About The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
The story behind the film
Roger Corman was famous for making films fast and cheap, and The Little Shop of Horrors may be his most famous example. Working from a screenplay by his regular collaborator Charles B. Griffith, Corman shot the film on a budget of about $28,000, with the interiors completed in just two days on sets left standing from his previous film, A Bucket of Blood. Its working title was The Passionate People Eater.
The story is a pitch-black comic farce. Seymour Krelboined, a hopelessly clumsy assistant at Gravis Mushnick's failing flower shop on Skid Row, grows a strange new plant from seeds and names it "Audrey Jr." after his co-worker and crush, Audrey. The plant draws curious customers and saves the shop — but it turns out to need human blood to grow, and it soon starts demanding more. "Feed me!"
Cast & crew
- Directed and produced by Roger Corman; written by Charles B. Griffith
- Jonathan Haze as Seymour Krelboined
- Jackie Joseph as Audrey Fulquard
- Mel Welles as Gravis Mushnick
- Dick Miller as Burson Fouch, the customer who eats flowers
- Myrtle Vail as Winifred, Seymour's hypochondriac mother
- Jack Nicholson as Wilbur Force, a dental patient who enjoys pain
- Charles B. Griffith as the voice of Audrey Jr.
Why it's worth watching
This is a cult comedy in the truest sense: rough around the edges, but packed with oddball characters and quick, absurd jokes. Mushnick's frantic, Yiddish-inflected complaints, Seymour's mother's endless ailments, two deadpan police detectives parodying Dragnet, and a carnivorous plant that politely says "Feed me" make it unlike anything else from the period.
It is also a chance to see a very young Jack Nicholson, years before stardom, in a short and hilarious scene as a masochistic patient who can't wait for his dentist appointment.
Fun facts
- The film was initially released by Corman's Filmgroup as a double feature with Last Woman on Earth, and later paired with Mario Bava's Black Sunday, which helped it find an audience.
- It became a staple of late-night local television, which built its cult following.
- It inspired the Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors (1982) by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, which was filmed in 1986 with Rick Moranis — a much bigger production with a much bigger plant.
Public-domain status
The Little Shop of Horrors is listed among US public-domain films because its copyright was not renewed. The later stage musical and the 1986 film are separate works that are still under copyright and are not shown here. See "Rights & source" below.