Sinful Dwarf (1973)

Sinful Dwarf (1973)
written by Harlan Asquith and William Mayo (story credit too)
directed by Vidal Raski

Sometimes one is surprised by their lack of knowledge. This year is starting to be a real eye opener, little did I know 'Sunset Boulevard' was some what considered a horror classic, A movie called 'Thundercrack' exists and is being released on dvd next year and that Ruggero Deodato directed The Barbarian twins in the movie Barbarians... I have to admit, the later was just a recent discovery, but never the less, boner inducing indeed.


No instead, I am often surprised by my lack of cult cinema knowledge, unfortunate considering I have dedicated so much of my time reading and breathing cult movies, finding out when they were released and who directed them. Most of the time I'm lead right into a circle, looking into the world of Troma for solace and distinguished love for the truly subversive independent cinema...

Yet... I find movies like Sinful Dwarf, that capsize my expectation and provide me with another genre, much maligned genre be it, DWARFSPLOITATION... oh it exists oh brothers and sisters... this is a new dawn of discovery, and it is delicious.

It should be no secret, I love a good bad horror film any day of the week, yet it takes a cinematic curiosity like this to wake me up and taste the cup rather than the coffee in it.

This odd ball obscurity centers around a deranged dwarf, who does his bidding for his mother by beating up young girls and drugging naked (apparently willing) women for prostitution out of his mother's apartment building, in the attic no less. He is obsessed with toys, plays the piano while his mother does cabaret type music numbers and walks with a cane, and spends most of the movie with an evil Jack Nicholson grin bordering on drooling. The creepy scenes of him bending over naked girls with needle track marks in their arms, injecting them with more drugs are just a tad disturbing. Whats funny is the actor playing the dwarf was a children's show co-host in Denmark. AWESOME!

We then meet a couple who enter the hotel, only to be spied on and when the time is right, the woman is abducted and bound naked to the wall. In this room, several woman lay around waiting for the next fix and lay lifeless as men come in, get their rocks off and leave. The begging for drugs is a little harrowing, but the film is ultra cheese, and nothing ever seems real.

Lots of sex happens in the films and often times looks to real to be simulated, which ups the ante of sleaze. Think Thriller a Cruel Picture, way of Wizard of Oz...maybe thats way out...but creepy dwarves and sex are things of nightmares. But then again, I've dreamed of stranger things...

It all ends really unclimatically, with the mother being shot by the husband of the abducted woman, and the dwarf jumping to his death, a hilarious potato sack of dummy slamming the ground.

This is one of those movies you wish you were told about, well here is my spreading of the word. This is some kind of classic, in the same category as a John Water's flick. Chock full of nudity, sex, drugs, some violence, and the best damn opening title sequence, almost ever. Plus the first few minutes of the dwarf offering a toy to a girl and then caning her to death is a high light. Other than that, this is one of those movies I kind of wish Mom wasn't in the room for, but it happened.

Highly recommend for that night you decide to watch Pink Flamingos and need to know what comes next...long live OLAF! It might make more sense to double bill this with Horror Hospital, and enjoy yourself a pleasurable evening of DWARFSPLOITATION!