Little Shop of Horrors

what the film does

seymour krelborn (rick moranis) is a nerdy orphan working at mushnik’s flower shop on skid row, new york. he has a crush on his coworker audrey (ellen greene), who is dating a sadistic dentist named orin scrivello (steve martin). business is dying until seymour displays an unusual plant he found during a solar eclipse. he names it audrey ii. the plant brings in customers but starts to wither, and seymour discovers it needs human blood to thrive.

audrey ii grows rapidly and starts talking, with the voice of levi stubbs. the plant demands more blood than seymour can give and suggests murder. when seymour witnesses orin abusing audrey, he decides to act. he goes to orin’s dental office but cannot bring himself to shoot him. orin, high on nitrous oxide, accidentally asphyxiates himself after breaking the valve on his gas mask. seymour feeds orin’s body to the plant.

mr. mushnik (vincent gardenia) witnesses the disposal and confronts seymour, but audrey ii eats him too. seymour and audrey admit their feelings for each other and plan to marry and leave skid row. but while seymour is out, the plant telephones audrey, lures her to the shop, and attacks her. seymour returns in time to save her. a botanical executive named patrick martin (jim belushi) offers to sell audrey ii saplings worldwide. horrified, seymour returns to destroy the plant. audrey ii reveals itself as an alien and destroys the shop. seymour electrocutes the plant and escapes with audrey. they marry and move to the suburbs, where a small audrey ii sprout lurks unnoticed in their garden.

why this one

little shop of horrors is a rare triple-genre film that succeeds as horror, comedy, and musical simultaneously. it has a greek chorus of three motown girls who narrate the story in song. it has practical puppetry from jim henson’s creature shop at its absolute peak, with a plant puppet that grows from a hand-sized prop to a room-sized monster weighing over a ton. the cast is stacked with cameos: bill murray as a masochistic dental patient, john candy as a radio dj, christopher guest as the first customer. the songs by howard ashman and alan menken are tight, clever, and stuck-in-your-head permanent. the director’s cut ending, restored in 2012, is the real ending: audrey ii wins, the plants take over the world, and the movie breaks the fourth wall to eat the audience. criterion-4: there is no other movie where a plant puppet voiced by a motown legend sings rhythm-and-blues showstoppers about eating people, then actually eats them, and the whole thing was originally a roger corman bet to shoot a film in two days.