Animating a rope without Reator

Hi there! If you could help asap it would be great and i'd really appreciate it,
so thanks in advance!

I am trying to create a rope animation...bascially there is a rope that has an
ancient mummy tied up...I have drawn the rope in the 3d file by using a spline -
tho at the moment it is just that...a line. 

I want the rope to unravel into a straight line - animate so that i can show the
length of it. But you cant animate vertices can you?! So i'm really struggling!
Any help would be great!

I thought about using the pathdeform or something like that? And making it
connect to the end of the existing rope, and just make it 'look' like the rope
is unravelling - but really i would just hide it?