Gobsmacking Cinema: THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN (1938)

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at this meeting:

"Okay, so you want funding for your movie. What's the story?"

"It's a tale of good versus evil, love and revenge, and it's set in the wild, wild west."

"You mean it's a western?"

"Well, yes."

"Been there, done that. Isn't there anything original about it?"

"Well, yes, this will be a musical western."

"A musical western? And you call that original?"

"Um... did I mention that it's a musical western with an all-midget cast?"

By way of a disclaimer I should say that the above conversation probably never took place - but you have to wonder, given that we still ended up with the cowboy craziness that is THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN.

The story is a simple one - villain terrorises town and rustles animals while useless sheriff does nothing until a brave cowboy comes along to save the day, falling in love and mending family ties while he does it. It's the stuff of western legend, albeit usually taking place a couple of feet further from the ground.

The film is truly awful - the acting is uniformly terrible and the few songs in the picture are even worse. But just as gobsmacking is the very notion that someone thought there was a market for a western comprised entirely of little people.

It would be nice to think that the people responsible for this film were making it as a way of securing work for actors who ordinarily might have struggled to get such roles. Unfortunately I find it difficult to accept this notion since several factors all point to it being purely for the purposes of exploitation - the way the film was promoted; the idea that the entire cast had to be midgets; the fact that the same mind that gave us this had already churned out the equally gimmicky HARLEM ON THE PRAIRIE (the first all-black western); and on top of all that there's an opening scene featuring the two leads and the only appearance of a non-midget which adopts an obviously patronising tone towards the cast.

Perhaps the most enjoyable factor of the film is the black-clad villain of the piece who, when not riding around with his gang on their little ponies, is busy trying to all manner of villainous things while looking about as scary as Wee Jimmy Krankie.

Actually, the more I think of Wee Jimmy Krankie, the more I think that a grown woman making a career out of dressing as a schoolboy is pretty scary after all... But I still wouldn't cast her in a western.