Directed by Vidal Raski
Written by William Mayo
Denmark, 1973
Danish exploitation cinema doesn’t get much notice in America and there is a perfectly logical reason: none of them are very good, mostly due to their uncommercial nature. When it comes to staple genres like science fiction or horror, the Danes ignore them like the plague. American producer-director Sid Pink tried to introduce the science fiction genre with the Danish co-production Reptillicus (1961); while the film did well for its theatrical run in the United States, the Danes greeted the show with guffaws and groans, resulting in Pink’s second Danish sci-fi co-production Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962) to have a United States-only theatrical release (although, to be fair, Pink’s to attempts to bring sci-fi to Denmark weren’t very good either). Instead, Danish cinema would concentrate making high-brow dramas, as well as comedies featuring Denmark’s Number 1 funny-man Dirch Passer, all of which would receive little-to-no distribution in America. Then, in the 1970s, Danish cinema would produce various exploitation films, some containing either softcore or hardcore porno, and sex comedies, also containing either softcore or hardcore porno as well.
One Danish exploiter that not only managed to bag an American theatrical release but also gain a cult following on home video of sorts was The Sinful Dwarf. Shot in English and first distributed in Denmark as The Dwarf (Danish title: Dværgen) with burnt-in Danish subtitles and featuring a few glimpses of lame hardcore sequences, the film was picked-up by sexploitation distributor Harry Novak, who cut out the hardcore but kept the necessary softcore sex and exploitation elements intact, and released the film under the title The Sinful Dwarf, as well as re-release it in certain markets under the alternate title Abducted Bride. In the early 1990s, Novak would lease his various titles to Something Weird Video (SWV) and The Sinful Dwarf would find its place with the video label that specialized in the kooky works of Doris Wishman, Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman, just to name a few. After Novak’s deal with SWV lapsed in early 2000s, The Sinful Dwarf seemed to be trapped in home video limbo until Severin Films released both the standard American edit and the hardcore Danish cut on separate DVD’s in 2009. A few years have passed, and now Severin Films has unleashed The Sinful Dwarf on Blu-Ray, again with both the soft and hard versions (my review is based on the standard softcore cut), so we can bask in its sleazy glory in High Definition! So, you may be asking: Does this little oddity live up to both its title and repugnant reputation?
The Sinful Dwarf opens with newlyweds Mary (played by Anne Sparrow) and Peter (Tony Eades) looking for a place to stay for a couple of days. The couple arrives at a rooming home run by Lila Lash (Clara Keller), a middle-aged former cabaret performer with a nasty scar on the side of her face, and her son Olaf (Torben Bille, credited as ‘Torben’), a dwarf who likes playing with wind-up toys and suffers a terrible limp. Despite the deplorable conditions of the room, the couple agree to stay there until Peter can get a well-paying job. But, operating a rooming home isn’t the only thing that Lila is involved with: she also has three young girls chained up in a secret room in the attic that Lila offers for prostitution and Olaf controls them by injecting the girls with heroin. While Peter is out searching for a job, Mary claims to hear strange noises on the upstairs floor of the house. She tries to investigate the place herself, but Lila and Olaf abduct Mary, chain her up in the secret room and inject her with heroin, with the intent of making her a new sex slave.
Be forewarned, readers: it has to be said that if one goes into The Sinful Dwarf looking for any “artistry” or aesthetics of quality cinema, then you best look for some other film to bask in. This low-rent European sleaze-fest is mainly a one-location show, with much of the action taking place in a single house, complete with a different room or two and plenty of attic space, all to accommodate the thin script and meager budget. The production values are just the bare minimum; Anne Sparrow’s character sums it up best to her co-star in the first 5-minutes with the line, “Oh, this place looks so awful!” The plot is predictable with zero suspense or intrigue; we pretty much know what the whole story is all about while the audience has to watch the main characters attempt to figure everything out despite the obvious clues that are right in front of their faces. And the acting, which varies from one performer to the next, is so bland that it’s really no wonder that most of the cast didn’t go off to bigger and better acting gigs. But, at the same time, those comments aren’t entirely meant to be negative, for all of the low-to-no budget aspects of this little production are, in a way, part of the charm. And while it can be said that the film defines the word “cheap” in terms of its visuals and on-screen content, The Sinful Dwarf is that special kind of production in which the people involved certainly tried to do something with the whole show, and knowing that most of the budget had to go to the 35mm raw stock. And that’s just fine, for the film certainly wasn’t made to achieve any high status in cinema; it’s just an exploitable product that was made to be played, especially in an era when there was no such term as ‘political correctness’ and low-brow film distributors would release anything that could be threaded in a projector.
For all of what The Sinful Dwarf lacks in production value, talent and, ahem, “good taste,” the film makes up for it with the audacity to throw such a grungy one-dimensional story on the screen. Even though the script is devoid of any substance, or style for that matter, the squalid situations on display are enough to hold your attention if you’re willing to go along with the trashy ride, as we are treated to such exploitable elements like fully-nude women kept locked up, sporadic sex scenes, a drug-trafficking subplot that serves as a convenient plot-device to push the lagging story forward, a middle-aged woman singing bad cabaret numbers to her drunken friend and, yes, a creepy dwarf. As mentioned before, the acting from most of the cast is dire at best as the performers spout out banal dialogue, which serves as mere padding for the film to achieve its 90-minute running time. Anne Sparrow makes fairly good eye-candy throughout: despite Sparrow’s pathetic line deliveries consisting of beginning her sentences with a heavy sigh and then following every word spoken very slowly as if she were exhausted throughout, Sparrow’s presence in The Sinful Dwarf is mainly to show off her “assets”, either without clothes or with clothes on minus a bra. But Torben Bille stands out the most in the title role: short and creepy looking, talking in a rather harsh English voice and playing around with mechanical toys, Bille’s presence alone manages to disturb, especially when he whips out a needle filled with heroin for his chained-up female prisoners and cackling maniacally! Make no mistake about it, The Sinful Dwarf is a fossil of a film that maintains its sleazy vibe amongst its shabby production, perfectly summing up the old saying, “Boy, they sure don’t make these like they used to!”
Is The Sinful Dwarf a “good movie”? If you have expectations for the film to be a quality production, then no. But, if you like your movie-watching experiences to be very trashy and crude, and if you are willing to take the whole show for being the cinematic time capsule that it is, then you might find something enjoyable about it. But if you do happen to watch it, just remember to take a shower afterwards for you might feel just a bit dirty after seeing this production.
