The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

A clumsy young man nurtures a plant and discovers that it's carnivorous, forcing him to kill to feed it.

Director:

Roger Corman

Writer:

Charles B. Griffith (screenplay)

Stars:

Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Jonathan Haze	...	Seymour Krelborn
Jackie Joseph	...	Audrey Fulquard
Mel Welles	...	Gravis Mushnick
Dick Miller	...	Fouch
Myrtle Vail	...	Winifred Krelborn
Karyn Kupcinet	...	Shirley (as Tammy Windsor)
Toby Michaels	...	Shirley's Friend
Leola Wendorff	...	Mrs. Shiva
Lynn Storey	...	Mrs. Hortense Feuchtwanger
Wally Campo	...	Sgt. Joe Fink / Narrator
Jack Warford	...	Detective Frank Stoolie
Meri Welles	...	Leonora Clyde (as Merri Welles)
John Herman Shaner	...	Dr. Phoebus Farb (as John Shaner)
Jack Nicholson	...	Wilbur Force
Dodie Drake	...	Waitress

Storyline

When clumsy Seymour Krelborn spoils two of a client's flowers, his boss Gravis Mushnick is ready to fire him from his flower shop until Seymour says he has mixed two different breeds of plant at home to create the "Audrey Jr." hybrid. Mushnick agrees to give Seymour another chance, and the next day Seymour brings in Audrey Jr., which becomes Mushnick's pride and joy and draws interest from his other employee Audrey Fulquard and more and more of their clients. Suddenly the plant ails, and Seymour accidentally learns that she likes blood. Upset because he doesn't know how to feed her, he walks along the railroad track and throws a stone that accidentally hits the head of a man who falls on the track and a train runs over him. Seymour takes pieces of the body back to the shop and discovers that the plant likes human flesh. The next morning, Audrey Jr. has grown and become the attraction of the shop. But how will Seymour feed his plant again?

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Plot Keywords:

black comedy | man eating plant | hit by a train | eaten alive | giant plant | 

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Taglines:

The flowers that kill in the Spring TRA-LA

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Genres:

Comedy | Horror

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

5 August 1960 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Passionate People Eater

Filming Locations:

Bunker Hill, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$27,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Roger Corman Productions, Santa Clara Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

72 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Charles B. Griffith put several of his relatives in the film; Myrtle Vail, "Grandmother" Myrt, for example, is actually his grandmother, and the hobo who Dr. Farb tortures in his office is Griffith's father. He also placed several of his relatives in crowd scenes. The bums in the background of the street shots on Skid Row are real transients, however, and were filmed in the actual skid row area of Los Angeles, California.

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Goofs

Frank walks into Detective Fink's office, sits down and lights a cigarette. The cigarette remains in his mouth until a close-up shot, where it is missing. When the wide shot is resumed, the cigarette is back again.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Sgt. Joe Fink: [voiceover over a panning shot of a drawing of a sleazy neighbourhood] My name is Sergeant Joe Fink, working the 24-hour shift out of homicide. And this is my workshop. The part of town that everybody knows about, but that nobody wants to see - where the tragedies are deeper, the ecstasy's wilder and the crime rate consistently higher than anywhere else. Skid Row... my beat.

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Alternate Versions

The Slingshot DVD is a fabricated 3D version of the film that is viewable in razor3D system. This is of course just an artificial 3D gimmick as the film was shot in standard flat format and not in 3D

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Connections

Featured in Cinemassacre's Monster Madness: Little Shop of Horrors (2015)

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Soundtracks

Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes
(1616) (uncredited)
Music by R. Melish (1780 ?)
Lyrics by Ben Jonson (in poem To Celia) (1616)
Sung a cappella by Myrtle Vail

User Reviews

Still Unique Even After 45 Years

Here's a movie that's gone from cult classic to just plain classic. For me, it's one of the few "cult classics" I saw when it was released and then first shown on television. I loved it then, and I love it now.

Forget the musical re-make made in the 1980s. It couldn't hold a candle to the original.

"Original" is what this is, too. and nowadays, it's great to have it on DVD in which the audio is clear and the picture pretty sharp.

I have always particularly enjoyed the many humorous lines delivered by Mel Welles, who plays the flower shop owner. He is the real comedian of the cast, although the plant does quite well as do the two leads played by Jonathan Haze and Jackie Joseph. The latter two are a little more subtle in their comedy.

All the characters in here are totally whacked, from Haze's hypochondriac mother to Dick Miller's flower-eating character to the Jewish mother who always has a dead relative to moan about and to the dentist and his patient. The latter, of course, is Jack Nicholson, making his movie debut and looking about 16 years old.

In the end, though, what one remembers most is the plant demanding, over and over, to "Feeeeeed me!!"

For that, the plant and the film never fail to make me laugh.