Monstervision's Joe Bob Briggs Looks At
Little Shop of Horrors (1960/1986)
(From Joe Bob's Ultimate B Movie Guide)
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
The Roger Corman classic was turned into an Off-Broadway musical, then adapted to the big screen with a giant people-eating fly trap that sings exactly like the lead singer of the Four Tops, with Steve Martin as the evil leather-biker dentist and Bill Murray of Ghost Busters in the role originated by Jack Nicholson, as the guy who loves the dentist's office. Rick Moranis of "Honey I Shrunk The Kids" plays nerd gardener Seymour Krelborn, but the great innovation is the plant itself--the voice of Levi Stubbs as the "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space" who manipulates Seymour into feeding it blood, eventually becoming the talk-shown sensation of New York City.
Ellen Greene reprises her stage role as Audrey, singing "I know Seymour's the greatest, but I'm dating a semi-sadist."
Steve Martin steals his scenes, singing "I Am a Dentist."
But the best lines go to Rick Moranis:
"I don't KNOW anyone that deserved to be chopped up and fed to a hungry plant" and "This is between me and the vegetable."
Two dead bodies.
Three quarts blood.
Exploding plant.
Chopped dentist chomping.
Gratuitous John Candy.
Directed by Frank Oz
Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
In Roger Corman's most popular film of all time, Jonathan Haze stars as the plant-lover Seymour, who works in a sad little flower shop on the Lower East Side of New York. One night, while trying to save an exotic species from death, he accidentally cuts his finger, and blood drips onto the plant. To his amazement, the plant begins to grow. As the plant gets more and more insatiable for blood, the movie gets more and more outrageous--until at one point the plant is twelve feet high and screaming "Feed me!" The whole thing was a joke, a movie made on a dare that Corman couldn't make a film in two days. He won the dare, with a little help from his friends, including Jack Nicholson in a hysterically funny cameo as the dental patient who ENJOYS his root canals. Inspired a hit Off-Broadway musical in the eighties, which was in turn made into a big-budget film starring Rick Moranis. With Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Myrtle Van, Leola Wendorff, Dick Miller (star of Corman's Bucket Of Blood).
© 2000 Joe Bob Briggs. All Rights
Reserved. Not an AOL Time-Warner Company in this lifetime.
"Little Shop of Horrors" is available on video and on DVD
One of Steve Martin's most recent movies is "Novocaine" (2001), a black comedy in which he plays a dentist.
For this and other movie reviews by the artist formerly known as the host of MonsterVision, go to Joe Bob Briggs.com
Elvis has left the building, and he took Joe Bob with him. Feed me!!!
