The Sinful Dwarf

Vidal Raski
1973

After finally seeing this steamy pile of sexploitation obscura I'm a bit puzzled by the uptight and overly reactionary DVD review that appeared in Fangoria Magazine a couple months ago. It's a problematic situation from the outset considering Fangoria probably doesn't have any business reviewing this sort of sleaze-fare to being with. Wicked Mom and dwarf Son run a boarding house by day and an attic Bordello of dope-slave hookers by night. A down-on-their-luck couple take up residence in the flophouse, and things get hairy when the proprietress decides she wants to add her sweet young guest to the upstairs stable. With expectedly poor production values, porno lighting, and an inevitable degree of camp, this outing is far more preoccupied with cheap thrills than disturbing it's audience on a genuinely psychological level. The rape scenes are plenty racy, but also low on intensity, further suggesting that Raski is far more interested in purveying simple smut than making any sort of comment or provocation on the horror of rape. Take any single rape (or consensual sex scene, for that matter) from a Sam Peckinpah film and it will be a thousand times more disconcerting than all the violence directed towards women in this film combined. Olaf the dwarf is pleasantly creepy, and his Mom gets to mug it up with some fun quirks, but overall the picture is pretty big on fluff, and will probably only really be enjoyed by hardcore exploitation fans. Certainly not the best or the worst I've ever seen.