PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960) is the kind of movie that proves how far ingenuity can stretch a dollar. Shot in just two days and one night on leftover sets from Corman’s earlier film A Bucket of Blood, this scrappy black comedy has grown into one of cinema’s most unlikely legends.
Instead of watching a trailer, how about watching the public domain Little Shop of Horrors in its entirety?
A Story of a Hungry Plant
The plot centers on Seymour Krelborn (Jonathan Haze), a bumbling florist’s assistant who discovers a strange plant with an appetite for blood. At first, Seymour feeds it drops from his fingers. But as the plant — dubbed Audrey Jr. — grows larger, it demands bigger meals. Soon Seymour is sneaking corpses into the flower shop, trying to keep his boss Mr. Mushnik (Mel Welles) happy and impress his sweet coworker Audrey (Jackie Joseph).
The tone is part horror, part slapstick. Death and dismemberment are played for laughs, with cartoonish violence and tongue-in-cheek dialogue. Lines like Mushnik’s quip — “Look at it, it grows like a cold sore from the lip” — set the film’s mix of grotesque and goofy.
The Cast That Stuck
While Haze, Joseph, and Welles carry the story, the movie is often remembered for a small role by a then-unknown Jack Nicholson. Playing Wilbur Force, a dental patient who actually enjoys the pain of the drill, Nicholson turns a bit part into one of the film’s most memorable scenes. It wasn’t a cameo — he wasn’t famous yet — but it has become a cult highlight in hindsight, and promos for the film often egregiously slap Nicholson’s face on the front (though Haze delivers an underrated, quirky performance that should perhaps be the center of attention).
There’s also Dick Miller playing a flower-eating flower shop patron. Miller had previously played the main character in A Bucket of Blood and would actually reappear with Jackie Joseph (as the Futtermans) in the Gremlins franchise.
From Forgotten Oddity to Cult Classic
When it was released in 1960, Little Shop of Horrors barely made a dent. It was too cheap, too odd, and too offbeat for mainstream audiences. But the film found new life in the 1970s on late-night television, where its bizarre charm earned it a cult following. Its reputation grew as a classic case of “so bad it’s good” — though fans would argue that its intentional dark humor makes it more clever than clumsy.
A Blooming Legacy
The film’s afterlife is just as fascinating as the movie itself. In 1982, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken adapted it into a stage musical, adding the catchy songs “Skid Row (Downtown)” and “Suddenly Seymour,” and the now-iconic cry of Audrey II: “Feed me, Seymour!” That musical’s success led to Frank Oz’s 1986 movie version, which turned the man-eating plant into a pop culture icon.
Today, Corman’s ultra-low-budget experiment is remembered as a pioneering “horror comedy” that punched far above its weight. What began as a quick, cheap shoot on recycled sets has flowered into a multi-generational cult phenomenon.
