Krysař AKA The Pied Piper (1986)
| director: | Jiří Barta |
| release-year: | 1986 |
| genres: | animation, stopmotion, fantasy, horror |
| countries: | Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic |
| languages: | Silent |
Takes place in a ridiculously awesome carved, stop-motion world of clumsy, medieval, German Expressionist-style wooden puppets. Like The Illusionist (2010), all spoken language is nonsensical muttering, as in The Sims.
The village is filled to the brim with the worst humans, which is to say that capitalism runs amok. They hoard wealth, covet riches, and haggle mercilessly.
Just beneath the surface of the city, a population of rats – played by actual rats – lives in parallel. The rats are equally as hoarding, covetous, and conniving as the humans with whom they share the streets. The rats, however, are also unrelenting thieves.
The rats grow in confidence and number. They steal more and more, begin coming out in the day time, and go as far as directly assaulting the human residents.
A mysterious man arrives in the village, and agrees to a contract with the hedonous lord of the town; 1000 coins in exchange for solving the rat problem.
He pulls out his little flute and the rats follow him religiously, right to the top of a tower. They cast themselves down into the river, and drown.
Whe the man goes to collect his reward, the court laughs and denies him his payment. Angered, he takes up his flute again. One by one, each of the villagers transforms from human to rat, and begins to follow.
The entire town marches, one-by-one, from town to tower to river.
