Little Shop Of Horrors

C'mon. It was a great scary funny film.

The Corman film or the musical?

Both are quite entertaining.

Oh, yeah, this is neat.

The musical is one of my favourite films. Period.

It also has what I think are some of the best effects of all time

Yes, the musical is love. Even the altered ending. ...Especially the altered ending.

By the altered ending, you mean the original stage ending?

Because yes, that ending was amazing.

No flame wars plz. I agree with Midgetsnowman, though.

LSOH is pretty much my religion. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that it saved my life, as well as the life of someone else in my school. Yes, I was contemplating violent actions, and LSOH saved me. That's why I get so riled up when people say it's just a play. It's more than that. It's a tool for helping people. I wish I could say that about, say, Ren and Stimpy, which is very entertaining, but probably hasn't saved any lives.

As for the movie, I heavily dislike the theatrical ending. I'm okay with Seymour and Audrey living, and I think getting rid of their deaths wasn't such a bad idea. What WAS a bad idea was Seymour and Audrey living happily ever after in Somewhere That's Green. The story is all about how you're not supposed to feed the plants. Seymour may have defeated the plant, but he got out of Skid Row with Audrey using the money he got from feeding it in the first place.

What?

If I was the director, and the studio told me to change the ending, I would, but I wouldn't reward Seymour. Eliminating the punishment is one thing. Replacing it with a reward is another.

If you excuse me, I have a dead horse to beat.

http://tinyurl.com/243ynrv

edited 3rd Sep '11 11:57:38 PM by TacoWiz

I was just having a discussion with Ooze, who some of you might remember. He decided to write this.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7351931/1/Alternative_To_The_Alternative

Neat, huh?

I've seen the movie and the stage version (the local high school did it many years ago and invited the junior high to watch). I prefer the movie but the play's ending. The play's ending reminds me of old B-movies and simply fits the tone better.

I like it... except Audrey. Audrey in the last bit just... in context of the rest of her as a character, it seems like it's Character Derailment for the sake of karma. I'm very much a 'characters' guy and as such... yeah.

In the happy ending, she marries a murderer.

That fact is intensely debatable in the film version, as has been discussed in other L So H-related threads.

In the film, I don't think Seymour really does anything wrong, IIRC (apart from dismembering Orin's body). He's clearly paralyzed with fear when Orin dies, and Mushnik is killed when he accidentally backs into the plant. In the play, Seymour deliberately engineers both deaths, though he's still rather sympathetic.

The way I interpreted the movie was that Seymour was paralyzed with shock and couldn't save Orin, but was desensitized enough by the incident to help back Mushnik into the plant, which counts as murder. So in the movie, Seymour kills one person instead of two.

If he didn't intentionally kill Mushnik, then the movie misses the point of the play entirely. It's supposed to be about a guy who isn't evil but ends up doing evil things anyway. It's a warning for the audience.

Mushnik, who was pointing a gun at him. I dunno about you but that's hardly a murder, if you ask me.

It wasn't "give me the plant or I'll shoot". It was "give me the plant or I'll report you to the police, and this gun is to prevent you from running away, in which case I'll shoot".

Mushnik was definitely greedier in the film version.

TBH, I like the stage version better than the film version (I'm ignoring the original ending of the film version), but not for the normal reason. It's not that I think Seymour deserved a sad ending in the film version. It's that the film version had a morally ambiguous middle and an ambiguous end, which just doesn't have the same impact as a morally unambiguous middle and an unambiguous end. You can legitimately argue that Seymour was or wasn't a murderer in the film, which I think gives the stage version the edge over it - it's completely clear what they were going for.

The Original is The Little Shop of Horrors, the musicals are Little Shop Of Horrors. I've only seen the movie musical, but I did like the ending they kept. He was pretty morally ambiguous, but I did spend the whole movie feeling sorry for the guy, and I don't think Audrey deserved to die. Plus, it's not like he got off easy, the plant had already reproduced.

I have to question the "Frozen with Fear Argument." Moments before the death, Seymour implied that he didn't help because of the abuse Audrey suffered. Now, the debate between killing vs not preventing the death that you had the power to is an ethical one.

But then again, the film added a lot more ambiguity to Seymour in order to make him more sympathetic with the audience.

edited 25th Jul '12 1:29:38 PM by Lionheart0

The Blu-Ray is out today!

This Entertainment Weekly article contains a clip from the Director's cut and interviews from Alan Menken and Ellen Greene.

This article makes a case for the T-cut's ending. And I think it's a compelling one. People have touched on why the change in medium makes the ending a problem, but it goes a little more in-depth on the subject.

I find it interesting that in the (also interesting) comments section, somebody suggests that cutting "The Meek Shall Inherit" was emblematic of Oz not getting the material.