RATTY NEWS FILM REVIEW

Dracula the Emu

No Stakes... No Steaks... No Hope.

Reviewed by Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Chief Film Critic, Ratty News

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (Four Cheese Wheels out of Five)

I have attended many cinematic masterpieces over the years at the Dusty Gulch Drive-In.

I have also attended many films.

Dracula the Emu somehow manages to be both.

The opening scene immediately sets the tone as a terrified stockman sprints across the paddock yelling, "He's behind me, isn't he?"

He is.

Unfortunately, so is his barbecue.

The audience gasped.

Well... Mrs McFookit gasped.

Old Bushie just muttered, "Told him not to use tomato sauce."

From there the story unfolds with all the subtlety of a runaway road train.

The mysterious Dracula the Emu arrives in Dusty Gulch under cover of darkness, wearing an elegant black cape, glowing red eyes and a set of vampire fangs that would make any dentist consider early retirement.

Unlike traditional vampires, however, this one has developed a taste for premium Australian beef.

This immediately creates the central conflict.

Nobody can afford any.

A 94-year-old’s heartfelt plea about cruelty to animals, the neglect of children and the elderly, and our failing responsibility as caretakers.

The Measure of Our Humanity

Today you hear of so many incidents: I cannot call them stories, of cruelty, neglect, and downright "don't give a damn" attitudes that you reach the stage where you say, "Please don't go into the details. It is too upsetting."

I can't listen to any more distressing accounts of what someone has done to a child, an animal, or an elderly person.

We, as human beings, have brains.

We have hands and fingers. We have developed all sorts of things that can help those who depend on us, whether they belong to the animal kingdom or to our own species.

But if we don't speak out, who will? At 94, my sense of urgency is a reminder that time is short for all of us to act on what we know is right.

The More We Bury the Truth

The more we bury the truth, the deeper the innocent are buried with it.

It's easy to look back at history and wonder how ordinary people failed to see what was happening.

How could whole towns live in the shadow of barbed wire and later say they knew nothing?

After the Second World War, Allied forces marched German civilians through the concentration camps. Ordinary men and women - bakers, schoolteachers, shopkeepers - were made to walk past piles of bodies, to smell the stench of death, to see the emaciated survivors, and to confront the consequences of evil that had been allowed to grow in plain sight.

It was a reckoning.

Not only for those who committed the crimes, but for those who chose not to ask difficult questions.

No, Sire. It Is a Revolution.

It's easy to forget, but revolutions don't just fall out of the sky.

They brew.

Slowly.

Like a storm gathering on the horizon that everyone convinces themselves will somehow blow over.

Take France in 1789.

Paris was in turmoil. Bread was scarce. The government was broke. Protesters filled the streets. Then came the storming of the Bastille. Heads were carried through the streets on pikes. The old order was beginning to crack.

A famous story tells how King Louis XVI, safe in Versailles and struggling to grasp what was unfolding, exclaimed, "This is a revolt!"

One of his advisers quietly replied:

"No, Sire. It is a revolution."

RATTY NEWS EXCLUSIVE

The Great Sausage Tax Scandal and the Return of Laughing Jack McKooka

Council Warns of Escalating Avian Threat as Citizens Told to "Keep One Hand on Their Snag"

By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Chief Correspondent, Dusty Gulch Bureau

DUSTY GULCH – What began as a simple case of a missing sausage, last seen on a Qantas jet heading to Ireland,  has spiralled into the greatest feathered crisis in the town's history.

The trouble started last Saturday at the Dusty Gulch Memorial Barbecue Grounds, when three sausages, two bread rolls and an entire plate of onion mysteriously vanished.

Witnesses reported hearing a familiar sound from the gum trees above.

"HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!"

Within minutes, rumours spread like wildfire.

Laughing Jack McKooka had returned.

When ideology excuses everything and responsibility belongs to no one.

I recently picked up Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky again after many years. Funny thing about old books - you read them at twenty and think they're about someone else. You read them again at seventy and suddenly realise they're about everyone.

At its core, the novel is simple enough. A young man commits a terrible act and then discovers something that every civilisation eventually has to learn: we are responsible for our choices. We cannot turn back the clock and pretend the damage never happened.

We carry our mistakes with us.

That is why the book feels so disturbingly relevant today.

Because Raskolnikov never really disappeared into the Siberian snow. He is still with us. Every age produces its own versions of him.

He is the overeducated, self-important intellectual who believes he sees further than ordinary people. He contributes very little, yet somehow feels qualified to judge everyone else. He is angry, resentful and convinced that his ideas place him above the normal rules of right and wrong.