The Ball of the dead rat

the Ball of the dead rat is a fantastic Cartoon of Jan Bucquoy and Jean-François Charles published in 1980. She describes an invasion of rats handled by a man who behaves like a Vampire.

The action leaves the Bal of the dead rat to the casino of Ostend. A police inspector must solve the business but it loses the control of the events. The rats attack the human ones and the city must be evacuated. In the intrigue of the cartoon, the Bal of the dead rat is an annual masked ball which occurs to Ostend at the end of the winter in commemoration from the voyage from Ensor and his/her friends in Paris during which they visited the Cabaret the dead Rat in 1896. This ball is organized by the Cercle Caecilia . The participants disguise themselves there according to a topic.

Scenario: Jan Bucquoy
Drawing: Jean-François Charles
Colors: unspecified

Synopsis

Jean the Mortuary young inspector of the Judicial police Of Brussels, specialized in pathological Criminology, is sent to Ostend. The Reynaart police chief presents to him the corpse in the mortuary of a cut the throat of virgin girl. A series of events during the night of carnival gives him wire with retordre: a small crime passionnel which is the murder of a couple by jealous, a burgling in the director of the casino, a failed cachalot, a power failure which plunges the city in the darkness, of the hallucinations, three girls cut the throat of,

une invasion of rats. ,

All these events occur at the same time as if they had the same final goal. After several weeks of investigation, the business of the ball of the rat died with the brutal assassination of three girls with beside them of the died rats, was classified temporarily and the Lamorgue inspector took again his service with Brussels. He has just left its been engaged, Margot Lovy, girl of good family which reproaches him her lack of ambition. Jan Lamorgue is called urgently: side of the Maroilles cheese, inside a poor apartment, his/her mother is extended by cut the throat of and emptied ground of its blood like the girls to the ball of the dead rat!
À Brussels, Jean Lamorgue patinates and it decides to spend its holidays to Ostend. Such unchaining Oedipus, it quickly will discover that the calamities which fall down on the city, are only the reflection of the evil which it carries in him. The evil shows through with the initiates who recognize it as Master. The population thinks that there is a relationship with excesses of the ball of the annual dead rat when they realize that the assassin had a head of rat.

After having had hallucinations of its promised in marriage and after another murder of girls with died rats, it meets again by chance its been engaged and they make love in the dunes. It also again meets the Raskals fakir-indicator which reads in the head of people and his Myriam daughter that it had met as prostitute when it was for the first time at Ostend. After the general breakdown which plunged the city in the darkness, a mass grouillante of rats left the belly of the Cachalot failed on the beach. A dirty small drizzle failed on the beach left the rats. A sailor tells that he saw an enormous rat at sea: Me, I says it to you, these rats, that hides another thing, a plague, a kind of Bubonic plague which would occur inside our heads… .
the rats, increasingly daring invade the town of Ostend. They grind around the casino, return in the bathrooms of the hotels and they penetrate in certain buildings. It would be said that they obey a well defined order as if an invisible hand guided them.

Un morning, in the streets of the city one counts tens of dead and among the victims one discovers Margot Louvy. The anguish seizes the city, a deaf terror invades the holiday makers. Will it will be the Player of flute of Hamelin and drive out the rats of the town of Ostend?

Comment

This cartoon holds all the promises of Ray Flanders (Jean Ray, which believed in the the Fourth dimension): the presence of the rats guided by a supernatural force, an indicator, the hallucinations, an investigation of police force which leads to nothing, double personality of Jean Lamorgue. It tries to resist the evil but in this duality of the good and the evil which goes even until the unfolding of its personality, it is the eternal Doctor Hyde who will triumph. The psychoanalyst Buytenarts (" Buytenarts" wants to say in Dutch: doctor in (of) outside) will not be able to save it: You are under the influence of obscure forces which you will be able to control only while turning over on the place even of your most remote memories. , During its nightmares it sees its own dead-man surrounded masked people. Then images of its childhood…
a morbid atmosphere releases from the Bal of the dead rat , with references to James Ensor, and a whole page dedicated to Jerome Bosch, , with drawings connected to the Plague and the macabre Dance. The universe of the Masque S in Ostend makes think of environment esque Carnaval certain works of Michel de Ghelderode, whose Jan Bucquoy put in scene the part Masques ostendais .

Psychopathology of Jean Lamorgue

It is a vampire which dominates the rats. Itself is able to cut the throat of human people but he prefers of launching the rats against the human ones. He will thus guide the rats which left a dying cachalot. On the other hand the large rat at sea is a fabulation of the fishermen. When it returns to Ostend after the murder of his mother to change the ideas, the sight of his/her dead mother will start in him a mechanism which it will not be able to dominate any more. Already, the first time at Ostend, when he is confronted with the corpses of the girls cut the throat of in the mortuary in company of the Reynaart police chief, sweat appear on its face. It is afraid of the corpses which point out his/her father found to him pendu.
Its characteristic, it is that he is a Master of the rats and it is thus recognized by one to fakir. Interesting character this to fakir Raskals which gives an air of magic to the account and which, with his/her daughter Myriam temptress, will carry out it on the way of the mal.
Ses powers of domination, it had to pile up them in its unconscious starting from a bad experiment
lors of the suicide of his father. This experiment, it forever controlled. He saw a rat at the time that he saw his hung father. For always, the death and the revenge will be accompanied by the vision on a rat. to
Voir note 24 for the explanation of the Névrose.

Criticisms

"In this strange story, in which Ostend and its casino are occupied by rats, the clean atmosphere of the Belgian side is well highlighted. In more phantastique is added which makes think of Jerome Bosch and to Ensor.".

" All begins with the Ball of the dead rat (Sharp-edged), a terrifying history to thread you jitter AD vitam aeternam.
Une wonder halfway of Edgar Allan Poe and Lovecraft. It is the first success with the Prix Saint-Michel. ".
"Although the author attracts especially the French editors, this small grain of Flemish magic ignites Flemish as much as the français."

the Author

Magic realism: In extreme cases of reality

the author is related with the magic Réalisme as shows also its series of cartoon Daniël Jaunes with drawings of Tito.
Un of the elements of magic realism is the interconnection of time and space (widespread in the Science American Fiction: for example the author Keith Laumer in Imperium ).
In Yellow In extreme cases of reality (the word Jaunes has a double direction expressly), Daniël receives his chart of member of Rex (started from Leon Degrelle) forty years after the dispatch date while Jean Lamorgue remembers more of time and of the places or it is passé.
Les two protagonists are police inspectors who financed one which awaits them Brussels (LISA and Margot), they live with their mother and at the same time they are attracted by magic women (Amalia in Jaunes and the girl of the Fakir in the Ball of the dead rat ).
In the two cartoons it there with the importance of the train like means of transport in time and space, to fakir it and its daughter meet the inspector for the first time in the train which leads to Ostend (see André Delvaux: One evening, a train or Peter Cushing in the Train of terrors ; Liliom of Fritz Lang and red Lips ).

Other fantastic cartoons of the same author

The world of fantastic takes an important place in the work of the scenario writer of the Bal of the dead rat : in the Night of the goat . Jan Bucquoy does not hesitate to introduce us into the world of the Sorcellerie with the worship of a goat and in Retour to the black country the protagonist goes to the search for his true identity in confrontation with its past and the revolts mining.

Film

The film Camp-site Cosmos (1996) (with inter alia the vamp Milk Ferrari and No5el Godin), also by the author Jan Bucquoy and produced by Ostendais Francis De Smet, by the same imaginary universe by the Belgian coast with its universe Psychotique was inspired.

Films and cartoons around the subject of rats

In the film Rat (2000) of Steve Barron the alcoholic father is transformed into rat,
et it will be neat of kind not its family.
In My uncle d' Amérique (1980) one makes parallels between the experiments on the rats and the human behavior.
In the cartoons where the heroes are mice, the rat (and the cat) often hold the role of the malicious one. In Basil, private detective of Walt Disney, the rat professor Ratigan is a dangerous and malicious chief. Brisby and the secrecy of NIMH is an exception because all the rats are not malicious but particularly intelligent: Mrs Brisby will request the assistance from the rats for her removal.
In cartoon film Ratatouille the rat Rémy succeeds in rectifying on a level the higher old displaced restaurant of Auguste Gusteau.

Cities and death

The Bal masked is a kind of carnival which must drive out the death or the fear of death. The masks are the symbols of the demons with maîtriser.

the cities and death: it is a constant in the symbolism and the Décadentisme to show the cities under the mask of terror: Died in Venice with the plague which sows death, Bruges-the-Dead called the " Venice of the nord" with Hugues Viane which has deplored his wife died for five years (see paintings of Fernand Khnopff which was pupil of the Academy of Beautiful arts in Brussels in the same year as Ensor), red Lips with the Vampirisme in a hotel of Ostend with a visit of the couple with Bruges. To note the Homosexuality in Died in Venice and red Lips . See also film of Roland Verhavert Brugge-die-Stille .
In the Ball of the dead rat one could claim that Jean the Morgue takes figure of a vampire, don't the vampires control the rats?
Le film the ball of the vampires speaks about a gathering of vampires in a castle, while here the human vampire, which is caught for a man-rat, is all alone between the human ones - in a balneal city - that it cuts the throat of and vacuum of their blood.
Dans Mort in Venice the type-setter Gustav von Aschenbach (figure inspired by the Doctor Faustus ) thus aspires to eternal youth like the countess Bathory in the red Lips . Gustav von Aschenbach and the countess Bathory gives us both the impression to be locked up in a hotel with like only interlocutor the Master of hotel, as well as the characters of Camping Cosmos and Jean Lamorgue who seem to be prisoners of their clean Fantasme s.
For Marcel Proust, Ostend is the city or one never arrives, she east flees in her past and her insulation. Doesn't it deserve as much as Bruges the epithet of the dead except season?

Editors

Sharp-edged Michel (1980 - first edition)
Glénat (1986)

Reward

Price Saint-Michel of best the Cartoon 1981.

Bonds

Internal bond

ways of glory , band draw-epopee of the Between two-wars.

External bonds

Comic strip of the author:

Photographs Ball of the dead rat
Opinion Ball of the dead rat
'' Daniël Jaunes ''

, t==== Of the same Fantastic author in : ====

'' the night of the goat ''
'' Retour to the black country ''

Complete bibliography:

Bibliography

Others about rats:

a series of STRIP CARTOONS '' Rat-Man
'' Rat King '': American STRIP CARTOONS on a homeless person who lives in the sewers.

References

Images

Random links: