31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 9 (Little Shop Of Horrors)

Me hungry.

Oh, I've been looking forward to doing this one for a while. Last year, pretty early on, I did The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was quite a good and interesting little horror-themed musical which paid tribute to the golden oldies of the genre. Little Shop Of Horrors has that same sort of idyllic setting (a decade not too far from our own) but beyond that it doesn't really play too much with that. It's still interesting that a lot of big musicals of that time were looking back to the 50's and whatnot; Grease, Rocky Horror, and even Little Shop Of Horrors here. I don't know if I like it as much as Rocky Horror, but Little Shop does its job well. The songs are mostly really good, which is a step in the right direction for a musical. All in all, the sound of this one is very soulful which I like. It's upbeat and peppy and I found myself moving along to the tunes a little as I lay back to watch the film. So, a success there. Let's do our thing again. Get in, talk bits, get out there. Here we go with the rad and fun Little Shop Of Horrors.

The first thing that struck me is just how many recognizable names show up in this one. Sure, I knew about Rick Moranis and Steve Martin. John Candy's cameo took me totally off guard and was a pleasant surprise. Same thing with Bill Murray's; a nice surprise in an already pretty good film. Hell, I didn't even know that Rick Moranis and Steve Martin had singing pipes on 'em. Nicely done, boys! I wasn't quite as enamored with Audrey's songs, though. Oh, her actress is good at singing and all, but they're more melancholy and all about being a good housewife or girlfriend or whatever. I don't really know how to feel about that. I'll just say it didn't work for me, save the reprise of "Somewhere That's Green" near the end. That was a cute and sad callback. It's definitely a movie that builds and builds using its songs as mood, and though the buildup works it's hard not to love the payoff more. Still, gotta have that buildup so... here we go. A space plant zapping down to Earth during a solar eclipse that grows on blood and demands more and more. Dang, that's a real good and dark idea. Despite that, Little Shop is surprisingly bloodless. I mean, for a movie with a giant plant demanding blood that has lots of murder in it, it's pretty tame. On the one hand, I admire that restraint. On the other, the black-hearted gore hound in me wants to see the red stuff. What we get is still pretty rad, and the space plant is ever bolstered by the wonderful voice of Levi Stubbs as Audrey II.


Ah yes, Audrey II. Let's chat about that ending for a bit. The version of this I ended up viewing was the Director's Cut. Keeping that in mind, the original ending of the film is actually the best way to end it and is a visual spectacle. Following Audrey II's amazingly catchy "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space", capitalism goes hog wild. Audrey II is the most popular new plant and gets sold nationwide... and then they go all in on destroying humanity in an amazing sequence that feels like something out of a kaiju film, all with amazing soulful music. There's no way the theatrical cut can compare to this. It's a tour de force and totally compelling to watch, and one hell of a downer. Supposedly it got pulled because test audiences didn't like the downer ending, but I disagree. I love it. Bad End for humanity. Unchecked spending and literal blood-feeding from the cute little plants leads to our end, and an Audrey II even breaks through the movie screen at the end. The film itself can't contain the monster plants, and so all hell breaks loose. That's Little Shop of Horrors for you. I dig it a lot! It has really good songs and that's what matters. I don't have much more to say on that but they can't all be lengthy esoteric novels. Go check it out sometime, you'll get those songs in your head guaranteed.