Let’s jump right into Of Unknown Origin. Made in 1983 in Montreal (which was doubling for New York on the screen), the film stars Peter Weller, Buckaroo Banzai himself, as an architect who has just finished renovating a brownstone townhouse for his family and finds a strange, persistent intruder threatening both his home and his ordered existence. The original trailer makes it look like a supernatural thriller along the lines of Poltergeist, with Weller fighting off some sort of demon inhabiting his home and trying to kill his family. That is not at all what is happening in the film. There isn’t a single supernatural element in the movie, although there are plenty of unnatural ones.
Bart Hughes is a fastidious, up-tight architect who takes serious pride in his beautiful Brownstone apartment building: and why not, since he did all the renovation work himself? The home is gorgeous and indeed something to be proud of. Bart also sank a good deal of money into fixing it, and so he feels pressured to fight for promotion at the architectural firm where he works. Couple this with his ordered, work-obsessed mentality and it results in Bart focused so intently on his projects and office-relations that he isn’t even enjoying the fruits of his labor at home. Continue reading