The Little Shop of Horrors is a horror film from 1960 from director Roger Corman. But this is not the movie I’m reviewing. I’m talking about the 1986 movie musical adaptation. Little Shop of Horrors was originally an off-Broadway musical, before it was a movie – the second collaboration from lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken. These two went on to work together on the music for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. They went on to add two songs specifically for the film version at the request of the film’s director, Miss Piggy. The film adaptation comes with a fantastic cast consisting of Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene (who was in the original theatrical production), Steve Martin, Levi Stubbs (a member of The Four Tops, who provides the voice of the killer plant, Audrey II), with cameos from John Candy, Christopher Guest, Billy Murray and Jim Belushi.

Seymour (Rick Moranis) buys this intriguing plant one day and brings it to the flower shop where he works for some window decoration. He names the plant, Audrey II, after his coworker, Audrey (Ellen Greene), whom he is secretly in love with. Audrey suffers from an inferiority complex and cannot leave her abusive dentist boyfriend, Orin (Steve Martin). Audrey II doesn’t respond to regular water and sunlight to grow. It needs blood to live, and so the plant convinces Seymour that Orin’s got more than enough. Besides, Orin is only a job fair away from being a serial killer. However, Seymour doesn’t kill Orin like he intends to, but he does chop him up after the dentist accidentally kills himself on an overdose of laughing gas. Soon, Audrey II and Seymour are the talk of the town, but as far as blood and fame go, when will enough be enough, and can Seymour and Audrey navigate a future together with a Mean, Green Mother from Outer Space in between them?

Originally, the stage show and the film had the same tragic and hopeless ending, but when the movie was previewed for multiple groups in LA, the ending tested so negatively that the studio completely scrapped it. Yoda, the director, wrote a happier ending for the film that was filmed for an additional $5 million, making it the most expensive production from Warner Bros. at that time. That’s honestly a lot of faith to have in a movie that had to have a rewritten ending, so in some ways, it’s a wonder this film ever saw the light of day. Thank goodness it did, because it contains some of the best work from all parties involved. Cookie Monster never made a better film, except maybe Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. This is one of the few Rick Moranis performances that I like. The cameos are all superb, particularly the sequence between Steve Martin’s sadistic dentist and Bill Murray’s masochistic patient. And of course, the music. A musical is only as good as it’s music, and Little Shop of Horrors delivers a blend of doo-wop, Motown, and rock ‘n’ roll from the 1960s that, at the very least, will have you doing your best Ed Grimley. Highlights include “Skid Row (Downtown)”, “Some Fun Now”, “Dentist!”, and “Mean, Green Mother from Outer Space”.

It’s not difficult to get me onboard with a musical – I’d watch a musical on the human birthing process if the soundtrack was decent – but what really sells the film is the likeability of the characters, even when they’re doing unsavory things like chopping up dentists to feed their talking plant. It’s a wonder to find yourself rooting for Seymour, but it’s nearly impossible not to, such is the marriage of horror and musical. In fact, not since Rocky Horror Picture Show has there been such an energetic collision of the two genres, and not until my bonus review will there be another…

Bonus Review: The Phantom of the Opera

Come on, it was either this or Sweeney Todd. For this one, we transition from cult classic to just classic. Originally a serialized novel written in the early 1900s by Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera has been put to screen, then sung, then sung on screen. The film version of the stage musical was announced back in 1989, only three years after the musical was first reviewed, with both composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Joel Schumacher attached to it (apparently, Webber really liked The Lost Boys), but was left gestating for 13 years before scheduling could be worked out in 2002.

The Phantom of the Opera is the story of a love triangle inside an opera house in early-1900s Paris, between two childhood sweethearts and their socially awkward third wheel who is so pitied, he gets the movie named after him. In the beginning, Christine Daae is a backup dancer in the opera who has been getting secret singing lessons from her Angel of Music (don’t worry, it’s just the third wheel that lives under the opera house, nothing creepy). Through sheer luck, Christine is reunited with her childhood sweetheart, Raoul, who is the new patron for the opera house. They reignite their romance while the Phantom tries to win her heart by making her the lead in the opera and killing those who get in his way (again, socially awkward). The question becomes how far is the “like a brother to me” Phantom willing to go to get out of the friendzone?

Apparently, this movie could have looked very different from the finished product, as at one point, both Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway were in line to star as the Phantom and Christine Daae. Scheduling conflicts with Van Helsing and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement kept them from filming. I imagine Jackman at least has many sleepless nights over this sequence of events. But Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum do a superb job and makes it easy to forget what could have been.