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Title: The Pied Piper (a.k.a Krysar)
Starring: Oldrich Kaiser, Jiri Labus, Michal Pavlicek, Vilem Cok
Genre: Horror / Fantasy / Romance
Company: Kratky Film Praha
Directed by: Jiri Barta
Year: 1986
MPAA Rating / TV Rating: TV MA
Buy on: Amazon
The film starts off with the people of Hamelin doing their daily tasks when suddenly, a large group of rats come and invaded the village, causing mayhem for the townspeople. The leaders of the town tried to find a way to get rid of the rats when they suddenly meet up with a mysterious man, who stated that he will help get rid of the rats if the town leaders pay him money. The town leaders agree to this and the Pied Piper ended up getting rid of the rats by using his flute to send the rats to their deaths. After that, the Pied Piper falls in love with a young woman who is very innocent. But then, things start to go wrong when the town leaders refused to pay the Pied Piper and so, the Pied Piper decided to take his revenge against the town of Hamelin.
So, for years, I have been watching and reading lots of darker and edgier takes on various fairy tales; but I had never seen a darker and edgier take on "The Pied Piper" before, until I saw this movie. This movie was such a dark yet entertaining experience for me as I just loved how dark this particular story got as the film goes on. There were so many dark moments in this film, like how the Pied Piper deals with the rats or how depraved the townspeople really are and those dark moments really made this film stand out to me. I also loved the bizarre and disturbing designs of the characters and the town of Hamelin itself as everything looks so disjointed and the animation style reminded me so much of "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Another thing that I loved about this film was that it showed us just how corrupted the townspeople were. In the original fairy tale, the town leaders did refuse to pay the Pied Piper, but the story seemed to be lighthearted, at least until the end. Here, the town leaders are corrupted themselves and we get to see just how disturbing and depraved they really are, and it helped upped the bleakness of this film. I also loved the design of the Pied Piper himself as he is not portrayed as a jolly guy like he usually is in other interpretations of the fairy tale. Instead, he is portrayed as a creepy and silent man whose only goal is to take down the rats to get his money. However, I do like the fact that the film tried to give the Pied Piper a softer side as he falls in love with the innocent woman.
One of the issues that I had with this film was that the first half of the film was pretty slow. Even though the first half of the film was introducing us to the townspeople, it wouldn't be until the halfway point of the film where the Pied Piper shows up and it was a bit of a slog to go through the first half of the film. I also found the characters of the innocent woman and the fisherman to be a bit bland in comparison to the rest of the townspeople as they don't really have much in personalities other than being more innocent than the townspeople. I actually wished that they had developed the fisherman and the innocent woman a bit more in this film.
Overall, "The Pied Piper (Krysar)" is one of the best and darkest adaptations of the "Pied Piper" story! Even though the beginning was very slow and the characters of the fisherman and the innocent woman weren't that well developed, the dark atmosphere and the unique animation really made this film a treat to watch and I would highly recommend this film to anyone who wants to see a darker and edgier take on the Pied Piper story.
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