The Little Shop of Horrors

1960 black comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Poor clumsy Seymour is about to lose his job at a little shop of flowers owned by Gravis Mushnick. That wouldn't be good because he's got to take care of his mother and Audrey, the woman he loves, works there. In his spare time at home, he is nurturing a flower of his own that he brings into the shop with the hope that Mushnick won't get rid of him. Mushnick's intrigued because a customer who comes in to devour flowers tells him it's intriguing, and Seymour gets a week to see what he can do with the plant. Seymour soon learns that the only way to make the plant, which he names Audrey Junior, grow is to feed it humans. Oh, snap!

This was notoriously shot in just two days. That's evident, but not necessarily in a bad way. The participants look like they're having fun, and the production, although cheap and dirty, has a free and lackadaisical quality that makes it fun for the audience. The central idea is about as weird as it gets, but the dialogue is filled with some really bizarre bits of black, absurdist humor. At times, the dialogue almost seems like something from a Marx Brothers movie. The acting's as bad as you'd expect from actors who are only given a single take, but again, that sort of adds to the fun. Jack Nicholson has a small, and really utterly pointless, role as masochistic dental patient Wilbur Force that's also fun to watch and arguably better than anything he's done in the last ten years. It's not hard to see how somebody could watch this and not think, "Man, this would be really great as a musical!" The movie's also got a nice message although you really feel sorry for Seymour at the end. Another thing I like (and another Marx-ish [not Marxist] touch) are the odd character names: Burson Fouch, Siddie Shiva, Hortense Feutchwanger, Frank Stoolie, Dr. Foebus Farb.