Dollar Tree Cinema: The Little Shop of Horrors

“The Little Shop of Horrors” (1960)
Starring Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Jack Nicholson
Screenplay by Charles B. Griffith
Directed by Roger Corman
Not rated

It's October, which means it's time to check out some scary movies, or at least movies I can relate in some way to Halloween. It seemed like the perfect time to revisit an even bigger bargain than usual among my Dollar Tree finds, a five-film set of Roger Corman movies.

Released 65 years ago, “The Little Shop of Horrors” might be the only movie in the set I'd actually heard of* before I bought it, although “heard of” is about the extent of my familiarity with it. My only prior experience is the memory of a bunch of commercials for the better-known 1986 musical version. I think these were advertising its availability on Pay-Per-View or some premium channel my family didn't get. Oh, and somewhere along the way, I have to believe Audrey Jr. was in the DNA of a Scholastic book order purchase from my youth, “The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks.”

If you are equally unfamiliar, Audrey Jr. is the name given by bumbling flower shop employee Seymour Krelborn (Haze) to the strange plant he's been growing at home. You and I know this plant is carnivorous, but Seynour is shocked to find it has a taste for blood. He's got to keep it alive, though, in order to save his job at Gravis Mushnick's flower shop on Los Angeles' Skid Row.

Cheering him on is the plant's namesake, Audrey (Joseph), who is inexplicably smitten with Seymour. Mushnick (Welles) is skeptical but eager to make the money a flower-eating customer (Dick Miller) assures him such a unique plant will bring.

Soon, Audrey Jr. is speaking to Seymour (in the voice of screenwriter Griffiths), and its demands and a series of unfortunate events turn the hapless horticulturalist into a borderline serial killer.

I knew this had evolved into a cult classic musical comedy, but I wasn't sure what to expect from the original tonally.

On the one hand, you have goofy jokes like Audrey and other characters routinely misusing words, as when she declares she's so hungry she “could eat a hearse.” Regular flower shop customer Mrs. Shiva (Leola Wendorff) is constantly in need of funeral bouquets.

But the absurdity ratchets up to a whole 'nother level when one police detective asks another how his kids are and he replies, “Lost one yesterday.”

“How'd that happen?”

“Playing with matches.”

“Well, those are the breaks.”

And all that's on top of a talking, meat-eating plant that grows at rate that suggests it's part xenomorph.

Then there's the young Nicholson** in his first movie role as Wilbur Force, a man who goes to the dentist to appreciate the experience without Novocaine. It's a role that makes you wonder why it took nearly 30 years to cast him as the Joker. Perhaps he was too unsettling for the Adam West “Batman?”

But there are also moments where there's genuine darkness under the dark comedy, like Seymour lamenting what the plant's insatiable hunger has driven him to do.

“The Little Shop of Horrors” is not so much a blending of comedy and horror but throwing disparate concepts, moods and moments together. It doesn't make for a seamless or great movie, but it is interesting to watch.

There's no rating on this one, but with the exception of the second feeding of Audrey Jr., most of the gruesomeness is implied rather than shown.

* - Honestly not sure about “Dementia 13.”

** - The majority of the pictures on the movie's IMDb page are of Nicholson in the movie or on subsequent DVD cover's for it.