Hallo-Watch: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Watched:  10/30/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing: First.  Ha.  Just kidding.

Director:  Frank Oz

James F. watched this and we had a bit of a convo about it in his comments, so I found myself watching Little Shop of Horrors (1986).  Again.  

I highly recommend checking out James' blog.  Dude is crushing it over there, and had some interesting thoughts on this film.  I don't always line up exactly (that would be boring), but I always get his point.  Get over there and check him out.  

So, read his post.  My comments I'll limit.  We've all seen the movie.

First, my crush on Audrey (if not Ellen Greene) continues on uninterrupted since a screening in 1986.  Well done.  We wrote about our crush 18 years ago at the old blog.

a goofy, lanky blonde with a heart of gold? I'd never find one in real life

Second, the past decade has seen the rise of the YouTube reaction video, which is its own topic.  We covered that in detail.  But what I noticed seeing some reaction videos, made largely by younger viewers, is that the context of Little Shop of Horrors is somewhat lost.  Ie:  people recognize it as a broad comedy, but they don't really appreciate the underlying joke.

Little Shop of Horrors originated as an off-off-Broadway show, not as something intended for tourists and high school productions.  It was basically hipster camp - early 80's Boomers coming into their own and doing what young adults always do - dragging the pop culture of their youth into the present.  It was the product of people growing up with re-runs of Corman movies playing on TV at 11:00 PM, the Phil Spector catalog (the trio of chorus singers are named Ronette, Chiffon and Crystal, natch), 50's and 60's consumerism as an end unto itself, and the explosion of *promotion*.  

This is New York counter-culture folks making fun of all of that while reveling in it.  

Grease, which people like to tee-hee about when they read the actual lyrics to Greased Lightning, started as a show in Chicago that went to New York, and in it's initial form was older show people doing a really raunchy show that was cleaned up, over and over, for the tourists in New York as the show became bigger and bigger.  

I have seen the movie of Little Shop of Horrors several times, starting with the theatrical release, and the play at least twice (I'm thinking three times, but can't remember where the third time would have been). There are some structural differences, and the ending of the play is different from the end of the movie - which was killed by test audiences.  The new, happy ending for Audrey 1 and Seymour, is part of the slow sanitization of the show to now being a high school theatre-kid staple (I don't know what ending they use in high schools, but I do wonder how much gets cut vis-a-vis the hints of Audrey's BDSM relationship with her dentist beau so little Kaylie and Schuyler don't start getting any ideas).  

I've seen YouTube reactors watch all of "Somewhere That's Green" without any idea that this song is a joke.  It's a period piece, and the period to which it refers is now about 70 years gone, it's the childhood of the parents of those making reaction videos.  The days of Better Homes and Gardens and Good Housekeeping as a major lifestyle force has been dead for 30 years (I don't know a single person my age who subscribes).  Dreaming of plastic on the furniture and Tupperware parties is just what today's kids would do if Influencers told them to do so.  And just as today's wacky folks mock 1990's beige, etc...  in the 90's we were having a time with fake wood paneling.  But if you're unaware of fake wood paneling, it just reads as "I guess people wanted that" without the "and it was kind of ridiculous".

You can't expect for younger generations to conceive of the 1950's creature-feature boom, Corman movies, wacky radio DJs, selling snips of plants in magazines, or bikers in the mode of The Wild One and why making him a dentist is good stuff.  

Anyway, you can't expect for The Youth to carry all the cultural ephemera that preceded them like genetic memory.  This happens.  It's always going to happen, I suppose.  And what was transgressive and subversive in the work can get lost, but leaves behind a hollowed out version of the thing.*  

Just as punk-inspired fashion is just something the kids wear now without knowing who Johnny Rotten is, things keep moving forward.  

Anyway, I've written about this movie plenty before, and as I said up top, check out James' review.  

 

*what I have seen of the most recent Rocky Horror on Broadway and when I tried to watch the Heathers musical online, it was like watching a Disney Cruise approved version of these stories meant not for the audience that originally embraced them, but safe for families