This rarely screened film declares that it has a social purpose: to show how "a special group of people...have difficulty adjusting to a normal world." Director William Castle once declared that the "only god is gimmick," and It's a Small World has its gimmick, a midget, Harry Musk (played by Paul Dale). The story follows Harry from a childhood filled with beastly playmates, around a home life tempered by equal measures of love and guilt, and into an adult world of mockery and abuse. Eventually, Harry is seduced into a life of crime: dressed as a child he makes the perfect pickpocket. Despite its social conscience, Castle's film succeeds in infantilizing its protagonist. When the adult Paul Dale isn't busy portraying his childhood character, he is impersonating the adult as an adolescent, clothed in shorts and beanie. Not an advocate of attitudinal reforms, this film suggests that Harry can only be happy among his own kind, where it's a small world after all.-Steve Seid