Little Shop of Horrors

Directed by Frank Oz

At the USA Charles

NOTHING HAS so eerily paralleled the plot of Little Shop of Horrors than the ever-growing pervasiveness of the movie/play/movie itself. Like the man-eating plant from outer space it chronicles, Little Shop began in a small, out-of-the-way place, attracting the fascination of all who gazed upon it. As a low-budget 1960 Roger Corman thriller, it was the ultimate cult film, a movie with a premise so unselfconsciously silly it just had to be watched.

After a generation in certified cult status, the concept was brought to the stage in a cutesy-campy off-Broadway musical that quickly spawned spin-off productions in around the country. Big time producer David Geffen found himself drawn to the tale, and hired Muppeteer-turned-director Frank Oz to return it to the screen. Today this absurd story, which once could rate only a black and white exploitation picture, is a multi-million dollar showcase for the insidious Saturday Night Live/SCTV crew that has dominated youth comedy for a decade.

Little Shop is the story of Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis), a nebbishy orphan raised by a nearly bankrupt Skid Row florist, Mr. Mushnik (Vincent Gardenia). Seymour spends each day slaving away in Mushnik's shop, kept alive by his two loves: botany and Audrey (Ellen Greene), the dipsy platinum blonde store clerk. One day Seymour buys a mysterious plant from a Chinese merchant--a plant we later learn has come from outer space with intent to conquer the world!

Just as Mushnik is about to close his failing business, and Seymour to give up his unsung passion for Audrey, the plant steps in, and with its supernatural powers makes things go right for all concerned.

Little Shop's Faustian dilemma emerges when the plant wants something in return: blood. Named "Audrey II" by Seymour in honor of his dreamboat, the wisecracking, ghetto-smart plant (whose booming voice is performed by Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops) bellows "Feed me!" to the cringing Krelborn. How he deals with this unusual request is the problem of Little Shop.

Oz' Little Shop adds little to the stage play, enlarging some of its jokes while totally blunting its few intentionally disturbing moments. What's left is a cartoony Skid Row where derelicts leap out of the gutter to sing and plants bounce about flower shops attacking everything in sight.

WHAT GAVE the staged Little Shop its appeal was the purity of its homage to Cliche. Writer and lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken built their Little Shop out of an inestimable number of dramatic, social, cinematic and musical commonplaces. Superficially, it followed the plot of the Corman picture, but it also obeyed dramatic rules enforced through the millenia: the Ashman/Menken Little Shop was a carefully structured Greek tragedy, replete with chorus, hero, dilemma, tragic flaw, catastrophic misstep and ultimate retribution. Snappy Chiffons-type songs and bouffant hairdos notwithstanding, the resolution of Little Shop was closer to that of Agamemnon than Animal House.

The juxtaposition caused problems in the stage version, none of which is corrected in Oz' big-budget Hollywood musical. Whatever thematic points--largely an assault on the Eisenhower-era vision of idyll--the staged version had to make are ignored here, as is the head-on assault on pop culture. Instead of consistency, Oz has subscribed to the youth comedy formula in force since The Blues Brothers: the bigger the blast, the louder the laughs.

And there are plenty of laughs in Oz' Little Shop, whose cast of television loonies has long excelled at caricature. Some musical numbers are riotous, including the dental office song by Orin Scrivellos D.D.S. (Steve Martin), Audrey's doomed boyfriend, and a marvellous expansion of "Somewhere That's Green." In that number, Greene's lyrical depiction of her own Nirvana--Levittown--blessed with Tupperware and TV dinners is at once hilarious and pathetic.

Moranis, who does his own singing, is superb as the credulous Krelborn, and featured bit players Bill Murray, John Candy and Christopher Guest walk through their roles with the workmanlike competence we've come to expect.

But for all its smirks, Little Shop is in the end a cowardly disappointment. The stage show earned respect because it showed universal dramatic rules applied in even the silliest of situations-- Seymour paid for his crimes. Oz told The Crimson he had originally shot the film with the theatrical ending, but that "test audiences" in San Jose, Calif., "didn't go for it." Movies have to have happy endings, he was told, and thus his Little Shop appeared with a happily-ever-after conclusion that contradicts what the play was about.

And despite the light-hearted joyfulness that pervades its Muppety murders and dismemberments, Oz' sanitized Little Shop is far more disturbing than its original version. Even happy-go-lucky killers should get what they deserve, not what they want.