By Lee Pfeiffer
"A young bride left alone to the lewd passions of an evil dwarf!" So read the American release ads for the 1973 Danish horror flick
The Sinful Dwarf. It was truth in advertising, because if you like your dwarfs sinful, this one wrote the book on such behavior. Variety called the film "repulsive" and that was one of the more complimentary reviews. Universally despised by those who saw it, the movie also sparked an outcry from Little People's organizations. The titular character is played by an actor known only as Torben in the credits. 'Lest you think he might have enjoyed Liberace-like status among the sinful dwarf set that allowed him to use only one name, in reality he was more widely known as Torben Bille, and was primarily employed in Denmark as the host of a children's TV show! In the film, Torben plays Olaf, an ugly, leering little man who runs a tenement-like boarding house with his equally perverted mother, Lila (Clara Keller).They lure pretty young women to take rooms as tenants, then kidnap them, forcibly turn them into heroin addicts and chain them up naked in a hidden attic prison where they are ritually abused by men who are happy to pay Olaf and his mother for the privilege.The story follows a young couple, Ann and Peter (Anne Sparrow and Tony Eades) who are unemployed and who have very reluctantly accepted a room at the house, which is the only lodging they can afford.Both mom and Olaf size up Ann as being worthy of their stable of captive girls, an opinion reinforced when Olaf uses a peephole to spy on Ann and Peter having sex.Ultimately, Ann is knocked unconscious and forced to join her fellow hapless captives, while her disbelieving husband is told she has simply run away.