31 Days of Horror: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Directed by Roger Corman.

1960. Not rated, 72 minutes.

Cast: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Dick Miller, Myrtle Vaile, Karyn Kupcinet, Jack Nicholson, Toby Michaels, Charles B. Griffith.

I absolutely love 1986's Little Shop of Horrors. If you've been following The 100 Project, you might remember that I rank it as my #2 movie of that year. I fell in love with it when I first saw it, back in '86 or '87, I can't quite recall. What's unusual about that is it goes against everything I stood for at fifteen years old. I was all about action, horror, and raunchy comedy. I was also into the occasional coming of age story which explains two other movies I love from 1986, Stand By Me and Ferris Beuller's Day Off. Given my general disdain for musicals, my love for this one is inexplicable. Yet, I can't help myself. The songs, the humor, the camp, it all works for me. Rick Moranis and Audrey II have electrifying chemistry. And just about all of it is indelible. For the longest time, I thought this to be the only one. Such perfection had to be an original concoction, right?

Time went by and I learned more and more about cinematic history. B-movies became one of those pockets that fascinated me more than most others. One of the things about them that revealed itself to me was the fact that Roger Corman directed the original The Little Shop of Horrors way back in 1960. And it isn't a musical. And it stars Jack Nicholson. Sort of. I also found out the 1986 film is what I call a secondhand remake. It's more directly a remake of the 1982 stage musical of the same name. That musical was based on the 1960 movie. I had to see the 1960 movie. And here we are.

If you've seen the '86 version, the story is familiar. Socially awkward Seymour (Haze) works at a struggling flower shop with his boss Mr. Mushnick (Welles) and the girl of his dreams, Audrey (Joseph), whom he has no idea how to woo. After some mistakes are made, Seymour gets hold of some special seeds which yield an odd looking flower he names Audrey Jr. (Griffith) and thinks might lure in some extra business. In short order, the plant starts to die because he can't figure out what to feed it. Mr. Mushnick tells him he's got a week to revive it or get rid of it. Seymour accidentally discovers that the plant craves human blood, and the story progresses from there.

Roger Corman's typical rules of guerilla filmmaking apply, starting with the shoestring budget. The principal cast shot everything over a weekend on sets leftover from his last movie. Interior and exterior shots of other places took a couple more weekends. The rest of the work was done in editing and there's your film. Despite this, or maybe because of it, The Little Shop of Horrors exudes an easy charm, even as things get grisly (for a 1960 movie). The performances are all good. None are great, including Nicholson's, but everyone seems to know this is pure B-movie shlock and has fun with it. In case you were wondering Nicholson eventually shows up as the dentist's patient who enjoys pain, or the role Bill Murray played in the '86 version. Nicholson is having a blast with it, and so do we. 

Occasionally, the movie suffers from identity crisis. It's mostly a horror comedy, but lapses into a noirish police procedural from time to time. It's not too bad at it, but doesn't always make the switch smoothly, either. At it's very best, the film uses the camera as a proxy for what Audrey Jr. is seeing at the flower shop. These are POV shots that let us see things from its perspective. As the film goes on, and Audrey grows, the angle of them becomes more pronounced. Eventually, it's pretty obvious the camera is sitting right where the wall meets the ceiling, and its glorious. 

Finally, the film comes up with an ending that I could see patrons of the day being appalled by. They might possibly have been grossed out by the implications. Through 2020 eyes it looks cheesy, maybe even laughable. However, what they're going for is still on the unsettling side. It's nothing that will cause head-scratching trauma, but it may stick with you a bit longer than you were anticipating with it being largely a comedy. Speaking of comedy, the jokes are hit-and-miss. The good thing is that there's enough of them for us not to mind. The ones that work were mostly carried over to the '86 film. The ones that don't aren't so terrible that they turn us off. In all, it's a fun time that barely stretches beyond an hour. It won't replace my beloved '86 version, but I will definitely return to it.

Eventually, I just plain bumped into a DVD copy of this version of The Little Shop of Horrors at a thrift shop for fifty cents so I grabbed it. Before that, however, I was checking around to see if it were streaming somewhere. It was, However, the film that really caught my eye was this one...

Please Don't Eat My Mother!

Directed by Carl Monson.

1973. Not rated, 98 minutes.

Cast: Buck Kartalian, Lynn Lundgren, Art Hedberg, Alice Friedland, Adam Blair, Flora Wiesel, Ric Lutze, Rene Bond.

At exactly the halfway point between the release of Corman's film in 1960 and Frank Oz's in 1986 came this forgotten spoof of the original. The aesthetic of the story is the same, if not the setting. That changes, mostly to the bedroom of our main character, Henry (Kartalian), and the area surrounding his house. Henry is a middle-aged man living at home with his mom and is still a virgin. He's also a world-class voyeur who watches others have sex whenever he can. This is actually pretty easy because the same couple is always doing it in plain sight somewhere in Henry's vicinity. While out and about he decides to buy a flower from a shady florist. Pretty soon, he realizes the flower is carnivorous. When frogs, dogs, and cats are no longer enough, Henry naturally graduates to feeding it people.

This is one strange, little movie. The premise of the original is odd enough, but this is somehow much weirder. Of course, it's main purpose is to show as much skin as possible which is why we often visit with the couple that just can't keep their hands to themselves. And yes, every time we see them they're getting it on. The surprise I wasn't ready for was that, on a couple occasions, it gets real close to being hardcore porn. By close, I mean if they had changed the camera angle a bit we'd see the whole train going into the tunnel. As it stands, we can still see the last car in motion. Aside from that, the writing is crap so most jokes are flat as a soda that's been opened, but has been hanging out in your fridge all week. A few land, but only a few. As far as fx go, this looks like it came out thirteen years before Corman's movie, not after it. Take a look at the plant in the pic above. It gets bigger, but it doesn't get better. If you're completionist who just has to see everything related to the original, go for it. Otherwise, this isn't something you need to see. Ever.