The Little Shop of Horrors - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Little Shop of Horrors or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Little Shop of Horrors

[albert]

Mr. Mushnik says that he is going to stay at the store overnight to take care of "that meshugganah plant". "Meshugganah" is a Yiddish word meaning "crazy".

[kenneth]

Roger Corman would shoot scenes with two cameras rolling at once whilst placed at different angles. He rarely shot re-takes, and spent little time on lighting scenes.

[francisco]

Made in 2-1/2 days on a budget of twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars.

[francisco]

Charles B. Griffith stood off-screen providing the voice of Audrey Junior as a reference for the actors and actresses. The voice of the plant was supposed to be dubbed in by another actor in post-production, but Griffith's vocalization of the plant got laughs, and Producer and Director Roger Corman was notoriously cheap, so his voice remained in the final print of the film.

[stephanie]

During a scene in which writer Charles B. Griffith plays the robber, Griffith remembers that "When [Welles] and I forgot my lines, I improvised a little, but then I was the writer. I was allowed to." However, Welles states that "Absolutely none of it was ad-libbed [...] every word in Little Shop was written by Chuck Griffith, and I did ninety-eight pages of dialogue in two days."

[tom]

Dick Miller was originally offered the role of Seymour Krelboin, but declined it in favor of the flower-eating Mr. Fouch instead.

[jim]

Although the film is legendary for having been shot in only two days, Jonathan Haze recalled in "The Little Shop of Horrors Book" that he was called back several weeks later for re-shoots.

[fred]

Dick Miller genuinely ate flowers for this movie.

[lena]

According to Corman, the total budget for the production was $30,000. Other sources estimate the budget to be between $22,000 and $100,000

[carla]

The first collaboration between Roger Corman and Jack Nicholson. Corman would go on to direct Nicholson in four more movies: The Raven (1963), The Terror (1963), The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), and The Trip (1967).

[addison]

Jack Nicholson, recounting the reaction to a screening of the film, states that the audience "laughed so hard I could barely hear the dialogue. I didn't quite register it right. It was as if I had forgotten it was a comedy since the shoot. I got all embarrassed because I'd never really had such a positive response before."

[javier]

The scene in which a character portrayed by Robert Coogan is run over by a train was accomplished by persuading the railroad crew to back the locomotive away from the actor. The shot was later printed in reverse.

[ivan]

Howard R. Cohen learned from Charles B. Griffith that when the film was being edited, "there was a point where two scenes would not cut together. It was just a visual jolt, and it didn't work. And they needed something to bridge that moment. They found in the editing room a nice shot of the moon, and they cut it in, and it worked. Twenty years go by. I'm at the studio one day. Chuck comes running up to me, says, 'You've got to see this!' It was a magazine article--eight pages on the symbolism of the moon in Little Shop of Horrors."

[nicholas]

In 1995, the movie was adapted as a 3-issue comic book series, which was released by Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics. The last two issues included interviews with stars Jonathan Haze and Mel Welles.

[frederick]

Jack Nicholson's first horror movie.

[aaron]

Remade as a successful stage musical that was later adapted into the film [Little Shop of Horrors](/category/1856/little-shop-of-horrors) (1986). The success of the musical led to the animated series Little Shop (1991), which director, Roger Corman served as a consultant on.

[nora]

The film's musical score, written by cellist Fred Katz, was originally written for A Bucket of Blood. According to Mark Thomas McGee, author of Roger Corman: The Best of the Cheap Acts, each time Katz was called upon to write music for Corman, Katz sold the same score as if it were new music. The score was used in a total of seven films, including The Wasp Woman and Creature from the Haunted Sea. Katz explained that his music for the film was created by a music editor piecing together selections from other soundtracks that he had produced for Corman.

[linda]

Charles B. Griffith not only wrote most of the screenplay, he also appears (uncredited) as the screaming dental patient who runs out of Dr. Farb's office, the burglar who breaks into the flower shop, and the voice of Audrey Junior.

[gerald]

Exteriors were later directed by Griffith and Welles over two successive weekends, with $279 worth of rented equipment.