Roadshow Rarities (June 30 – July 6) In the old days of theatrical releases some of the more lavish movies would be promoted by holding limited screenings in large cities. These roadshow releases would generate hype before the nationwide release and allow producers to tweak the film to the audience’s reaction. This model also worked for low budget productions that may have had no intention of a wide release. These explo roadshows traveled an informal circuit of theaters, churches, revival tents, high school auditoriums and anywhere else they could run a projector. They frequently promised more than they delivered and left town before the angry audience could catch up to them. Through the restoration efforts of SWV many of these movies have survived to piss audiences off to this very day!

Sam Newfield directed around 250 movies. He didn’t specialize in a genre. He made about twenty movies a year. He made so many movies that he also used the names Sherman Scott and Peter Stewart so that it wouldn’t seem like he had made so many.

In fact, Fred Olen Ray even used the name Sherman Scott to make Tomb of the Werewolf, Haunting Desires, Super Ninja Doll, Girl with the Sex-Ray Eyes, Bikini-A-Go-Go, The Bikini Escort Company, Bikini Cavegirl, Bad Girls from Mars and The Prophet. He used Peter Stewart for 13 Erotic Ghosts, Dear Santa and Mom’s Outta Sight.

Newfield heard someone say, “If this economic dive keeps going, we’ll be using midgets as actors.” That’s why he made a Western with little people.

It starts with a man (Stephen Chase) introducing the movie and stars Buck Larson and Bat Haines getting ready to fight before the story has even played. In that story, Haines and his gang are stealing the Shetland ponies of Buck’s father and selling them to another farmer, Tex Preston. Buck also falls in love with that man’s niece, Nancy (Yvonne Moray).

Buck was played by Billy Curtis, who started his career in the vaudeville and pro wrestling. In his fifty year career, he was in everything from The Wizard of Oz (as the Munchkin city father) to the AIP small person gang film Little Cigars and High Plains Drifter. He also played Mayor McCheese, Bark Bent and Superpup in the wild pilot The Adventures of Superpup, a Martian in The Angry Red Planet, a child ape in Planet of the Apes and appears in Eating Raoul.

The bad guy is played by “Little Billy” Rhodes, who was the Barrister in The Wizard of Oz, which also had Charlie Becker (the cook in this movie) play the mayor, John T. Bambury (Buck’s dad) was a soldier, Joseph Herbst (the sheriff) was a soldier, Nita Krebs (a vampire in this movie!) was one of the Lullaby League, George Ministeri (the blacksmith) was a villager, Fern Formica (Diamond Dolly) was a sleepyhead, William H. O’Docharty (The Old Soak) was a villager and Jerry Maren was a townsperson in both movies. He was also the last surviving cast member of The Wizard of Oz with an identifiable speaking or singing role before dying in 2018.

Many of the actors were former members of the performing troupe The Singer Midgets — I apologize for having to keep using that racially horrible term — which was founded by Leopold Singer. He even created Liliputstadt, a special town at the Venice in Vienna amusement park, where they could perform. Singer provided 124 actors and stand-ins to play Munchkins. While his employees called him Papa, some say he kept half their money. This movie’s star, Billy Singer, said that he “had a reputation for cheating his midgets.”

This is another movie that Harry Medved and Randy Lowell listed in The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way). It also won he P.T. Barnum Award for Worst Cinematic Exploitation of a Physical Deformity in the Medveds’ The Golden Turkey Awards.

As always, they are wrong.

This was written by Clarence Marks and Fred Myton, who wrote over 170 movies, including Nabonga.

You can watch this on Tubi.