Cinema
Little Shop of Horrors
Frank Oz · 1986
Synopsis
In the wretched Skid Row district, Seymour Krelborn, an orphan, works for the florist Mushnik and secretly loves his colleague Audrey, who is going out with a sadistic dentist, Orin Scrivello. The shop is failing; Seymour displays a strange plant bought from a Chinese florist during a solar eclipse, names it Audrey II, and customers flock in. The plant withers, until the day Seymour pricks his finger and discovers that it feeds on human blood. It grows, makes him famous, even on the radio, then starts to speak and to demand more and more.
Context
The show by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, produced off-Broadway by David Geffen, adapted a 1960 film shot in two days for about thirty thousand dollars. Geffen first thought of Martin Scorsese and a 3D film; the budget reached twenty-five million dollars, the highest of its distributor at the time according to Oz. Lyle Conway, a former collaborator of Oz, designed the plant, more than three metres tall and operated by up to sixty puppeteers. A finale of about twenty minutes, shot first, was abandoned after two disastrous test screenings.
Who it is for
A musical comedy of one hour thirty-four minutes, in which the voice of the plant is that of Levi Stubbs, singer of the Four Tops.
Prizes and reception
Well received by critics, two Oscar nominations, a loyal audience that came with time, and an abandoned ending restored and shown in 2012.
Sources for this page 7
The pages consulted to check this page.