Review(s): DVD Great Wacky Western Comedies (The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West / Fair Play / The Terror of Tiny Town)
2 STARS BASED SOLELY ON TERROR OF TINYTOWN THE REST STUNK
Well, I've been curious about this movie for years and now I've finally seen it: "The Terror of Tiny Town" (1938), a Western/musical with an all-dwarf cast! In many respects it's just a typical Western-- dashing hero attempts to save/woo gorgeous gal and fight off cattle rustlers at the same time (one such rustler tries to frame the hero for murder). The film starts with an average-sized man introducing the diminiutive stars; including the hero, "Buck Lawson" (played by Billy Curtis, who has been in several movies and even has a walk-on in "the Incredible Shrinking Man".)
"Tiny Town" is populated entirely by little people(or "midgets" as some have called them). They ride ponies instead of horses, but everything in town seems scaled for average sized people. Thus the image of cowboys sauntering UNDER half-doors into saloons! To be honest I think SOME of the "dwarf" actors were actually average-sized children. In one scene, a barbershop quartet sings and a "dwarf" in a chair sings along in a much deeper voice than you'd expect. That "dwarf" looks more like an average-sized little boy in reality.
But then more than a few of the (adult) little people in the cast look like kids (but aren't)-- not just height-wise but they also have very-young-looking faces. You almost think it's a film of kids playing adults (ever see "Bugsy Malone"?) but they are indeed dwarfs.
You get the typical elements of an "oater" (Western), from shoot-em-ups to a seductive female singer in a saloon; some very bad puns ("smallpox", "half-pint"); a hero-and-girl duet that will conjure up images of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald (all together now: "when I'm calling you-u-u-u"--though to be honest, the songs in "Tiny Town" are VERY forgettable!)...a dwarf drinking a huge beer stein, and a duel in a shack where dynamite is about to go off!
So is it great or horrible? Kind of in between; unusual enough (in that it has an all-dwarf cast) to see at least once, but cliched dialogue, weak songs, etc....still, now at least I can say I've seen The Terror of Tiny Town!
(PS--I must add that in many respects the film is the type that exploits little-person actors for their size instead of whatever other talents they may have. How many dwarf actors out there go to a casting call and immediately are told, "ah! We'll make you the leprechaun...the tiny space alien...one of Santa's elves..." etc. instead of more substantial roles... )
SADLY I WOULD HAVE TO SAY THAT THE OTHERS WERE VERY DISMAL. I WOULD BUY THIS PURELY FOR THE PRICE AND THE TERROR OF TINYTOWN
Related DVD's Great Wacky Western Comedies (The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West / Fair Play / The Terror of Tiny Town)
Sometimes a movie achieves such legendary status that it can't quite live up to its reputation. Plan 9 from Outer Space is not one of these movies. It is just as magnificently terrible as you've heard. Plan 9 is the story of space aliens who try to conquer the Earth through resurrection of the dead. Psychic Criswell narrates ("Future events such as these will affect you in the future!") as police rush through the cemetery, occasionally clipping the cardboard tombstones in their zeal to find the source of the mysterious goings-on. More than just a bad film, Plan 9 is something of a one- stop clearinghouse for poor cinematic techniques: The time shifts whimsically from midnight to afternoon sun, Tor Johnson flails desperately in an attempt to rise... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gregory Walcott - Tom Keene Director(s): Edward D. Wood Jr. DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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For years, conventional wisdom has had it that Ed Wood Jr.'s Plan 9 from Outer Space is the ultimate "bad movie," a sort of Holy Grail of cinematic ineptitude. Often lost in the shuffle, though, is Bride of the Monster (fans of Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood will already be familiar with it and the offscreen misadventures that went along with it). Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Vornoff, a mad scientist working on a race of superbeings in his lab. His process of clamping a metal lampshade onto the heads of his subjects and zapping them with radiation usually kills them, but the monstrous Lobo (Tor Johnson) survives and becomes Vornoff's assistant. Vornoff's plans go awry, though, when he tries to get a nosy reporter to mate with Lobo and winds up being given the atom treatment... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Edward D. Wood Jr. DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2000 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Tod Browning, who directed Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula, stepped into even eerier territory with this 1932 story of betrayal and retribution in the circus. Evil trapeze artist Olga Baclanova seduces and marries a midget in the circus sideshow, hoping to inherit his wealth. But in doing so, she has crossed the wrong folks: the tightly knit group of nature's aberrations, who stick together like family--and who set out to avenge their little pal. Browning brought in some of the most famous sideshow attractions of the era, include Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and Johnny Eck the Legless Boy, as well as Zip and Pip, microcephalics whose appearance in this film inspired cartoonist Bill Griffith to create his comic strip, "Zippy the Pinhead." So disturbing that it was... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Wallace Ford - Leila Hyams - Olga Baclanova Director(s): Tod Browning DVD Release Date: Released the 10 August 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Kudos to Something Weird Video for putting "A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine," one of David F. Friedman's best movies, on DVD! Sexy Stacey Walker, with her arched eyebrows, wicked smile and heavily sprayed hair, burns up the screen as Sharon Winters, a character who gets her kicks seducing men, then crying "Rape!" (In his commentary, the always-enteraining Friedman tells how he considered calling the movie "C.T.", but figured no one would get it.) It's a performance that's fun to watch, and certainly uses Walker to much greater effect than the nudie-cutie "The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill." Shot in black and white, "A Smell of Honey" has a deliciously tawdry look, yet shows some artful flourishes (likely attributed to cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs as director Byron Mabe was never... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Byron Mabe DVD Release Date: Released the 13 January 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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