Little Cigars

Angel Tompkins(grrrrr.....)stars in this dodgy modern retelling of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", portraying a shifty waitress who falls into a life of crime with a band of midget grifters. Together, they turn their initial petty thefts into big-time capers which ultimately lead to very serious consequences.

Not at all the light comedy it was marketed as, though there are giggles in spots, the mien of LITTLE CIGARS borders more on seedy noir in a rather nontraditional and semi-exploitive way. Miles short of masterful, but a unique and quirky as hell B flick with considerable cult appeal.

5/10

This film essentially begins with an attractive woman named "Cleo" (Angel Tompkins) robbing a mob boss and quickly fleeing the scene in her car. Needless to say, this infuriates the mob boss who orders a couple of his men to track her down and kill her. To that effect, they eventually stumble upon her while she is working at a roadside diner but after a sudden altercation she manages to escape again. Not long afterward, she takes up with a small group of thieves in a traveling carnival and under her leadership they begin a lucrative crime spree that spans multiple states. What they don't realize, however, is that each heist brings them closer to getting captured by either the law or the mobsters still pursuing her. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this turned out to be a rather tepid comedy which had just one saving grace--the presence of Angel Tompkins who was absolutely stunning. That said, those viewers familiar with her career might find this film somewhat entertaining and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

I've been reading Quentin Tarantino's book "Cinema Speculation". He mentions a few movies that not only I haven't seen but that I have never even heard of. "Little Cigars" is one of those movies. Since QT mentioned the movie and it starred Angel Tompkins (who delivered a brief but memorable nude scene in "Chapter 2: Walking Tall"), I figured I'd give it a go. It's an okay watch. The cast is fine and Tompkins does look good. The cast members do a good job because they all play it straight. The movie, however, needed a better script. How many times can you show the gang doing robberies? Apparently a bunch. That's what most of the movie is. It gets pretty redundant after a while. I'm not going to say that "Little Cigars" is a good movie but I will say it's a lot better than "The Terror of Tiny Town".

Having just watched the little people musical western The Terror of Tiny Town, I decided to go next to fancast.com to watch Little Cigars which stars two of TTOTT's players: Billy Curtis and Jerry Maren. Other members of their gang include Frank Delfino, Felix Silla, and Emory Sousa. There's also a statuesque blond played by Angel Tomkins who reluctantly joins their carnival act when she runs from her former gangster paramour's henchmen. At this point, the movie becomes a series of heists that provide some suspenseful moments. Most of the time, however, there's some highly humorous moments involving size and sex and fighting. In fact, I loved the scene when the Curtis character attempts to get "girlfriend" Tomkins out of the bar by beating up on the guy sitting next to her especially after previously seeing him doing the same to "Little Billy" Rhodes in The Terror of Tiny Town! No great shakes but Little Cigars comes highly recommended for anyone with a taste for the unusual. P.S. Angelo Rossito was another little person who appears here as part of a member of those his size put in a police lineup. His best known movie was Freaks. Also in continuing to point out actors with connections to my birth town of Chicago, Simmy Bow was also born there and Walter Beakel was a founding member of The Second City there.

This movie doesn't fit neatly into any category. It has elements of comedy, including slapstick, puns, sexual innuendo, and "witty" lines, but also contains foul language, brutal murders, robberies and assaults. Added to this lack of focus is terrible pacing. Some of this is the fault of the editor as he holds to long on a close-up of a character who has just said a "funny" line, but those extended pauses for laughs are present even when the scene does not cut away. I suppose the humor of the movie was supposed to derive from the surprise of seeing little people who are as nasty and cruel as everyone else. Even in 1972, this would not have surprised many people. This would probably have been a lot funnier if made a few years after the Wizard of Oz. The plot is nothing more than a series of "capers" that demonstrate the many clever ways you can smuggle a bunch of midgets into an establishment you are planning to rob. There's no indication of how or why this group of con artists suddenly become brutal armed robbers. There is nothing of the con artist subtlety in their later capers. What dramatic tension there is comes from trying to decide if Cleo (Angel Tompkins) really cares for Slick, or is just stringing him along. Since neither of these characters is sympathetic, it's hard to care to much about this.