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Dance of the Dwarfs is the weirdest version of Snow White I’ve ever seen. I can see why it didn’t set the box office on fire this weekend.
I couldn’t do my part, which is a shame. When it comes to charity, I give as much as possible to keep Disney’s Drag Show Hour for Kids subsidiary in the black. I mean, in the positive financial column of color. St. Jude and the March of Dimes can take a hike with their oh so sanctimonious support for maternal health and childhood diseases.
Nevertheless, I was able to spare ninety-three minutes last night when my friend, Chip Mancuso, showed up at the door of my hyperbaric chamber with a screener copy. Let’s look at what this live-action version of Snow White brings to the table. Spoilers will happen…
Stop being so strong and independent!
Dance of the Dwarfs
Dance of the Dwarfs starts strong. They certainly know their audience. Within the first ten minutes, a man gets his face torn off and a topless woman is shown in passing. From there we get our introduction to the main characters.
Peter Fonda (Race with the Devil) plays Prince Charming. In this version, he is a down-on-his-luck helicopter pilot in South America. He lives in the world’s rattiest Huey helicopter, subsists off Cracker Jacks and rum and utters poetic lines like…
“Five hundred bucks doesn’t buy you the right to climb into my pants.”
Gal Gadot plays Deborah Raffin (The Sentinel) as the Evil Queen. She hires Fonda to take her into the jungle to search for a missing scientist, possibly to help her figure out a formula that will determine who is the fairest of all.
Ninety percent of Dance of the Dwarfs is Fonda and Raffin bantering. It is very much a Romancing the Stone-type relationship, although Leonard Maltin prefers to compare it to The African Queen. Fonda and Raffin do display a watchable amount of chemistry. The characters are stock, and that is all they need to be as their dynamic is a timeless classic.
Dancing Queen of the Dwarfs
Gus Trikonis directed Dance of the Dwarfs. He started out on the other side of the camera. He portrayed Indio in the original West Side Story. I know what you’re thinking… male dancer… West Side Story… this guy is Disney material all the way!
But you would be wrong. Disney zigged when it would usually zag in this case. Trikonis was married to Goldie Hawn at one time. Add in the fact that he got to direct a hamming Richard Crenna in The Evil, and that’s a pretty good career.
Dance of the Dwarfs is based on a novel by Geoffrey Household. Household was a British writer of some renown, mostly dabbling in the thriller genre.
The one-two punch of Trikonis and Household keep Dance of the Dwarfs lean and mean when it comes to the narrative. Alas, they don’t mine the concept to its full potential.
Back to the story…Fonda and Raffin are shot at by bandits while flying into the jungle. A bullet hits the Huey’s hydraulic line, and they must make a crash landing. This leads to more bantering as Fonda and Raffin trek through the jungle to a walled field station.
Stop calling me Louis Gossett Jr. I’m Michael Jordan.
Flashdance of the Dwarfs
Fonda and Raffin meet the dwarfs at the field station. Only three dwarfs appear. Most likely, Disney cut the other dwarfs to mitigate some of their cinematic losses of recent years. One scene does contain a brief appearance by a fourth dwarf, however. Fonda has drinks with a lady dwarf at a bar, and it is not weird at all.
Two of the other dwarfs are played by Venchito Galvez and Iliang Vitales. They are a husband/wife duo that man, I mean, person, the field station.
Jon Amos portrays the final dwarf. He wears a cobra around his neck, carries a flask of potent booze and is covered with body paint. He gives exposition about “Duendes.” Maybe that is the South American word for Snow White? I’m not sure. I’m a proud liberal woman, but that kind of language is way too ethnic for me to bother to understand.
At this point, most of the movie is about Fonda trying to get his helicopter repaired. He eventually settles on the idea that Mazzola Cooking Oil will do the trick.
Dirty Dancing of the Dwarfs
At last Rachel Zegler appears as Snow White, and things get…weird. Snow White is a lizard person in this version…and there are multiple Snow Whites. They rise from a swamp and kill people. They try to kill Fonda and Raffin, too, but after a murky chase, Prince Charming and the Evil Queen escape in their Mazzola Cooking Oil-powered helicopter.
Or do they…?
Ultimately, Dance of the Dwarfs is not as bad a Snow White movie as the critics would have you believe. Its low budget doesn’t help, but the bones of a solid movie are here. They could really nail this one with one more remake, methinks.
In fact, Dance of the Dwarfs could almost be viewed as a reboot of The Creature From The Black Lagoon. If one was inclined to revisit the world of the Gillman, this track is certainly one that could be traveled: bantering couple go looking for a missing scientist investigating local legends and run into a race of Gillmen.
Face…off!
Dance of the Dwarfs Encore
Dance of the Dwarfs generally works as a low-budget jungle movie. Fonda and Raffin have enough chemistry to keep things interesting, but the third act is where things go awry. This is a shame because one can see the potential for a rollicking climax exists.
Imagine a bunch of lizard people rising from a spooky, misty swamp at night and then laying siege to a jungle outpost while our heroes desperately try to fight them off.
That could play. Unfortunately, Dance of the Dwarfs doesn’t have the budget or execution to make the most of this kind of scenario. Perhaps the costume limitations of the lizard people contributed to this. One can tell Trikonis is doing his best to hide the shoddy effects.
Dance of the Dwarfs also suffers a bit because Fonda and Raffin are given too much responsibility to carry the day. A half-hearted attempt is made at throwing in a few cannon-fodder victims to keep things spicy, but the attempts are extremely half-hearted.
Nevertheless, I’m glad I didn’t fall for all of the negative publicity and gave this version of Snow White a chance. It’s weird certainly, but we must commend Zegler for telling us that from the beginning…
The post Retro Review: DANCE OF THE DWARFS (1983) appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
