The first version of The Little Shop of Horrors, long before the Broadway musical and Frank Oz's musical/horror/comedy, is one of the primary examples of shoe-string movie-making. Shoe-string, of course, refers mostly to the budget, and this possibly ranks above others like Clerks, Slacker, Night of the Living Dead and Blair Witch in order to put it together so quickly. And yet for all of its little slip-ups and deranged moments of comedy, it does work for what its worth. Not that it doesn't show that the film was made in two days, but on those terms of extremely low-budget, go-for-broke B-movie-making, Roger Corman as a director has quite a nifty effort here. The story is similar to a fairy-tale (a darkly comic one to be sure, like one of the Fractures Fairy tales from the old Rocky & Bullwinkle show), in how Seymour (Jonathan Haze, perfect as an awkward, easily shockable little guy) tries to nurture a plant to earn the affections of Audrey (Jackie Joseph). But then the plant turns into a meat-eater, to put it that way, and from there Charles Griffith's script goes into wild comic turns where he now has to figure out how to take care of the plant before it 'takes care' of him. Some scenes are less notable than others, and sometimes the cheesiness of it all (just look at the plant itself for proof enough) can be wearisome. But Corman keeps the atmosphere with a giddy amount of late 50s 'shlock', and some scenes stand the test of time as the best of their B-movie status. Tops go to the 2nd film appearance from Nicholson as the most psychotic of the bunch, as a 'chipper' fetishist who gets off on getting his wretched teeth worked on- it's a masterpiece of a scene with cartoonish action, innuendo and crazy looks from a 23 year old Nicholson. Worth checking out, maybe more than once, and you're likely to find it (appropriately) in the cheapest lot of DVDs and videos at your local store.
