Somewhere in between the overlapping circles of ‘Thriller: A Cruel Picture’, ‘Last House on Dead End Street’ and ‘Bloodsucking Freaks’. We find ourselves in the realm of ‘The Sinful Dwarf’ a…STRANGE film for lack of a better descriptive. I wasnt entirely sure what I was getting into with this one, but when I revved up my severin Bluray copy of this and found that it contained no subtitle OR language options. I knew that what I was about to witness needed only the language of vision to clarify it.

The plots pretty brief. The film follows a couple who are running low on cash and forced to stay at a sleazy run down boarding house while the husband tries to earn them enough money to move them along. What the couple dont realise is that the house is in fact a front for a huge drug smuggling/brothel operation maintained by the titular ‘Sinful Dwarf’ who is the son of the bordinghouse owner.

Essentially, he finds girls on the streets, lures them back to the bording house, where he knocks them out, drugs them up on Heroin to make them dependent on him, before he pimps their drug addled bodies out to anyone willing to pay the price of admission. Naturally the Dwarf takes a liking to the wife of the couple who have just moved in, and when said wife begins hearing the horror filled shrieks of the women being violated in the attic, she begins to investigate….aaaaand you can imagine where this goes from here.

And, I do somewhat feel this films reputation preceeds it. I was led to believe this was a fairly hardcore grubby and seedy little picture. But the elements that MAKE it grubby have all been done in other pictures (like the ones I mentioned in the opening of this review) MUCH more effectively. with that in mind, it kind of makes this film interesting in the sense of it breaking several taboo barriers WELL ahead of its time, but equally a little bit ‘done’ as a result.

The scripts a bit overly basic, once you get the above plot out of the way, it essentially just turns into a rinse and repeat ‘The wife goes to investigate, has to leave before finding out the truth, cue extended rape scene’. It does this 2-3 times before we actually get to the finale, which WAS well handled I felt, but also left me kind of wishing that level of scripting was present across the runtime.

Theres a brief subplot about the couples marriage slowly breaking down as the wife feels neglected and the husband continues to flounder in securing work. But thats never really fully realised and is ultimately cut short for the 3rd act finale.

I watched the ‘European XXX’ cut of this, wanting an ‘authentic’ sinful dwarf experience, but was actually kind of dissapointed to see that the ‘additional footage’ was literally just 3 scenes badly intercut into the wider released version, two of which were incredibly murky hardcore sequences that added nothing to the plot, and one was just an extension of a non hardcore sequence that REALLY added nothing.

The pacing is slow burn, and it feels across the runtime like it might be building to some kind of broader subtext interpretation…But, I honestly dont think it does. I couldnt interpret a message out of this film beyond what was being shown on screen…Not from the elements in play at least. The film opens relatively strong, idles through most of the 2nd act, and ends in a way that I didnt dislike…but I didnt exactly ‘love’ either.

add into this that the tones a bit all over the place, the comedy isnt nearly present enough to act as a contrast to the darker moments, and the darker moments dont really compliment the kitchen sink drama elements much, it all feels a bit ‘addled’ like your part remembering a more coherent movie while slowly falling into a deep sleep. Im not entirely sure how I feel about it, I feel a rewatch may somewhat sharpen things up a bit. But I ultimately came away from it feeling simultaineously like i’d seen it all before, and that I didnt WANT to see anymore.

The characters are all fairly one note, they have their pitch and they stick to it for most of the runtime, I kind of wish there had been more of an exploration of the Dwarfs day to day work, like how he manages his drug deals and how he captures the women. more of an exploration of his thought processes, and in particular a bit more of an investment into his attraction to the wife. Because they hint it a couple of times softly at the beginning of the film, and then just flat out turn him sex nuts in the final act for her. Given the film shows he’s into voyerism, it would have made sense to have really fleshed him out a bit more in that regard.

The direction too is overly basic and VERY grimey, to the point it looks sickly, theres a slightly off-greenish quality to the film elements, that changes to a harsh blue/purple on the hardcore inserts. The prints scratched, smeared. dust filled. and the film is riddled with dirty early 70s cold looking sets that just make you feel like you need a shower with bleach and a scourer by the halfway point. I’d say that was a triumph on the directors part, but in reality, those kind of locations were so common at that point in time, I dont feel like the credit could really be earned.

Composition is messy, unfocussed. shots seem to be set up for whats practical in the location, rather than what would work for the story, and as mentioned the hardcore inserts have been shot overly dark, meaning when it cuts to the dirty stuff, you have NO idea what your actually looking at. Colour is murky and uninteresting, the sequences constructed bluntly with harsh edits that dont always match or work. it feels like it was cut together by someone who’d never used a bench before. I WILL however give the film credit for its opening title sequence, which was simplistic, but VERY effective.

As for the performances? Well…its basically Torben Bille as the Dwarf who steals the show, and that isnt saying much because most of the time he’s basically locked into ‘swivel eyed loon’ mode and is thrashing about screaming, gurning or hobbling from scene to scene. He’s the best performance in this thing, and It feels laboured. So you can imagine that the rest of the cast range from bored, to genuinely confused as to what they’re shooting.

I REALLY liked the experimental noisecore electronic score that mixed whimsical child like compositions with droning screeching. I felt it really helped give the film a bit more life. But it ultimately wasnt enough to fully sell this thing to me.

I think, if you havent seen ‘The Sinful Dwarf’ and like films that are a bit more controversial such as ‘Thriller’, ‘Salo’, ‘Last house on dead end street’ or similar, you may get your moneys worth…I didnt exactly feel cheated. But I did feel like its infamy had been played up a bit beyond what was actually on screen. I have absolutely seen worse than this. and theres absolutely better controversial films out there.

Definitely one i’ll need to revisit sometime.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-sinful-dwarf/