Little Shop of Horrors: Gonna open a can of worms here...

I want to have a calm discussion about the film version Little Shop of Horrors and both endings. Original ending supporters should not go into a rage and tell happy ending supporters that they're murderers, and happy ending supporters should not go into a rage and tell original ending supporters that they're emos who don't believe in true love.

My opinion is that Frank Oz wanted to show Seymour being corrupted, but in a different way than in the play. He wanted to really play up sympathy for Seymour so that the tragic angle would work more. While Seymour intentionally kills Orin in the play, he kinda-sorta-ambiguously-maybe kills Orin in the movie. My interpretation is that kinda-sorta-ambiguously-maybe killing Orin, which isn't an unforgivable act itself, is what made it easier for him to definitely kill Mushnik. I honestly don't understand how people can view Mushnik's death as anything BUT Seymour backing Mushnik into the plant. If anyone here thinks that Mushnik's death was an accident too, please help me.

Also, this 1985 draft of the script (while they were still figuring out the ending, which even before the test audience screening went through a lot of revisions) directly states that Seymour backs Mushnik into the plant.

http://mondomusicals.blogspot.com/2012/02/little-shop-of-horrors-screenplay.html

Now let's say Seymour didn't murder anyone. Then from a dramatic point of view, what is the point of the story? Is it about a shy nerd who accidentally kills two people and then gets married? "LOL HE'S SO CLUMSY HE KILLS PEOPLE" worked in the Roger Corman film, but this is a relatively serious work of fiction, rather than a movie made in two days over a bet.

Here are some points I have on the flaws in the happy ending.

1. Mean Green Mother from Outer Space is supposed to give you a feeling of hopelessness. You identify with Seymour, and since Seymour's messed up, you feel as though you, the audience member, have messed up. Audrey's death wasn't just karmic retribution for Seymour, but for the audience, for actually agreeing that killing Mushnik was "okay". MGMFOS is supposed to be a twist on the big epic this-ends-here battle..because Seymour doesn't even have anything left to fight for. It feels so beautifully hopeless. In the happy ending it just feels like another climatic action sequence. It's not horrible, but it's not amazing.

2. To be honest, I think Frank Oz had a point when he said you can't kill your leads in a mainstream movie (although I still think the original ending is the best possible ending). I think there could've been a way to let Seymour and Audrey live without ruining the moral. What if Seymour lost all his money and gets dumped by Audrey (murderers don't make good husbands), remaining lonely and having to live in Skid Row for the rest of his life? He goes back to square one, and the audience doesn't feel like they've witnessed something horrible.

The happy ending letting Seymour off scott free isn't the real problem. While I like the tragic ending, I could live with Seymour and Audrey living. What made me upset was that Seymour gets the girl AND moves to the suburbs using the money he got from his gardening TV show.

Seymour fed Orin and Mushnick to Audrey II so that he could 1. get out of Skid Row and 2. take Audrey with him.

If he hadn't fed Orin and Mushnick to Audrey II, it would've died and Seymour wouldn't have gotten the TV show.

Seymour. doesn't learn anything.

Audrey II isn't the villain. Audrey II is a part of Seymour's mind, and Seymour is the real villain. In Feed Me (Git It), Audrey II promised that in exchange for blood, Seymour would get the girl and money. He gave Audrey II blood, and as a DIRECT result he got the girl and money. The end.

That's the exact opposite of the movie's message. The message now appears to be that if you kill two people, then as long as you're sorry, you'll get everything you want. But you need to kill the two people first. That's the only way to get everything you want. Just make sure you're "sorry" afterwards.

3. He doesn't tell Audrey he killed anyone. He says "the plant makes terrible things happen". He doesn't even say WHAT terrible thinks. Not only is he a murderer, but he's hiding his crimes from his wife.

4. Audrey II only grows after it eats. How does it grow the pods in Mean Green Mother without eating Audrey first? That's a pretty big plot hole.

I tried to seem unbiased here but I think I failed.

edited 14th Feb '12 7:49:17 PM by TacoWiz

So in short, your problem with the ending is pretty much summed up by a dislike of the Karma Houdini bit?

Yeah, I can see that. I generally didn't have that problem because after a certain point I started seeing the movie as less about Seymour's character progression, but I understand where you're coming from.

Wait. Why do we need a new thread for this? We already have a multitude of Little Shop of Horrors-related threads.

I do have an opinion on this issue but I'm not sure whether or not I should even get into this thread, given that it's redundant to the pre-existing threads.

Most of this being cut was the reason the original ending didn't work. It didn't have the full impact of Hamartia (which in Greek can mean Tragic flaw or tragic mistake) because we didn't see how essential Audrey was in the process of Seymour's corruption. Without this scene Audrey's death lacks the punch and irony that it should have. Seymour just wanders through the plot motivated mostly by greed or shortshightedness. True it's shallow of Seymour but it makes the ending makes sense as a tragedy.

edited 14th Feb '12 9:43:39 PM by RhymeBeat

The thing is that they cut that with the original ending, not before they cut the original ending.

From what I can see this song was never filmed (unlike the original ending) so it can't have been the test audiences that led the the cut.

All sources I'm aware of indicate that the song was filmed, it's just that unlike the original ending, it wasn't leaked in a rough form by a mistaken DVD creator.

OK. So OK. That does make sense then.

If The Meek Shall Inherit isn't in The Intended Cut I'll raise hell.

I think that the DVD editor should've leaked everything in the rough cut after Suppertime, including TMSI and the original, somewhat darker proposal scene.

We'll find out all about this later this year, unless the people making the Blu-Ray are particularly stupid.

Damn why did I ask for a normal DVD of L So H for my birthday? I wasn't aware that the intended cut was being released later this year.

Well, now you'll have something to tide you over until October.

I guess it's nice to have both for comparison.

>implying The Intended Cut will be a separate release

I wish. It'll probably be in the Bonus Features section.

A technical reason why they changed the ending, along with results from a focus group, is that in a Broadway play the audience won't be as sadden if a character dies because the curtain just rises back up again to show that they are perfectly fine as they bow to them! That doesn't happen in a film, where all fates of the characters are finalized before the end credits. They probably thought that since the movie is upbeat, they wanted the audience to feel uplifted during the ending too.

edited 15th Feb '12 9:01:14 AM by kyun

I do agree that the sequence of the character's being dead was a problem. The sequence dragged on FAR too long when the audience's emotional investment in the characters was gone. As I recall the stage version had the casts heads as flowers on Audrey II as they sang the finale. They should have done that if they had the budget to do so.

I think there is no valid excuse for circumventing the entire point of the story.

I agree that the deaths were too depressing for a mainstream audience, and an ending could've been filmed where Seymour and Audrey live, but where Seymour [yelling]DOESN'T GET THE MONEY, THE GIRL, AND THE DREAM LIFE, ALL BECAUSE HE FED THE PLANT.[/yelling] It's Seymour getting the very things he killed Mushnick (and maybe Orin, that one's ambiguous) for in the first place. "Let the protagonist and his love interest live" and "let the protagonist get rewarded for murdering one person and manslaughtering another" are two completely different things.

Sorry, I can get very passionate sometimes.

Yeah. Something more along the lines of the ending of Dr Horrible would have worked Seymour getting everything he wanted except Audrey, perhaps in this case because she was disgusted with his actions.

Oh my god that would've been super epic. Speaking of which, I'm 95% certain that the ending of Doctor Horrible would have been changed if it was made through the Hollywood system. It got to have a dark ending because it was an independently funded B-movie.

Say, maybe the film adaption of Little Shop of Horrors should've been a B-movie like the source material of its source material. Then they could've kept the dark ending and there wouldn't have been any financial risk. I mean, if you think about it, did the film version really need to be a 30 million dollar (60 million in 2012 dollars) blockbuster? Almost all of the events in the play took place in or around the shop. The movie could've done the same thing with no more than three sets.

edited 15th Feb '12 2:18:44 PM by TacoWiz

I wonder how much of the budget was for Audrey II?

I know in addition to the Audrey II animatronics, a lot of money was spent on constructing a life-size Skid Row set from scratch. Srsly.

Probably incredibly expensive. I listened to the DVD Commentary with Frank Oz and although I don't remember if he gave an answer to that, the puppet required up to 40 puppeteers, and 5 different versions of him were made since he's constantly growing.

edited 15th Feb '12 2:21:20 PM by kyun

The "death doesn't have the same effect onstage" argument has always come off as very condescending to me. It's like saying "audiences are so stupid that they can't accept someone dying, but it's okay in theatre because theatre is a lesser artform so the audience can just ignore the impact, whereas film is truly magical so the audience will be unable to accept that it's just fiction". It manages to simultaneously insult the viewing public and the medium of theatre.

I don't think theater is inferior to film. I think it's just a different experience if you saw the same story in both types.

I think the only issue with the original ending of the Little Shop of Horrors film is that "Don't Feed the Plants" dragged on far longer than needed. With all the main characters dead the audience loses investment in the destruction of New York. If it had been shorted to the length of the number in the stageplay it would seem less irritating.