starfoxfan86

Werner Herzog is one of the all time greatest directors, but his second feature film, "Even Dwarfs Started Small," is an absolutely puzzling film.

The story focuses on inmates of an insane asylum, who in the absence of the faculty, take over the complex and bring on chaos and anarchy as they see fit. The story is told with little to no linear sensibilities, and too the film's credit, it works. However, Dwarfs' failings and successes all stem from this story. It is that there is no story. Only the this chaos and anarchy, with some scenes featuring one authority figure failing to deal with the situation at hand. When watching the film, there are scenes featuring the inmates watering flowers with gasoline, driving a van in circles with no one at the wheel, a foodfight, and disdain for the farm animals kept at the asylum. And these scenes range from dark and disturbing, to darkly humorous, complete emptiness, or somehow all of the above.

The real problem I personally would hold against this film is that everything serves no purpose. And even if purposelessness is the intention, something has to be gleamed from it. And while it's clear Herzog was going for this, he instead created an empty void of drabness and dark humor. And from the few other Herzog titles I've seen, I can say even with a lack of story, his ability to have defined and memorable characters (such as his later work in Aguirre The Wrath of God, and Stroszek), cover up the minimal, and abstracted story. But Dwarfs, doesn't really have that same character, and that may well be the reason this film gets lost. But the actors and actresses are all good, the black and white photography is fitting, and the bad soundtrack fits nicely with the tone of the film. Plus the all dwarf cast makes for an interesting experience amid the dull void.

Herzog is a masterful director, and this second feature of him showcases his immense technical strength and skill, but ultimately ends up as a failed avant garde art film focused more on being gratuitous. I say Herzog fans and art film fans go ahead and check this out. The rest can go check out Herzog's more famous works.

Though not particularly well versed, I'd consider myself to currently be a big fan of Italian horror, and "Sacrifice!" is officially the first cannibal title I've seen, and let me say this wasn't 100% what I was expecting.

The plot is simple enough, a British photographer while exploring the Thai/Burmese jungle gets captured by a native tribe and slowly starts to become absorbed into it. Now I say native tribe because it is not a cannibal tribe, and the actual cannibals in the movie only account for less than five minutes of screen time, so this technically isn't a movie about cannibals, but kind of an examination of an "undeveloped," (shall I say) tribe.

First the positives. The sudo documentary opening is quite excellent. The rugged, dirty, and even rough Asian city contrasts nicely with the small village, and our lead's stories of London. Also, the story is quite effective. You get to know the characters, and grow to feel for them. This film was obviously concerned with telling a story with characters. And from what I've seen, the later cannibal films forgot about his aspect. And once again, Italian horror movies have to have an excellent score, and this is no exception. Everything fits the mood, and is another fine example of Italian horror scores.

Now, the moderates. Though there is story and characters, this is still also an exploitation film. We're treated to many fine shots of naked Me Me Lai, and a few other girls, while basically minimizing the amount of male nudity. And as for the violence, while I would say the human element is fine. There aren't too many gory scenes, too which one is actually an effective cannibal scene, and all are quite effective, and even shocking even by toady's standards. And while there's also a bit of minor stuff, such as people getting shot with darts, both poisonous and non poisonous,I now have to address the main issue with this movie, which perpetuates the whole genre.

The absolute negative aspect of this movie is the real animal killings. Though I fully acknowledge that these are all ways of tribal life, but watching animals die simply for shock value is unacceptable. It doesn't help that the animal abuse is a recurring thing through the movie. It just comes of as tasteless and sickening, especially when the footage could be cut and nothing would be lost.

"Sacrifice!" is only really notorious for starting the Italian cannibal boom. And despite the animal abuse, it is still a well executed film. This is only something for the strongest of the strong. No exceptions.

This movie is crazy when you think about it. There's a non linear plot that still manages to arc, there are tonal changes throughout that actually are pretty smooth for the most part, and not to mention some pretty crazy characters. The plot for sure is unusual, it's mostly made up of shorter plots that wind up quickly wrapping themselves up. The tone here is really what makes this movie crazy. Most of it does have a comic tone, but then there's two soft sex scenes that this movie relishes in. The only bigger break from those scenes are the fact that this movie gets sad near the end. I won't say what or why, but trust me it happens. But, what's really crazy is with the exception of the sex scenes that go on for way too long, the tone of the movie actually ties together surprisingly well. While I don't think I could summarize the characters, all I can say is just about every supporting character is crazy in some way and does add to the comedy of the movie. This is a hard movie to summarize, but it's a funny and entertaining little Japanese direct to video movie which I'm sure is better here in the United States than it is in Japan. And I do have to mention one last thing, and that's the IMDb page for this movie- and that's the fact that most of the cast credits are for the English dub included on the DVD (which I didn't watch). Still the actual Japanese cast should have credit here everyone here is quite memorable in their own unique way. So if you see this review, check this movie out.