The Sinful Dwarf (1973)

(Original Title - Dværgen) This Danish horror flick has achieved a degree of notoriety, not due to its explicit content, but its overwhelming atmosphere of sordid despair.  This is an exploitation flick of the bleakest variety.  Let's have a look - but don't say you haven't been warned.

Olaf the Dwarf (Torben Bille) and Lila Lash (Clara Keller) manage a grimy apartment building.  Lila is an eccentric woman stuck in the past, and Olaf is a perverted psychopath.

Peter (Tony Eades) and his new wife Mary (Anne Sparrow) request a room to rent.  Peter is out of work, so they're having to slum it.

 Olaf shows the newlyweds to their room.  

Mary stares in horror at the dwarf as he bounces on the bed; clearly reflecting on how shitty her poverty-stricken life is going to be.

But it's even worse than they can imagine.  Olaf gets his hypodermic needle ready to attend to his sex slaves stowed in the attic.

 Olaf enters the abysmal room and pumps the nude captives full of drugs.

Peter leaves each day in search of work; Mary is left bored alone in the depressing apartment.

In a scene straight from a David Lynch movie, Olaf plays the piano while Lila delivers a bizarre performance.

Mary snoops around the apartment building.  She hears strange noises and visitors coming and going.

Finally, an hour into the film, we get a good look at Anne Sparrow naked as she changes into a nightgown.

After this film, actress Anne Sparrow is never credited in a film again.  What happened to her? Did this dirty, nihilistic movie cure her of ever wanting to act again?

 Mary gets a little too nosy and is abducted by Olaf and Lila.  Her clothes are ripped off and she's chained to a back corner of the attic.

Actor Torben Bille really steals the show; when he gets all hot-and-bothered, his face absolutely explodes with psychotic exuberance.

This movie reminds me a lot of  Bloodsucking Freaks (1976); that also featured a sadistic dwarf  managing nude captive women who are drugged and tortured.  I didn't like that film near as much, as it was just vile, mean spirited excess, with nothing else to offer.

Poor Peter.  He's stuck working at a toy shop to make ends meet - and now he believes his wife has left him. 

Mary tries to convince her cellmates to escape, but they're too drugged to help.  Note the broken wall conveniently placed in front of Mary's cell. Although the actress was clearly willing to provide full frontal nudity, I suspect she wanted to preserve some degree of modesty in her extended attic scenes.

Also note that there are hardcore scenes interspersed in this film (none featuring Anne Sparrow).  It gets graphic when various Johns have sex with the drugged captives.  These ladies have been in a few VZ1 flicks (In the Sign of the Gemini and The Man Who Couldn't Get Enough), but never approaching a starring role.

 The film's most startling and memorable scene: Olaf punishes Mary by raping her with his cane!

 Fucking hell.  I told you this movie was a bottomless pit of despair.

Finally, Peter arrives with the police.  While in the toy shop, overheard Olaf discussing the use of the stuffed animals for smuggling drugs. 

 The police officer is so dismayed by what he sees, he hands Peter his gun and tells him to do what he needs to do.  Peter shoots Lila, then Olaf jumps out the window to his death.

What depressing, soulless, filthy piece of hateful smut... and I loved every minute.  As mentioned, it had darkly surreal elements that seemed straight from a David Lynch movie. Anne Sparrow is the perfect central character - young, beautiful, naive, who doesn't belong in this vile place; her violation an hour into the picture comes as a hard slap upside the head.  It was so over-the-line when it comes to upturning every standards of decency that it well earns its place as one of the grimiest, most mean spirited pieces of cinema smut ever made.
★★★★★★★★☆☆