Despite being a Corman fan (something not a lot of people will cop to, and more often than not while watching his movies I ask myself exactly why, but I like the guy), I had never seen this flick up until now. I’ve seen the musical remake, which kinda sucked. I barely even knew anything about the movie, aside from the basic idea of what it was about. Just that it was a cheapie Corman horror flick. The thing that surprised me was that it’s funny. Really, really funny.
Seymour Krelboin is a delivery boy at a small-time flower shop on skid row, run by Gravis Mushnick. He botches one assignment too many, and Gravis is ready to fire him, but flower-munching Burson Fouch (Dick Miller, yay!) convinces Mushnick to take a look at the new plant Seymour claims to be raising before making up his mind to fire the boy.
Mushnick is amazed by the strange looking plant , and allows Seymour to keep his job. Seymour names the plant after Audrey, the shop girl he has a crush on. Audrey Junior begins drawing crowds, and Mushnick’s business takes off. He thinks they’ve made it to easy street, until, returning to the shop late one night, he sees Seymour feeding the quickly-growing plant human body parts. Considering how much money the thing is bringing him, he overlooks Audrey Junior’s murderous appetite until it brings the police down on all their heads. After a lengthy chase through a junkyard that seems to specialize in nothing but truck tires and old sinks, Seymour decides the only honorable thing to do is feed himself to the monstrous vegetable and end the nightmare once and for all.
After having seen the original, the idea that someone saw it and thought, “Hey, let’s make an ironic musical to poke fun at this cheap little movie” kinda pisses me off. In fact, it really pisses me off. I have as much of the MST3K spirit in me as any one of us, but I think you have to understand something before you make fun of it. There’s a difference between lovingly poking something you care for and haughtily making fun of it because you don’t understand it. I love black metal, but have you ever seen any of Immortal’s music videos? I mean… come on. You have to laugh.
But Little Shop of Horrors, aside from its budgetary restrictions, is fantastic. The script is tight as Gene Hoglan’s double-kick bass drumming, and the dialogue is every bit as rapid-fire. Seymour is a lovable dope, and his scenes with his hypochondriac mother are a hoot, but the real gems here are Dick Miller and Mel Welles, Mel especially. Their comedic timing is absolutely impeccable, and either Charles Griffith was a brutally underappreciated comedy genius (possible, but unlikely considering the rest of his filmography, basically all Corman genre stuff, plus the fact that although Seymour says he got the seeds from a Japanese salesman, they spend the rest of the movie talking about what a great botanist he is for creating Audrey Junior), or Mel Welles was one of the best improv actors of his time (also unlikely considering the filmography, you’d think, but his line delivery speaks for itself).
It blows me away, sometimes, thinking about the low-rate, talentless ripoff artists turning out unwatchable shit flick after flick and getting Academy Awards for it, while sheer, unadulterated brilliance wallows and fades into obscurity, or winds up being made fun of by people who think they’re smarter, and quite painfully obviously aren’t.
It still happens. Think about it. Bill Moseley, Bruce Campbell (anyone who thinks he’s a one-trick Ash pony, see Bubba Ho-Tep and tell me that man doesn’t deserve to be in every movie, ever), Jeffrey Combs, the list rolls on. But we’re starting to get ours. Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, two heroes of the genre if ever there were any, are now making some of the highest-grossing movies in history. Horror is starting to make another mainstream comeback after nearly being killed off by Kevin Williamson over a decade ago. Of course, that last is probably cyclical, but no one is going to take Peter Jackson’s Oscars away from him. Fuck you, Jethro Tull, you’re not metal.
Mainstream entertainment has always regarded horror as the bastard child they keep in the basement, all the while stealing ideas and pretending to be original while mocking the source. Fuck that. Fight it. Vote with your dollars, brothers and sisters. Instead of praising big studio remakes of classics, go see original genre flicks whenever they pop up.
Maybe someday Mushnick will learn his lesson, and Seymour will get that promotion and run the shop without having to feed himself to a talking mutant plant.
The Moral of the Story: KILL IT WITH ROUNDUP™!
H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating: 
Remade as: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
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