Little Shop of Horrors

The Little Shop of Horrors is a 1960 dark comedy/horror film produced by Roger Corman, later adapted as a stage musical and then a 1986 musical film and a 1991 animated television series Little Shop.

Themes and motifs

Predation

Most of the characters are predators. The plant preys on humans. But this reflects the other relationships going on around the plant. The dentist preys (brutally) on his girlfriend (and others), the shopkeeper on Seymour, Seymour on anybody who can feed the plant. The story is set in a flower shop on Skid Row, a location where every human is either predator or prey.

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Morality play

Seymour demonstrates a gradual slide into evil. At the beginning of the story he is innocent and interested in the plant because it is unique. When Audrey II demands food, Seymour first feeds her his own blood. It's only a prick, and it's a good cause. His escalation to feeding other humans to Audrey II happens one step at a time. The first victim is already dead. Seymour rationalizes that he was a bad man, so there is nothing wrong with using his death to the plant's good. With the second victim, Seymour knows he is tricking his mentor to his death. The third death is justified not to help the plant, but to help Seymour's fortunes. Seymour accepts evil one step at a time. In this slide into evil, Audrey II is a tempter. Finally, Seymour unsuccessfully attempts to correct his actions. Seymour is an example of an anti-hero (a character type that was not known to traditional morality plays).

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Looking at the story from a different literary light, the plant is a more literal Devil. Little Shop of Horrors is essentially the plot of Faust, reworked into modern times in a flowershop. Seymour seals his deal with the plant in blood. He hopes to gain from the plant the Devil's traditional payments to Faust: fame, fortune, and romance. In the end, Seymour is completely destroyed by the plant.

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In Faust, Faust initiates his deal with the Devil in full knowledge of what he is doing. Seymour, in contrast, does not understand what is happening until he is deep into a relationship with the plant. Like Faust, Seymour comes to recognize how he has become evil, attempts to correct his sins, but fails to do so and is claimed by his devil.

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Both Little Shop of Horrors and Faust have been reworked by different authors into different versions, presented in different media. In both, in some versions the protagonist is lost, while in other versions he is saved.

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As in some versions of Faust, the love interest is caught up in the destruction, but remains innocent.

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Seymour's story (ignoring the "happy ending" version) is also a tragedy in the ancient Greek sense. Seymour starts out intending good, but comes to a bad end due to his own character flaws. Once the action is set into motion by the discovery of the plant, it moves unstoppably towards the protagonist's destruction.

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Black comedy

The work makes fun of violence, sadism, masochism, and humans as plant food. In all but the second movie version, the plant succeeds in the end, spreading across the world as a successful predator on humans.

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This ending is characteristic of black comedy: it is the logical outcome of the events that in more traditional art would be unsettling, but in this work is the source of humor.

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Genre parody

Little Shop of Horrors uses the vocabulary of the horror genre, but in self-referencing and mocking ways. The plant is a monster that feeds on humans, but enlists Seymour's aid in obtaining victims. Seymour describes his debt to his mentor, but pairs each example with an example of how the florist also abuses him.

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Corman (also in many of his other works) used the horror genre to make a work that consciously sets itself apart from that genre. This is made more explicit in the musical version. A chorus in the musical functions much as a classic Greek chorus, offering meta-commentary about the story. Many of these comments specifically poke fun at the horror themes.

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The basis of Little Shop of Horrors would later be used to create a much less-known B-movie; Please Don't Eat My Mother.

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