Careful readers of this blog (not that there are many) will note that I didn't do a post last week on the new TCM Star of the Month for September 2025. That's because, for whatever, reason, this month's Star gets four nights in prime time but TCM didn't want to program that on Wednesday or Thursday. So we finally get to the new Star of the Month tonight. That star is Peter Sellers, whose films will be on TCM tonight and each of the following three Mondays. I have one of his movies sitting on my DVR: Tom Thumb, which shows up overnight tonight (or early tomorrow morning depending upon your point of view) at 3:15 AM.
Technically, this isn't Sellers' movie, as he plays a supporting role, in the opening credits as one of "the villains" alongside Terry-Thomas. The real star here is Russ Tamblyn, who plays the titular role of the extremely tiny person. But we don't meet him for several minutes. Instead we meet forest dweller Jonathan (Bernard Miles), who lives a seemingly happy life out in the forest with his wife Anne, except for the fact they don't have children. One day as Jonathan is about to chop down a tree, he's stopped by the Forest Queen, who offers him three wishes in exchange for not chopping down the tree. Jonathan and his wife stupidly use up those wishes but granted a fourth, which is for the child they never had. That's where Tom comes in, mature but not grown up, or at least as grown up as he's going to be, with all of this being a perfect opportunity for special effects work, since the movie ws directed by George Pal.
Meanwhile, Woody (Alan Young) is a friend of Jonathan and Anne's as well as a performer in a traveling band. Jonathan sees the Forest Queen and falls in love with her, except that she's immortal. Or at least she is until Woody kisses her, which as you might guess is finally going to come at the beginning of the movie. Woody takes Tom to the carnival, and Tom gets transported by balloon to the top of one of the castle's towers.
On that tower are the Villains, Antony (Sellers) and Ivan (Terry-Thomas). They're trying to steal the gold that's in a locked vault in the treasury in the castle. Except that somehow, the vault has a ridiculously high ceiling with a grate at the top which just happens to be on the tower where Antony and Ivan are. They come up with an obvious lie that the naïve Tom accepts about the gold being misused as it was supposed to be for orphans. So they get him to help them steal one bag, since he's the only human who can fit through the grate. The folks in the castle do inventory and find one bag of gold coins missing, so they go out looking for it. When the one coin Ivan and Antony gave Tom is found in a bowl of porridge, Jonathan and Anne are put on trial for the theft. It's up to Tom and Woody to save the day and give us the requisite happy ending.
We know we're going to get that happy ending because for the most part the movie has had a light tone. That, and it's Hollywood. So even though it's based on a fairy tale compiled by the Grimm brothers, and many of the tales they compiled were surprisingly dark and violent, we're not getting that. What we do get is a movie that, even close to 70 years on, is going to appeal to children. They won't mind the special effects that seem primitive by today's standards, or the backlot production values. That doesn't mean that it's a bad movie or that adults will be bored by it, although it is a fairly simple story with not much going on and a running time padded by musical numbers and stop-motion photography.
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