I was king of all the goodies? You

Craig:  know that?

Clip:  Oh, good. 2 week old oysters. Want some of those?

Craig:  Oh, I

Clip:  like those. I used to have a puddy just like you, yet my wife sneezes, so I can’t have one anymore.

Todd:  And I have to think that most of that was ad libbed. Again, another thing that has absolutely no payoff, the cat just walks around the house.

Craig:  And the rat stalks it. Like, there are so many funny things going on here. Okay. So he just, like, he sends her off in the taxi, and then he’s, like, oh, hello, kitty. And he picks up this beautiful cat. Like, I imagine street cats in New York Are not gorgeous. Not being, like, these beautiful house cats and, like, he picks it up and it’s totally docile and nice and he takes it in the house. And I I’m thinking, like, a, if that’s an alley cat, that’s not what alley cats are like. B, if that’s really what that cat is like, you just stole somebody’s cat.

Todd:  Just scan that thing for a chip.

Craig:  And And then he takes the cat in and this poor pretty cat is just, you know, we just see shots of it like walking around the house like a cat would, like the rat like stalking it from above, like the cat will be walking under a glass table and you’ll just see the rat’s big wet gross paws on the tabletop. And then eventually, like Craig, there there is a payoff, but not much of one because he the guy, Bart, just wakes up one morning and he goes to get milk. And as he’s pouring his milk, blood starts to drip into it, and he looks up and there’s the poor dead cat, like, just hanging over the side of the refrigerator. And again, it’s it’s like this rat has a vendetta. Well, you know, like, it’s it’s intentionally taunting this guy.

Todd:  Do you think it’s because he messed with their babies or something? Is that what it was? I don’t know.

Craig:  But that was Todd believe? I guess. I think it was probably supposed to be, but I also thought that it was funny that, like, he found this rat this nest of rat babies. And then when the mom attacked him, he just dropped it and like he dropped it on a grate and like some of them like fell down through the grate and some of them didn’t. And I frankly expected at the end for there to be a twist because I was like, where are those rat babies? Like, I I thought there would be an army of rat babies that would come to protect their mother, but

Todd:  no. Apparently not. I just I actually I I don’t know if this was going through my mind too because he finds the cat, but before the cat dies is when he gets the poison and puts it around the house. Or maybe it’s after he gets the cat. I’m thinking, are you cleaning up that poison, or are you gonna let the cat eat the poison too? I Well,

Craig:  and there are shots of the cat walking all around those traps. I’m like Yeah. Cats don’t know what traps are. Like, that

Todd:  cat is gonna get caught in one

Craig:  of those traps, dummy.

Todd:  This is not a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Craig:  Maybe maybe they were I’d like to believe that they were saving the rat babies for the sequel. Oh.

Todd:  I’d like origin 2. The revenge known origin. Oh Todd.

Craig:  Oh, man.

Todd:  You know, I said I wasn’t able to find a lot about this movie online, but one thing I did find is apparently John Waters is a huge fan of this film.

Craig:  So is Stephen King. Stephen King says it’s one of his favorite movies. Yeah. Wow. But I hadn’t read about John Waters. What Well, on IMDB, which of course is a completely reliable source, it says that it’s Stephen King’s favorite movie.

Todd:  There’s no way.

Craig:  I don’t know. Well, there’s that. What did John Waters have to say about it?

Todd:  John Waters had to say it’s the Citizen Kane of rat movies. Wow. I I don’t know.

Craig:  I haven’t

Todd:  I don’t know. I’ve never seen Ben. I’ve never seen Willard or any of that, any of that. But if this is the Citizen Kane of rat movies, I guess we don’t need to bother doing those later on our podcast.

Craig:  Oh, man. I don’t know. And and frankly, like, it’s not a terrible movie. It’s not it’s not terribly made. I mean, some of the giant rat effects are pretty unbelievable and kind of, you know, laughable to look at. But, you know, there’s some suspense and I don’t know. I’m trying really hard to find nice things to say about it because I’ve seen way worse recently. We’ve seen way worse. So maybe I’m being maybe I’m being generous, with this one just because we’ve come off some real crap piles lately, but, it’s it’s okay. Yeah. I I I I’m not surprised that I’d never heard of it before.

Todd:  It it’s a perfectly serviceable film. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, and you might enjoy it with your kids or something. And I bet, you know, it’s one of those movies where if you watched as a kid, it’s way scarier.

Craig:  Yes.

Todd:  You know, and, then you come back and watch it 20 years later and you’re super disappointed. Right. But the cinematography is fantastic.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s pretty good.

Todd:  That in there is really good. There’s some really nice sweeping camera angles, some really interesting things they do with transitions, especially when he’s going off into dreamland and stuff, taking you around the house. They do these little moments where if you like, it doesn’t even call attention to it, so you wouldn’t, you know, you might miss it where where just off in the corner of a scene, you’ll see a little shadow or you see a little rat tail disappearing around the corner, you know, with no fanfare, which is really neat, you know, for them to put these kinds of things in. It’s just in service to a plot that’s just kinda, By the end of it, he meets his family. They all hug out in the front of the house. He invites them in.

Craig:  Oh, my Todd. Bart, what happened here?

Clip:  I had a party.

Craig:  Yeah. There are some really good lines like when he’s talking about how some people in other countries eat rats and he says, a filthy rat on fine China. That was a great line. And then, there’s another one when he’s talking to the rat and he says, this town ain’t big enough for the both of us. I’ve tried dope. Like that like, I’m a badass. I could take care of a rat. I’ve tried dope before. It’s got some good lines, some good funny parts. So, you know, there’s that going for it.

Todd:  Yeah. Alright. So that’s a very tepid, thumbs to the side from both of us.

Craig:  Yeah. Sorry. That’s okay.

Todd:  You know what? Thank you, Nick, anyway, for your recommendation. We do enjoy seeing films that we haven’t seen before, and this was certainly a film that we hadn’t seen before.

Craig:  Mhmm. And we’ll never see again.

Todd:  Well, thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Google

Craig:  Let us know what you thought of this film. Any other future films

Todd:  you’d like to do? There. Let us know what you thought of this film, any other future films you’d like to do. Earlier, Craig referenced some really interesting stuff that we have seen lately, and, the last movie that we watched before this one, we couldn’t even bring ourselves to talk about. But if you go on to our website at 2 guys.redfortynet.com, you can see the review of Street Trash, another request that we got this month, and we watched it and we wrote about it, and we’re posting these reviews every Thursday as well Todd supplement the audio podcasts. Until next week. I’m Todd, and I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.