The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Start listing nominees for the title of "the king of B-movies," and Roger Corman's name will have to be near the top. He's been involved with hundreds of movies during his lengthy career, whether it be as a writer, producer, or director. He's also been credited with helping launch the careers of numerous A-list actors and directors. But as a filmmaker, one of his most well-known movies was his 1960 monster movie The Little Shop of Horrors. It's been overshadowed by the musical it inspired over the last few decades, and really, maybe that's for the best.

Our story takes us to Skid Row in Los Angeles, where Gravis Mushnick (Mel Welles) runs a flower shop. The shop doesn't get much business, but his two employees — Seymour Krelboin (Jonathan Haze) and Audrey Fulquard (Jackie Joseph) — enjoy it there. Unfortunately, Seymour is fired after messing up one too many arrangements.

Desperate to keep his job, Seymour reveals to Mr. Mushnick that he has developed his own plant, crossbred from a butterwort and a Venus Flytrap. Though the plant, which Seymour has named "Audrey Jr.," looks sickly at first, Mr. Mushnick is intrigued by its uniqueness and gives Seymour one week to have it ready to be display it in the store.

But as the days start to pass, Seymour is disheartened to find that Audrey Jr. is unresponsive to plant food. It isn't until he pricks his finger on a thorn that he realizes Audrey Jr. craves blood. He begins a nightly routine of feeding the plant blood from his fingertips, as people flock from all around to see it.

But Audrey Jr. starts growing at an alarming rate, even developing the ability to speak (as voiced by Charles B. Griffith). Audrey Jr. demands more blood, but Seymour has become anemic from his constant bloodletting. Faced with little other recourse, Seymour begins feeding it dead bodies for sustenance.

The Little Shop of Horrors is typical '60s Roger Corman. Shot over two days and a night with recycled sets and a budget of 30,000 dollars, the movie is about as cheaply made as you could expect. It's got a wealth of cheesy acting and hackneyed writing, lame sets and lamer special effects. But it's got a weird charm to it that makes likable in a bizarre way, even if the movie isn't really all that good. I don't know what makes it that way, but I'll try to find out through this review.

Corman sits at the helm of this little picture, and the way he makes the movie, you can see why someone would try adapting it for the stage. The movie is made in such a way that it feels like Corman simply filmed the actors performing a play. The simple cinematography and cheap sets and props really give it that feeling too.

And in watching the movie, I started noticing scenes would just prattle on for several minutes at a time with little to no satisfactory payoff. Take Jack Nicholson's scene, for example. It doesn't have anything to do with any other part of the movie, other than extending the running time. Actually, more than a few scenes feel like useless padding. The movie's only 72 minutes long, and if you removed all the padding and useless scenes, you could probably whittle it down to an hour. Maybe even 45 minutes if you're feeling brave.

But let's move along to the script, written by Charles B. Griffith. The movie is promoted as a black comedy and actually features precious little of the titular "horrors." But unfortunately, I just didn't think the movie was all that funny. It just didn't do anything for me. I mean, did it really need that recurring Dragnet parody? Did that Jack Nicholson scene need to drag on for so long if it had to be in the movie at all? Were all the scenes with Seymour's hypochondriac mother and the stupid "who's on first?" routines absolutely essential to the movie? My argument is no on all counts. If I may summarize, Griffith's script is lacking in humor, likable characters, and dialogue that goes anywhere.

But let's wrap up this review by continuing onward to the acting. My honest opinion is that pretty much every actor in the movie is either annoying or just plain bad. I really had to struggle to even so much as tolerate the cast. I know I should expect such acting out of a Roger Corman movie, but come on now. I will give credit where credit is due and say I though Mel Welles was amusing enough. But the rest of the cast simply got on my nerves.

I went into The Little Shop of Horrors expecting it to be 72 minutes of dumb fun. It was certainly 72 minutes long and it was certainly dumb, but I'm not entirely sure about the fun part. It wasn't just my kind of movie. That's disappointing too, because I loved the remake. The original Little Shop of Horrors is, sadly, just kinda lame. It's too bad they had to wait two and a half decades before Seymour would feed us a good movie.

Final Rating: **