83 - Little Shop of Horrors

    Shlub Seymour encounters a peculiar plant that he raises, even after finding that it grows by consuming human blood.
    I got heavily into Little Shop of Horrors around the time I was in 4th grade.  The melodies are very catchy, the performances are solid.  Eventually, I burned out on the music.  Then the show came back into my life - during high school, I played in the pit for the show.
    This is the first time that I’ve watched the director’s cut.  After I heard about the recalled DVD, I really wanted to see this alternate ending.
    Seeing the movie now, for the first time in probably ten years or so, it’s a remarkably strange movie.  I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it.  Everything is clearly a set.  This makes the whole thing feel like a fancy version of a stage production.  I kind of like it, but it’s very strange to see a movie embracing unrealistic sets.
    Rick Moranis does a great job.  The cameos - John Candy, Bill Murray - are great.  Bill Murray’s scene is probably the funniest thing in the movie.  Steve Martin is great, as always.  I’ve never cared for Audrey.  I like some of her performance, and I like her more gentle singing.  But when she really plows into a song (see the second half of Suddenly Seymour) I have an impossible time understanding her.
    There’s a strange shift that happens with the show.  It starts off with a very Phil Spector/girl group feel to much of the music, even as the styles shift around a little.  At the end, there’s a song specific to the movie - Mean Green Mother from Outer Space - and this one never feels like it fits.  It feels like it’s not in the same style.
    I have another weird issue with this movie.  There’s an innocent quality to most of the story.  Even with the bleaker elements, there’s an almost child-like feel for most of it.  This atmosphere goes away when the plant starts getting rude.  When he says “tough titty” and “no shit, sherlock,” these feel like a break in the style.  I could be wrong about this, but it’s been a detail that’s always bothered me.
    I noticed some very strange music edits.  Tiny bits where they would subtract a beat to make the music fit with the editing, and sequences where an awkward vamp would be used to fill in space.  The vamping is pretty standard in musicals.  The subtracted beats are really puzzling to me.  The difference is minimal to the editing, and it would have smoothed things out without adding much to the running time.