Der Rattenfänger Von Hameln

A traveler comes into a town overrun with rats and vermin. He promises to free the place of the pests and names his price. When the townspeople refuse to pay him after he has done what he promised, he plays his tune again with consequences. This film survives in incomplete/fragmentary form.

Englishman Mr. Howard is on a fishing holiday in eastern France when the Germans invade in 1940. Setting off to try and get back home he is persuaded to take along the two Cavanaugh children, and as his journey progresses his family keeps growing in size. Once in German-occupied northern France a new problem arises — the risk of being heard speaking English.

Greed, corruption, ignorance, and disease. Midsummer, 1349: the Black Death reaches northern Germany. Minstrels go to Hamelin for the Mayor's daughter's wedding to the Baron's son. He wants her dowry to pay his army while his father taxes the people to build a cathedral he thinks will save his soul. A local apothecary who's a Jew seeks a treatment for the plague; the priests charge him with witchcraft. One of the minstrels, who has soothed the Mayor's daughter with his music, promises to rid the town of rats for the fee. The Mayor agrees, then renigs. In the morning, the plague, the Jew's trial, and the Piper's revenge come at once.

The people of Hamelin, overrun with rats, offer a bag of gold to anyone who can get rid of the rats. A piper offers to do the job, and successfully lures the rats into a mirage of cheese, which disappears. The citizens, disappointed that all he did was play a tune, offer only pocket change. The piper, angered, plays a new tune that has all the children of the city follow him, even the new twins the stork is preparing to deliver.

A darkly brilliant stop-motion adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin about a plague of rats that punish townsfolk corrupt with greed. One of Czechoslovakia's most ambitious animation projects of the 1980s, notable for its unusual dark art direction, innovative animation techniques and use of a fictitious language.

A grandfather relates to his two grandchildren, the story of the township of Hamlin which was plagued with rats. In their moment of desperation, a stranger, a Pied Piper, appears with a promise to rid the town of rats forever in exchange for 200 gold bars. The Piper fulfils his promise by playing magical music which attracts all the rats as he led them to the river to drown. When the townspeople fail to keep their promise and pay him only 1 gold bar, he vows revenge - and delivers... The moral of the story - Always keep your promise - always pay the piper.