THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN (1938) Billy Curtis, Yvonne Moray & "Little Billy" Rhodes | Western | B&W

The Terror of Tiny Town is a 1938 American musical Western film produced by Jed Buell, directed by Sam Newfield and starring Billy Curtis. The film was shot at a sound studio in Hollywood and partly at Placeritos Ranch in Placerita Canyon, California. The inspiration came when Buell overheard an employee jokingly say "If this economic dive keeps going, we'll be using midgets as actors".

Using a conventional Western story with an all-diminutive cast, the filmmakers were able to showcase gags such as cowboys entering the local saloon by walking under the swinging doors, climbing into cupboards to retrieve items and dwarf cowboys galloping around on Shetland ponies while roping calves. It is considered to be one of the worst films ever made.

SYNOPSIS
An evil gunslinging midget comes to terrorize the good little people of Tiny Town. The townspeople organize to defeat him, and zany antics ensue.

Billy Curtis as The Hero (Buck Lawson)
Yvonne Moray as The Girl (Nancy Preston)
Little Billy Rhodes as The Villain (Bat Haines) (as Little Billy)
Billy Platt as The Rich Uncle (Jim 'Tex' Preston) (as Bill Platt)
John T. Bambury as The Ranch Owner (Pop Lawson) (as John Bambury)
Joseph Herbst as The Sheriff
Charlie Becker as The Cook (Otto)
Nita Krebs as The Vampire (Nita, the dance hall girl)
George Ministeri as The Blacksmith (Armstrong)
Karl Karchy Kosiczky as The Barber (Sammy) (as Karl Casitzky)
Fern Formica as Diamond Dolly (as Johnnie Fern)
William H. O'Docharty as The Old Soak (as W.H. O'Docharty)

Directed by Sam Newfield
Written by Clarence Marks (additional dialogue)
Screenplay by Fred Myton
Produced by Jed Buell
Cinematography Mack Stengler
Edited by Martin G. Cohn, Richard G. Wray
Music by Edward Kilenyi
Production company Jed Buell Productions
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date December 1, 1938
Running time 62 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $100,000

Jed Buell was able to find about 60 cast members for the film, with an average height of 3’8". He located most of them through talent agencies, newspaper ads, and radio broadcasts.[3] The film presents Jed Buell's Midgets. Many of the actors were former members of the performing troupe The Singer Midgets and played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939.

The Terror of Tiny Town was released twice: first independently by producer Sol Lesser's Principal Pictures in July 1938, and then on a larger scale by Columbia Pictures six months later. Box office returns proved to be so good that in 1938 the producer, Jed Buell, announced in the magazine Variety, that he had closed a deal with Sol Lesser. He had plans for multiple series of sequels films featuring an all little-people cast. For unclear reasons, the sequels were never produced. The film entered the public domain in 1966 after copyright was not renewed.

The reputation of The Terror of Tiny Town rests primarily on its oddball premise and its tongue-in-cheek title, with some of today's viewers regarding it as a "so bad it's good" movie. When it was first released in 1938, however, the film garnered excellent reviews as a novelty feature. Hollywood Spectator: "One of the most interesting and pleasantly entertaining pictures I have seen in quite a spell of moons... We do not laugh at these nice little persons. We laugh with them as they strut importantly, and obviously with appreciation of the humor in it... good fun, a screen treat you should not miss." Motion Picture Daily: "The midgets play the picture as earnestly, professionally, and melodramatically as any aggregation of full-statured performers ever played one. By managing it so, Jed Buell has turned out a film that is a distinct novelty and, more than that, a new kind of motion picture." Film Daily: "Decided novelty should do handsomely at the box office if properly exploited... western fans, especially youngsters, should enjoy it hardily." Audiences of the day liked it as a change of pace: a Maine exhibitor reported, "They liked it so well, some came back Saturday. It was a good story and more carefully put together than the run of mill westerns."