Little Shop of Horrors
A nice melodrama with some music tying it up. It’s an effects driven showcase for Audrey II, and it’s a doozy. Taking a quarter from the register and making the phone call is absolutely brilliant. That and the comedic cameos. Worth it for those alone.
Nerdy orphan Seymour is living the bad life on Skid Row, working a dead end job. He sweeps floors for Mister Mushnik, but business is bad, they don’t sell a single flower all day. The other employee is not in a great spot either: she is dating some sadistic dentist, and gets beaten up frequently.
They are both secretly in love with each other, but won’t act on it, they don’t think they are good enough for one another. She’s a former floozy that doesn’t think she deserves a nice guy that treats her well, and he thinks she won’t give him the time of day. The boss is worried about the lack of customers, he’s always kvetching.
Suddenly, during an eclipse, a plant from outer space presents itself to our protagonist, but he still pays two bucks for it. It’s a kind of chunky flytrap, with a penchant for fresh blood. It’s not a vampire, it’s closer to a Jinn, it can grant wishes to our nerd protagonist. Money, fame, girls (which he doesn’t want), or a particular girl, Audrey (which he would murder for).
The dentist is truly nasty, our protagonist rubbed the magic lamp, so he will need to murder the dentist, so said the devil’s lettuce talking to him in this raspy Motown voice. He can’t really bring himself to murder, the dentist gets high on nitrous oxide and dies by himself. Our protagonist helps the plant by chopping him up into smaller digestible pieces.
Murder by negligence followed by hacking a body to pieces is still nasty, but the plant comes through: our protagonist gets on the radio, he appears on the cover of Time magazine, and Audrey talks to him now.
The boss saw him dismembering a corpse, but he is eaten by the plant, that’s another problem solved. As for poor Audrey, she goes as far as planning marriage, but at what cost: spreading the plant all across America. Our protagonist takes care of it by shocking means, and they get their wish: a white picket fence, grass, children.
The cast is great, but what I really want to know is whether Vincent Gardenia and Ethel Green were chosen based on their punny names. He’s the guy from franchise:DeathWish!
The credits mention this is based in some off-Broadway play in turn based in a Roger Corman film. Is this the film of the play of the film? Sounds like Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.
I’m pretty sure Serleena from Men in Black II is based on Audrey II, at least the plant form. They did not kept the raspy voice, though.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.