The Little Shop of Horrors is one of Roger Corman‘s most beloved films, and understandably so. Shot in just two days, written in a coffee house with, according to Corman, a pre-fame Sally Kellerman acting as adjudicator as Corman and scriptwriter Charles B. Griffith traded gags and absurd situations, it’s a film that really had everything stacked against it. And yet it turned out to be a very funny follow up to the very similar A Bucket of Blood (1959) and has enjoyed one of the most robust afterlives of any of Corman‘s films.
Tongues are firmly in cheeks right from the very start as the film begins with a hardboiled narration spoofing the seriousness of the then recently ended but still hugely popular television cop show Dragnet (1954-1959). The action takes place mostly around the skid row flower shop owned by Gravis Mushnick (Mel Welles) where he employs the ditzy but enthusiastic Audrey Fulquard (Jackie Joseph) and the downtrodden but kind-hearted Seymour Krelborn (Jonathan Haze). Eccentric customers abound – Burson Fouch (Dick Miller) buys flowers to eat, Mrs Siddie Shiva (Leola Wendorff) needs a steady supply of tributes for the many relatives that die on her and Mrs Hortense Feuchtwanger (Lynn Storey) arrives representing the Society of Silent Flower Observers of Southern California. One regular customer is the dentist Dr Phoebus Farb (John Shaner) and when Seymour messes up an order, Mushnick fires him but he returns with a sickly plant that he claims he grew from seeds he got from a “Japanese gardener over on Central Avenue.” Seymour has named the plant Audrey Jr and it’s interesting enough for Mushnick to reinstate him.
To his horror, Seymour realises that the plant needs blood to thrive and fed on his own plasma, Audrey Jr grows into a healthy specimen that attracts many curious punters to Mushnick’s shop. Audrey Jr also talks (that’s screenwriter Griffith as Audrey Jr’s demanding voice – he turns up on camera later as a would-be burglar) and coerces Seymour into bringing him more blood, eventually leading the hapless shop assistant to murder in order to satisfy Audrey Jr’s voracious appetite.
Written as The Passionate People Eater, The Little Shop of Horrors is a very silly film and so much fun that it’s easy to overlook its many shortcomings. It’s as threadbare as any other non-Poe derived Corman film of the era and his direction is almost the epitome of “minimal” – he simply sets his camera running and lets the cast get on with it, showing little real flair. It’s often like watching a run through the stage production that it would eventually be turned into.
But it scarcely matters as the film is packed to the rafters with a marvellous cast of eccentric characters, beautifully played by an enthusiastic cast, from Welles‘ malapropism spouting shopkeeper to Dick Miller‘s customer who buys plants to eat, snacking of flower heads while he waits to be served, from Myrtle Vail‘s eccentric mother to the unforgettable Jack Nicholson turn as a masochistic dental patient. Mushnick (“the bloom tycoon”) and his mangling of the English language (“it’s a finger of speech”) are a hoot and there are many zippy one-liners and witty asides to enjoy – when Seymour returns home to his ailing mother, a radio announcer is heard telling listeners that “This is Radio KSIK. You’ve been listening to Music for Old Invalids. Our next selection is entitled, Sickroom Serenade.”
The Little Shop of Horrors is located in a strange world of talking plants and flower obsessions of all kinds – everyone in the film needs more and more flowers as the story goes along, some to eat, some for simple decorations, others for the ridiculous number of relatives that die. It’s a world where terribly earnest flatfoots like Wally Campo‘s Joe Fink (a tip of the hat to Dragnet‘s Joe Friday) live and work alongside some of the silliest characters ever to grace a 50s “monster” movie and a demonstrative talking plant – origins unknown and really, who cares? – that develops a taste for human blood.
The ending feels a little rushed – though the final shots are fantastic – but that’s a tiny complaint to make about a film that turned out far better than it had any right to. Corman may have been reluctant to have taken on the film, given that A Bucket of Blood hadn’t performed as well at the box office as he’d hoped, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions of his career. He faced problems in getting it released (many distributors feared that the Mushnick and Siddie Shiva characters might be construed as anti-Semitic (Welles, who was Jewish, denied that his characterisation was intended to defame or offend) but amazingly turned up, out of competition, at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Eventually American International Pictures picked it up, releasing it first on a double bill with Mario Bava’s La maschera del demonio/Black Sunday/The Mask of Satan (1960) and later with Corman‘s own Last Woman on Earth (1960).
The Little Shop of Horrors may have been a very modest production but its influence has been impressive. A cult following steadily accrued around the film as it was shown many times on American television during the 1960s and 70s and it was shamelessly ripped off by Carl Monson’s Please Don’t Eat My Mother! in 1973. In the early 1980s Alan Menken wrote the music and Howard Ashman the lyrics for a hit stage musical that began life Off-Off-Broadway in 1982 before moving to the Orpheum Theatre Off-Broadway, and eventually to Broadway itself in 2003. The stage production was adapted into a film directed by Frank Oz in 1986 with Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia and Steve Martin taking the main roles. A short-lived (13 episodes) animated television series aimed at children and titled simply Little Shop ran on Fox Kids from September to November 1991 and in 2009, Declan O’Brien announced that he was going to remake the original film though nothing came of it and a further attempt at a remake was announced 2016, to be directed by Greg Berlanti.
Crew
Directed by: Roger Corman; © [not given on screen]; Allied Artists Television Corp [uncredited], Filmgroup [uncredited], Santa Clara Productions [uncredited]; Produced by: Roger Corman; Screenplay by: Charles B. Griffith; Photographer: Archie Dalzell; Film Editor: Marshall Neilan Jr; Music by: Fred Katz; Makeup: Harry Thomas; Art Director: Daniel Haller
Cast
Jonathan Haze (Seymour [Kreilboind]); Jackie Joseph (Audrey [Fulquard]); Mel Welles ([Gravis] Mushnik); Dick Miller ([Burson] Fouch); Myrtle Vail (Winifred [Kreilboind]); Tammy Windsor [teenage girl]; Toby Michaels [teenage girl]; Leola Wendorff (Mrs [Siddie] Shiva); Lynn Storey [Mrs Hortense Feuchtwanger]; Wally Campo [Detective Sergeant Joe Fink/narrator]; Jack Warford [Detective Frank Stoolie]; Merri Welles [Leonora Clyde]; John Shaner [Dr Phoebus]; Jack Nicholson [Wilbur Force]; Dodie Drake [waitress]; Bobbie Coogan [tramp – uncredited]; Charles B. Griffith [Kloy/drunk at dentist/screaming patient/voice of Audrey Junior – uncredited]; Jack Griffith [drunk – uncredited]
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