Little Shop of Horrors (Musical) (1986)
Little Shop of Horrors is the 1986 musical film adaptation of the off-Broadway musical comedy of the same name by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a nerdy florist shop worker who raises a vicious plant that feeds on human blood. Menken and Ashman’s off-Broadway musical was based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman.
The film was directed by Frank Oz, and stars Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and the voice of Levi Stubbs as the plant. Ashman wrote the film’s screenplay, his first and only one before his death in 1991.
Little Shop of Horrors was shot on the Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage at the Pinewood Studios in England, where a “downtown” set, complete with overhead train track, was constructed. The film was produced on a budget of US$30 million, in contrast to the original 1960 film, which, according to Roger Corman, only cost $30,000.[1] The film’s original 23-minute ending, based on the musical’s ending, was rewritten and reshot after receiving negative reviews from test audiences and has never been seen since besides black-and-white workprint footage.
Directed by Frank Oz
Produced by David Geffen
Written by Howard Ashman
Narrated by Stanley Jones
Starring Rick Moranis
Ellen Greene
Vincent Gardenia
Steve Martin
and Levi Stubbs
as the voice of Audrey II
Music by Miles Goodman
Alan Menken
Howard Ashman
Cinematography Robert Paynter
Editing by John Jympson
Studio The Geffen Company
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date(s) December 19, 1986
Running time 93 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $30,000,000
Gross revenue $38,747,385
The original ending
The film’s 23-minute original ending, based on the off-Broadway musical’s ending, was rewritten and reshot after receiving negative reviews from test audiences. The new ending, written by Ashman, changes the fates of the film’s main characters and allows for a (basically) happy ending. The film’s rarely seen original ending was the preferred choice by Oz and the majority of the actors, including Moranis.
As originally conceived and filmed, the story follows the stage musical’s plot: Audrey is attacked by Audrey II and dies in Seymour’s arms, begging him to feed her to the plant so that Seymour will get all the fame he deserves. Seymour does so, and in the process ironically fulfills Audrey’s great wish, that she be “somewhere that’s green”. After Seymour feeds Audrey to the plant, he attempts to commit suicide by jumping off Audrey’s apartment complex. Before he can, Patrick Martin (played in this version by Paul Dooley) climbs to the roof to persuade Seymour to let him cut samples of the plant so that they can grow into little Audrey IIs and be sold across America. Seymour quickly slides down the ladder and crosses the street to Mushnik’s while Martin reminds him that plants are in the public domain and can be sold without his permission. After confronting the plant as it sings “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space”, the plant tears down the shop, plucks Seymour out of the rubble and eats him. It then spits out his glasses, and laughs evilly as the scene fades to black.
The three chorus girls appear in front of a sparkling American flag (a pastiche of the opening scene of Patton) and narrate how Audrey II becomes a consumer craze like Pet Rocks. People are shown fighting over miniature potted Audrey IIs in an A&P. But soon, Audrey II (along with its army of duplicates) takes over Cleveland, Des Moines, Peoria, and New York City, as the song “Don’t Feed the Plants” warns the audience not to give in to evil temptations.[3] In the dramatic finale, Audrey II takes over New York City, attacks the Brooklyn Bridge, fights the U.S. Army, climbs the Statue of Liberty and, in homage to the 1933 classic monster movie King Kong, scales the Empire State Building. There are also various nods to the 1953 film The War of the Worlds. Finally, in the last shot after the title “THE END?!?” has appeared, the plant crashes through the screen of the film and laughs as the camera (the audience) comes closer and closer to its gaping maw.
A special effects team skilled in working with miniatures, led by Richard Conway, went to great lengths to create the finale. The sequence cost $5 million to produce. However, preview audiences rejected this ending as too disturbing.[3] Afterwards, director Oz commented: “In a stage play, you kill the leads and they come out for a bow — in a movie, they don’t come out for a bow, they’re dead. And the audience loved those people, and they hated us for it.”[4] In the final cut, the only miniatures shot by Richard Conway are the New York City streets passing behind Steve Martin’s motorcycle ride at the beginning of “Dentist!”
Oz and Ashman scrapped Audrey’s and Seymour’s grim deaths and the finale rampage, and Ashman rewrote a happier ending, with Jim Belushi replacing Paul Dooley (who was unavailable) as Patrick Martin. In the happy ending, Audrey II is killed and Seymour, Audrey and humanity survive. The musical number “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space” was left intact from the original cut, but shots of Audrey observing from a window were added in. This happy ending is somewhat ambiguous, however, with a final shot of a smiling Audrey II bud in Seymour and Audrey’s front yard. Tisha Campbell was unavailable for the final appearance of the chorus girls in the yard and was replaced with a lookalike seen only from the waist down.[5] A brief scene earlier in the film, in which Seymour asks Audrey to marry him, was also reshot to provide context for the new ending.
Another cut sequence is seen on the blooper reel on the DVD, in which Seymour is seen running through fog and in the background are white pillars under a black sky. Director Frank Oz, who provided a commentary on the reel, says this was a “dream sequence” that never made the final cut of the film. It is taken from the deleted section of “The Meek Shall Inherit”, in which Seymour agonizes over the murders he has committed to feed the plant. Stills from this sequence reproduced in the Little Shop of Horrors photo novel by Robert and Louise Egan show Audrey running through dry-ice fog towards Seymour, only to bypass him and embrace Audrey II (the “Suppertime” sized plant). Another still shows Seymour confronting a giant framed portrait of Mr. Mushnik, and yet another shows Seymour engulfed in vines as if turning into a plant. This sequence was cut, but it appears on the soundtrack album. These scenes are available within the special features section of the DVD.
Creepy Shack 