czech horror movies – Horror Ghouls

Welcome to the town of Hamelin, where the sun slowly rises above the horizon, and it’s time to begin a new day! Except, every new day in this town is one filled with misery and pettiness, as the townspeople of Hamelin are all a miserable, narcissistic bunch of lowlifes. Everything that matters in this town is money and social rank, and people’s gluttony and waste is enormous. The result is a rat infestation, where the rats are having their fun at night and steal both food and other valuables. Things get worse and worse, until a mysterious hooded man arrives in town. This man is a piper, and he demonstrates to the town leaders that the sound of his playing can entice rats to their deaths. How wonderful! The rat problem is soon to be gone an all the assholes in town can go back to their same shit as usual. They offer the piper 1000 gold coins as payment for the job, and so he starts playing and gets rid of the rats.

You probably know this story, of course. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is an old tale dating back to the Middle ages, and have forever stood as a warning of the importance of paying your debts when due. Because the Piper, despite getting rid of the rats and doing the job, doesn’t get paid. When the townspeople have gotten their problem solved, they decide to not pay him after all, causing him to exact his revenge. In the original story he lures all the children away from town, in the same way he did with the rats. In this movie, there’s a different twist on this old tale.

This version of The Pied Piper (Czech title: Krysař) is a 1986 Czechoslovak animated dark fantasy film, directed by Jiří Barta. It was a very ambitious project, where other animation studios in Czechoslovakia mainly made short films for television, usually aimed at children. As someone born in the 80’s and growing up in Norway, these Czech animated shorts were often featured on our local children’s programs on TV, mainly our public broadcaster NRK, with some of the main ones being Krtek and Pat a Mat. Kratky Film was the production company behind The Pied Piper (which is also the company that helped produce Krtek and Pat a Mat). Research for the film took six months, while screenplay and technical preparations took a year.

This movie is certainly a gorgeous and artistic piece of work. The art design is heavily influenced by German Expressionism and medieval German art, which of course is perfect for this film. And the puppets – oh man – they really are something else! Pure nightmare fuel, but in the greatest sense. I can imagine if I saw this as a child, my dreams would probably be really, really weird for the next days. The people of Hamelin look just as ugly as their personalities, which I suppose is very much the point as they’re horrible people through and through. The puppets were also intentionally designed to appear very mechanical to make them even less human, a contrast to the use of several living rats in the film. This is of course an artistic choice to make the rats seem more alive than the humans. There’s no language in the film, so the “dialogue“ is delivered through physical gestures, grunts, mumblings and other sounds.

Aside from the pure uncanny valley territory from the puppets, the whole film has a certain dark and disturbing atmosphere all over. The backgrounds, puppets, rats, music and everything creates this weird and slightly surreal nightmare-feeling to it all. Just taking a quick look at it should make most people realize this isn’t something you put on for the kids, but it’s also not just because of the visual style. There’s several themes here, including some really dark ones when it comes to another of the Piper’s main reasons for taking revenge on the entire town, that’s definitely not suitable for a younger audience.

The Pied Piper is an awesome art-house stop-motion animated film for adults, and definitely one you should check out if you want something strange, nightmarish and oddly beautiful! The movie is available on some streaming sites, including Tubi. A restored version of the film was released in 2023 by Deaf Crocodile, which is the film’s first official Blu-Ray release.

Director: Jirí Barta
Writer: Kamil Pixa
Original title: Krysar
Country & year: Czechoslovakia/West Germany, 1986
Voice actor: Oldřich Kaiser, Jiří Lábus, Michal Pavlícek, Vilém Cok
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0174834/

Upír z Feratu (also known as Ferat Vampire and Der Autovampir) is a black Ferat racing car that sucks blood from its driver’s feet through the pedal. Even if you wear shoes with thick soles. And you understand the hilarious pun, right? nosFERATu. Har-Har.

If you expect a crazy Maximum Overdrive-ish thing here, or a miniature car with bat wings fluttering with strings in the light of the full moon, Ed Wood-style, you can just give this a pass right away. It is impossible not to expect something real special when you hear a title like DER AUTOVAMPIR while taking a look at its cover, and with Dracula himself appearing in the original poster. Be ready to be really underwhelmed, for this pretty obscure film from Czech Republic is obscure for a good reason.

The plot goes something like this: A foreign car manufacturer has created a whole new car design that is using human blood as fuel. Dr. Malek has realized from the start that there is something really fishy about this company, and is not at all happy when his colleague, Mima, has signed a contract with them to work as a rally driver. Dr. Malek comes in contact with another bizarre guy, a scientist, who looks more like a creepy uncle that you never would allow babysitting your kids. He also likes to sneak up on people while they shower. Fuck this guy. However, he is convinced that this Ferat lives on human blood. And in order to convince Dr. Malek what they’re dealing with, he puts on an old roll of Nosferatu to lecture him about vampires, as if he was a five year old. And nothing much really happens from here. We get a completely random sex scene where someone cuts himself on a broken bottle that happens to contain blood. There’s also a completely random scene where an old, disorientated grandma is run over by someone (off screen) during rush hour. Just because of shock value, I guess. Except it’s so poorly filmed that it isn’t shocking at all. The film builds up to a rather anticlimactic sequence with a rally racing which you probably couldn’t give a shit about unless you’re a big fan of cars and… well, rally racing.

I must also point out that this is not a comedy, or a parody, this is made in all seriousness with serious actors, dry as sandpaper and with really dull dialogue that doesn’t help much to keep the interest up. And to make it look more serious, Dr. Malek is played by a guy who looks like a clone of Bill Gates, and is as bland, wooden and uncharismatic as a potato. However, one has to be a complete mental imbecile to take any of this as seriously as the communist censorship board in the Czech Republic did by cutting away the only two scenes containing blood, and the only thing that reminded the viewer that this was actually a horror movie. Well, “horror” is a word that fits very loosely anyway. These scenes are now added back on the limited German DVD/Blu-ray release, but they’re too tame and downright weak and silly to add any form of shock value. And if you expect some great visuals here, there’s not much. Most of the scenes are filmed out in the broad daylight, mainly in the outskirts of Prague that comes off a bit cheap and lazy. I’m not sure what to make out of Der Autovampir, to be honest, or what the appeal is. There’s several eye-rolling and unintentionally funny moments here for sure, which is impossible for a film like this to avoid, but as a whole, you’re not missing out a damn thing unless you’re in for a few chuckles.

Director: Juraj Herz
Country & year: Czech Republic, 1982
Actors: Jirí Menzel, Dagmar Havlová, Jana Brezková, Petr Cepek, Jan Schmid, Zdenka Procházková, Blanka Waleská
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0083264/

Tag: czech horror movies

The Pied Piper (1986)

Upír z Feratu (1982)