Cast, Crew, and Other Info

Jonathan Haze as Seymour Krelboin
Jackie Joseph as Audry Fulquard
Mel Welles as Gravis Mushnik
Myrtle Vail as Winifred Krelboin
Dick Miller as Burson Fouch
Jack Nicholson (yes, that one) as Wilbur Force

Written by Charles Griffith
Directed by Roger Corman

Complete information is available from the IMDB.

Buy from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. (Note that those links are to the edition I have. There are numerous editions available, most of which are cheaper, and just as shoddily made.)
Past movie reviews can be found here.

Premise

Seymour Krelboin obtains a carnivorous plant. (He originally says he bought it, but later he's credited with creating it.)

This is just bizarre. It's not a musical, like the more popular and better known remake. It's got some "before they were stars" appeal with Jack Nicholson as Wilbur Force, a character renamed Arthur Dent and played by Bill Murray in the remake. It also has Dick Miller, whose face I immediately recognized, but whose name I had to look up, as a character who eats plants. (I'm not talking about fruits and vegetables, either. I think he was placed for oddball symmetry to play off the plant that eats people.) Check out Dick Miller's IMDB page here to see who I'm talking about, if you didn't recognize the name. (He's probably best known as Futterman in the Gremlins movies.)

High Point

Check out this conversation between the two police officers:
Joe Fink: How's the wife, Frank?
Frank Stoolie: Not bad, Joe.
Joe Fink: Glad to hear it. The kids?
Frank Stoolie: Lost one yesterday.
Joe Fink: Lost one, huh? How'd that happen?
Frank Stoolie: Playing with matches
Joe Fink: Well, those're the breaks
Frank Stoolie: I guess so.

Yes, the detectives are named Frank and Joe, and they play everything deadpan, including the death of one of their children. This is the kind of movie we've got here.

Low Point

The final line of dialogue. Yeah, it was a repeated phrase, but it was completely meaningless in that instance.

The Scores

This was original. It's loaded with quirky characters and oddball situations. It stands as proof that it takes more than originality to be good. I give it 5 out of 6.

The effects were lousy. They didn't even have a hole in the bottom of the tabletop plant to push the food through! It's a pretty lousy clamshell-like puppet. The flower blossoms looked awful, too. I give it 1 out of 6.

The story was contrived, awkward, and full of bizarre moments that were there for the sake of being there. There are nonsensical decisions and conversations throughout. Look at the first murder; if he wasn't planning on feeding the plant, why did he bring the corpse back to the flower shop? I give it 2 out of 6.

The acting was pretty lousy. Jack Nicholson, Mel Welles, and Dick Miller did decent work, and Myrtle Vail (grandmother of the screenwriter) was actually pretty good as the hypochondriac mother of Seymour, but Jonathan Haze and Jackie Joseph were awful from start to finish. In fact, those two were so bad that I'm not sure if the others were actually decent, or if they just seemed that way in comparison. I give it 2 out of 6.

The emotional response is odd. I was laughing the whole time, but not always when and why the filmmakers wanted me to. I give it 5 out of 6 anyway, because nobody should watch a Roger Corman film and expect to enjoy the movie as the screenwriter intended. (Unless, of course, that screenwriter was Corman.)

The production was obviously Roger Corman. This is a 77 minute film with four principal locations (in the shop, in the Krelboin home, in the dentist office, on the street) and several incidental locations (the railway station, the police station, the rubber factory that was filled with toilets, and probably a couple more I've forgotten.) That didn't stop Corman from filming the entire thing in two days. Two days. There was no time to adjust lighting, retake scenes, fine tune the set decorations, or any of the tasks that are a staple of films. I give it 1 out of 6.

Overall, it's a bad movie. It's a movie you watch because you know it'll be bad. This is Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fare, believe me. Unfortunately, it loses some impact there because some of the intentional jokes actually are funny. In that light, I give it 3 out of 6.

In total, The Little Shop Of Horrors recieves 19 out of 42.

Halloween Countdown to date

• October 1: Witchcraft Through The Ages
• October 2: The Evil Dead
• October 3: Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn
• October 4: Army of Darkness
• October 5: Ghostbusters
• October 6: Ghostbusters 2