Friday, May 20, 2011

You gotta watch out for those man eating plants...

Little Shop of Horrors - 1986

This film is another movie musical, but with a little more of an
absurd tone. Seymour Krelborn is an orphan who works in a flower shop.
He has a crush on his coworker, Audrey. One day he finds a mysterious
plant, and names it Audrey II, but the plant ends up having much more
of an appetite than expected. It eats people, and sure enough, the
plant soon consumes Audrey's boyfriend.

I have never actually read the play, and besides one high school showing at my school that I kind of remember seeing when I was in lower school… I have never really encountered Little Shop of Horrors in full. To say the least… this was a weird movie. It is most definitely a movie musical, but more of one geared towards horror, or thriller (?) than the normal “happy go lucky, lets go dance now” competitors of the time.

The film still had humor to it though, it opened with a trio of female singers belting the opening song and title, “Little Shop of Horrors”. The actors played their characters more like stage characters-- exaggerated and slightly over the top, whether in attitude, with voice, or in actions. The singing trio also reappears in different outfits to sing in harmony with various towns folk, hobos, and homeless people, which needless to say adds some more elements of humor (whether intended or not) to the film. The film does it’s best to be a theatre show that just happens to have editing cuts, but I’m not sure if this is the most successful way to go about being included into the new movie musical fad in the 80’s…

Overall, I thought the film could have been better, but that it was still distinctive and cute for an 80’s movie musical. I’d be interested in searching if “Little Shop of Horrors” was ever remade, I’m not sure if it would be more successful in this present time. Perhaps the new version would include less of the classic songs included in the theater version of the show. The movie seemed to include almost every song piece, which rather slowed down the plot, and would probably do more so for people not used to watching musicals.

Wow singing plant...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLO7IxKwruc


1 comment:

Vladigogo said...

Your hyperlink didn't work.

Actually, Little Shop in the 80s is a remake of the 60s film of the same name. So, you were watching a remake. H

And of course isn't Rollins doing this musical this fall?