Directed by: Vidal Raski
Stars: Torben Bille as Olaf the Dwarf, Gerda Madsen,Lisbeth Olsen, Jeanette Marsden, Anne Sparrow, Tony Eades, Clara Keller, Werner Hedmann, Dale Robinson, Jane Cutter
Language: English
Country: Denmark | Usa | Imdb Info
Also known as: Dværgen, Das Haus der verlorenen Mädchen, Syntinen kääpiö, Teenage Bride
Description: A young married couple, Peter and Mary Davis, arrive at a shabby boarding house looking for a place to stay. At first, the building seems merely strange: cheap rooms, odd noises, bad atmosphere, and eccentric owners who appear to be hiding more than they admit.
The house is run by Lila Lash, a faded cabaret performer with a taste for booze, old songs, and theatrical self-pity, and her son Olaf, a deeply unsettling figure who moves through the building with toys, secrets, and a permanent air of menace. Together, they operate a criminal racket from the shadows of the house, using the respectable surface of a guesthouse to conceal the horrors above.
Mary begins to sense that something is wrong. Sounds come from the attic. People appear and disappear. Olaf’s behavior becomes increasingly disturbing, and the building itself feels less like a home than a trap. While Peter struggles to understand what is happening, Mary’s curiosity pulls her closer to the boarding house’s hidden economy of fear, addiction, and exploitation.
The Sinful Dwarf is one of the grimiest artifacts of 1970s European exploitation cinema: a sordid mixture of crime thriller, horror atmosphere, softcore sleaze, and grotesque melodrama. Its power does not come from polish or sophistication, but from the sheer unpleasantness of its world. Every room feels stained. Every character seems damaged. Even the toy-shop imagery, usually associated with innocence, becomes part of the film’s nightmare logic.
As Mary moves nearer to the truth, the boarding house transforms into a claustrophobic hell of locked rooms, manipulated victims, and criminal decay. The film builds toward a brutal collapse in which the rotten structure of the house — and the people who run it — can no longer remain hidden.
Legacy Note:
The Sinful Dwarf has become infamous as one of the defining examples of extreme Eurosleaze. Directed by Vidal Raski and starring Torben Bille as Olaf, it occupies a special place among grindhouse collectors precisely because it feels so raw, cheap, and morally diseased.
Unlike Denmark’s more playful erotic comedies of the period, this film has almost no lightness. It is closer to a scuzzy horror chamber piece, built around a boarding house that seems to sweat corruption from the walls. Clara Keller’s drunken cabaret-mother routines add a bizarre theatrical grotesquerie, while Olaf’s wind-up toys give the film one of its strangest and most memorable motifs.
The movie’s reputation rests less on craft than on atmosphere: ugly sets, warped performances, oppressive sleaze, and a sense that the entire production crawled out of some forgotten grindhouse basement. Difficult, unpleasant, and proudly disreputable, The Sinful Dwarf remains a cult object for viewers interested in the farthest, dirtiest edges of 1970s exploitation cinema.
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