From the Files of Dr. Strangefilm #1

06.23.09 | Dr. Strangefilm | From the Files of Dr. Strangefilm...Print this Post

It was Russian author Leo Tolstoy--or perhaps the producers of Jon & Kate Plus Eight--who said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This time-tested maxim has also been co-opted by certain cineastes to explain their strange fascination with bad films, from bargain-basement, no-star flops (Teenagers from Outer Space) to big-budget fiascoes (Heaven's Gate) to critically savaged but inexplicable blockbusters (pretty much anything by Michael Bay). There is, however, another type of movie misfire whose appeal is a little more subjective and harder to define: works whose concepts are so twisted, whose execution almost lived up to the word, and whose very existence will have the most diehard David Lynch devotee scratching their head in bewilderment. These are the video oddities that the one and only Dr Strangefilm has dedicated his life to uncovering and sharing with the public.

Case #001: "The Terror of Tiny Town"

Thanks to 1903's The Great Train Robbery, a good case can be made that the Western is the oldest of film genres, and in the 100-plus years since pretty much every type of frontier hero has galloped past audiences. There have been singing cowboys (Roy Rogers), masked cowboys (the Lone Ranger), whip-wielding cowboys (Lash LaRue),  and even ventriloquist cowboys (Max Terhune).  We've also seen the elderly (The Over-the-Hill Gang), women (Bad Girls), African-Americans (Posse), the visually impaired (Blindman), and other minorities all get their crack at riding tall in the saddle.

1938, however, saw the release of a movie whose characters could never be accused to riding tall in the saddle...or anywhere else, for that matter. Courtesy of producer Jed Buell, who the previous year gave the world the all-black oater Harlem on the Prairie, The Terror of Tiny Town is the only western, if not the only Hollywood film to date, to feature an all-midget cast.

That's right, viewers can thrill to scenes of bantam-sized buckaroos atop Shetland ponies, moseying their way through normal-sized sets and props, as the titular blackhat ("Little Billy" Rhodes) tries to start a range war between two families as a smokescreen for his cattle rustling operation. Meanwhile, the heroic son (Billy Curtis) of one rancher tries to stop the bad guys while falling for the niece (Yvonne Moray) of his pa's enemy. Curtis has his work cut out for him, though, when Rhodes frames him for the uncle's murder. Along the way, a saloon singer vamps likes a diminutive Marlene Dietrich while belting out the ballad "Hey, Look Out (I Want to Make Love to You)," a comic relief cook tries to catch a frying pan-destined duck, and a barbershop scene inexplicably includes a penguin.

The film's story was already a Saturday matinee cliché by 1938, one that the stilted dialogue ("I won't hunt no trouble, but I won't run away from it, either") doesn't help, and were it not for the characters repeatedly walking under hitching posts and swinging saloon doors, one would think you were watching a typical B-Western of the era. Of course, this gets a little tiresome before too long (Dare one say that the tale might have been better served as a "short subject"?), and the mind starts to wander. Why didn't these Lilliputian pioneers build a city to their own dimensions? Why do so many of the townsfolk have "Mittle European" accents? Why was there a penguin in the barbershop?

So, how strange is The Terror of Tiny Town? Well, there aren't that many Westerns being made these days, and in these politically correct times all-little person films are even rarer (Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small notwithstanding), all of which makes this sawed-off sagebrusher a curiosity that every true aficionado of "what were they thinking?" cinema should see at least once. No, make that exactly once.