Another World Entertainment
R2 DVD
Web: http://www.anotherworldent.com
Sinful
Dwarf is considered one of the rarest cult exploitation films. It is very
unusual to find copies and most are seriously edited releases. Another World
Entertainment has made available one of the most impressive editions of this
film with a two disc set. It includes the standard cut export edition (which
for most people is controversial enough) and the fully uncut Danish release.
This second edition was original shown in Danish cinemas and while having burnt
in Danish subtitles (which have been carefully obscured) is the only surviving
uncut edition being taken from a 35mm print. Don’t let the fact that it was
shown in cinemas make you think this is tame, it includes nudity throughout,
explicit sex and enough exploitation to make the timid among us run from the
room in disgust !
The film opens as a young woman wanders
innocently along the street without a worry in the world; she is approached by
a Dwarf named Olaf (Torben Bille) who is leading a little toy dog by the leash.
The young girl seems fascinating by Olaf and his dog and follows him home. They
reach where Olaf lives, an old boarding house, and he offers to show her his
large collection of toys, just as she begins to enjoy looking at the
collection, he knocks her out with his cane.
Peter (Tony Eades) is an unemployed
writer, Peter and his wife Mary (Anne Sparrow) are having a hard time making
ends meet. They decide to take a room in the boarding-house run by Olaf and his
mother Lila Lash. Lila Lash (Clara Keller) lives in the past when she was a
cabaret singer and spends the day steeped in gin.
It seems Lila and her son Olaf have
found a new way of covering their costs when the boarders slowed down. They kidnap
young woman and keep them in the attic addicted to heroin from where they
service customers, in other word’s they run a lively sex trade. Olaf certainly enjoys
his job and is a violent character and this is what makes the film so “politically
incorrect”, he is the quintessential evil Dwarf/Troll of fairy tales and Torben
Bille plays the role with frightening gusto. Clara Keller is also impressive as
Lila Lash, when she is drunk enough she reminisces with songs from the old days
which are so bad you want to scream, in one memorable scene, she whips one of
the girls as she is dressed as Marlene Dietrich singing a Dietrich classic. (If
singing is the word, she must have worked very hard to sing so horribly off
tune !)
The cinematography makes this a perversely
well made exploitation film, the way in which the songs Lash sings are cut to
the abuse of the girls is very disconcerting. For example, in one scene she is
singing the song Choo Choo Bamba with Olaf on the piano and this is intercut with
scenes of a client having his “Choo Choo Bamba” with a girl upstairs. Tasteless
but it certainly works. The whole of the film is well edited, nicely show and surprisingly
professional for such exploitative fare.
On top of the lively sex trade we have
a heroin smuggling ring using teddy bears which is co-ordinated by “Santa Claus”
who runs a toy shop. The obsession with toys and bears in many ways are
exemplified in Olaf who is a man-child, who on one level plays like a kid, yet
on another does what his mother requires and gives very brutal discipline to
the girls when required and indeed, seems to relish it. This constant
juxtaposition between toys, dolls and teddy bears and the sex trade and heroin
trafficking give the whole film a very perverse feel.
While this is clearly an older film
(1973) the film is fairly clear with only sporadic flickers and only a small amount
of damage, the sound is clear. The unrated edition is certainly explicit with a
surprisingly amount of nudity and occasional bouts of sex. Sinful Dwarf is certainly
one of the classics of depraved cinema. The AWE release is sometimes difficult to
find, a place which tends to keep them in stock is the US Cult cinema store
Diabolik DVD at: http://www.diabolikdvd.com