Little Cigars

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.

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.

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".

Another Viet Nam era veteran has commented about first seeing "Little Cigars" on a navy ship; I saw it in our base theatre. Playing to young captive male audiences in 1973 was pretty much the perfect venue for this movie. It played especially well to an audience that was drunk and/or stoned. Actually it's typical of the B-movie junk they showed the troops in those days-movies that did poorly on the domestic market and were quickly shipped to the military. It is not nearly as funny now as it was in 1973.

The premise is a troupe of midgets who travel around the country, performing as a kind of sideshow attraction and using their free time to steal from various places. The idea is to show various clever ways their size works to their advantage when breaking into a building. The writer quickly runs out of clever ideas and the capers get totally moronic. Even in 1973 we realized that the gang's advantage was also a major disadvantage because if they were seen they would be easily identified.

Angel Tompkins is the sexploitation factor, she had recently been featured in Playboy and that probably explained the above average attendance at our theatre. There is a MAJOR credibility problem with her hooking up with the lead midget (played by Billy Curtis). Not because he was a midget but because he looked about 80 years old. Good grief the guy played a munchkin in 1938. But even that was funny in 1973.

Tompkins was the Megan Fox of the 1970's, in that she had a negative charisma and a mean looking face that made her much more suited to bad girl roles.

Bottom line: My rating would have been a two but the movie is unique and Tompkins looks great. It's about as unprofessional looking as anything Hollywood put out in the early 1970's.

Little Cigars (1973)

** (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining, if 100% bizarre, film from AIP has a gangster's moll (Angel Tompkins) leaving his controlling arms and hooking up with a gang of midgets. The midgets are involved in a small circus but the woman turns them into bigger criminals with a string of robberies. LITTLE CIGARS will probably entertain those who like off the wall material but there's no question that the overall film is incredibly uneven. The film never seems to know if it wants to be kid friendly fun stuff or if it wants to be a tad bit darker and aimed for adults. The strange mix just makes for an uneven film and this here is what really kills things. The kinder side of the picture is innocent enough as the robberies are all done in good taste and none of them feature anything too graphic to the point where you couldn't show the film to kids. However, the darker side of the picture deals with a lot of sexual innuendo between the moll and the midgets, which is somewhat strange to watch. There's also a twist at the end, which leads to an ending that I won't spoil but this too is a lot darker than the rest of the film. These two elements just keep going back and forth and I really wish the filmmakers had selected one and just went all out with it. Still, there are some good things here that make the film worth viewing. The biggest is the performance of Tompkins who really comes off well here. The sexuality of her character is something the actress pulls off with no problems and there wasn't a single time where I didn't believe her in the part. Billy Curtis is also good as the leader of the midgets and I really enjoyed the fire and passion he brought to the character. The rest of the midget actors all fit their roles just fine and certainly help keep the film moving.