LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

"On the twenty-third day of the month of September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. And this terrifying enemy surfaced, as such enemies often do, in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places..." and so begins LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, a wild, weird, completely demented, and utterly ingenious musical film adaptation of the Off-Broadway sensation by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, itself an adaptation of a zero-budget Roger Corman-directed film from 1960. What makes LITTLE SHOP shine is the obvious love put into its creation. Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Steve Martin, Vincent Gardenia, and Levi Stubbs (as the voice of Audrey II) are note-perfect, the technical wizardry that Frank Oz and his team brought to give life to the plant through practical effects is nothing short of astonishing, and Ashman and Menken's literate and clever score ranks with the greats. A film with a bloodthirsty talking plant, a sadistic dentist, and big musical numbers may not sound like classic movie material, but LITTLE SHOP is so infectiously energetic and entertaining that it's impossible to resist. 

Alan Menken is a composer known for composing the scores and songs to such hit films as THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN, POCAHONTAS, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (based on his Off-Broadway sensation), HERCULES, and ENCHANTED, among countless other works for the screen and stage. An "EGOT"-winner, Menken has won eight Oscars, 11 Grammys, a Tony, and a Daytime Emmy.