Rat
Trailer
Synopsis
After one more night of drinking at the local pub, working-class Dubliner Hubert Flynn stumbles home and wakes up the next morning as a small white rat. His wife and children treat the transformation less like a tragedy than an inconvenience, or, once a tabloid journalist smells a story, a chance to cash in, while Hubert scurries around trying to hold on to some shred of his old life.
Context & Trivia
Rat primarily used trained live rodents to play Hubert in his transformed state, but Jim Henson's Creature Shop augmented the animal performances with several puppet doubles: a fully animatronic, remote-controlled rat built for close-ups and precise movements, a simpler stunt rat operated by a mechanical device, and additional basic puppets and rigs for stunts and long shots. The result is a hybrid creature performance rarely discussed in Henson's filmography, blending real-animal wrangling with practical puppetry rather than relying on either alone.
Puppet companies
Jim Henson Pictures · Universal Focus
Direction
Steve Barron
Writing
Wesley Burrowes
Cast
Pete Postlethwaite, Imelda Staunton, Andrew Lovern, Kerry Condon
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