The Little Shop of Horrors [PG]

Downtown in the poor and dishevelled neighbourhood of Skidrow, Mushnick’s little flower shop thrives. That is until one of his employees, sweet and clumsy Seymour, manages to attract further business with a new plant that he’s been growing. At first the plant is sickly, but then Seymour manages to coax it to grow with a few drops of his blood. Soon it’s growing at a rapid rate and demanding human flesh for sustenance. After one accidental murder, Seymour is soon in too deep and it’s only a matter of time before his success story comes to an end: either in jail or in the plant’s ever-hungry trap! 

I bet there are heaps of people out there who didn’t know this was a movie first. Certainly I didn’t. We all know the story from the offbeat Broadway musical, which was made into a remake starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene in 1986, but the original Little Shop of Horrors proves to be much different from its musical reincarnation with Seymour physically being responsible for many of the murders as well as an entirely different ending that brings the story’s horror element to a paramount head. 

Downtown in the poor and dishevelled neighbourhood of Skidrow, Mushnick’s little flower shop thrives. That is until one of his employees, sweet and clumsy Seymour, manages to attract further business with a new plant that he’s been growing. At first the plant is sickly, but then Seymour manages to coax it to grow with a few drops of his blood. Soon it’s growing at a rapid rate and demanding human flesh for sustenance. After one accidental murder, Seymour is soon in too deep and it’s only a matter of time before his success story comes to an end: either in jail or in the plant’s ever-hungry trap! 

A classic B-grade horror movie, made with an overdone sincerity that you cannot help but laugh at it, The Little Shop of Horrors still manages to deliver a few dark and creepy surprises. As I said before, the story is really very different from the musical that we’ve come to know and love, and there are more conventions of the horror genre at play here causing it to tread that fine tightrope of horror/comedy. 

Everything in this movie is overdone, but in a way that both repels and captivates. The music is very in-your-face, or rather, in-your-ears and the characters are each so incredibly eccentric it’s hard to know who to look to for moment of clarity. Amongst the more memorable characters are a guy who buys flowers to eat them (salted and everything), a woman suffering from the loss of a family member every day, Seymour’s mother who glamorises disease and ill-health, and a dental patient who is titillated and stimulated by the experience of pain (Jack Nicholson creepily plays this role and Bill Murray did the role in the remake). 

Starring Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Dick Miller, Myrtle Vail, Tammy Windsor, Toby Michaels, Leola Wendorff, Lynn Storey, Wally Campo, Jack Warford, Meri Welles, John Herman Shaner, and Jack Nicholson, The Little Shop of Horrors is a strange but nonetheless creepy little cult movie that’s filled with murder, drama, romance, comedy, and horror. It’s not a movie for everyone because it is quite cult and weird, which is probably why I found it so entertaining, but if you like the musical or the remake, then it’s worth having a look at.