The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

My brother left me a bunch of movies on DVDs.  These weren’t great movies, mind you.  They were those 50-movie packs filled with all sorts of public-domain movies.  That’s why it surprised me to find The Little Shop of Horrors among the titles.  My mind immediately went to the version staring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene.  No.  This one predates that version by 26 years.  This one was directed by none other than Roger Corman.

If you’ve seen the 1986 remake, you won’t be surprised much by the plot of the 1960 original.  Seymour Krelborn is a klutz, so much so that he gets fired for ruining an arrangement.  He is able to redeem himself by bring in an unusual plant.   Gravis Mushnick, who owns the show, agrees to tie Seymour’s fate to the plant’s.  If Audrey, Jr., can bring in customers, Seymour can stay.  (The plant is named for Seymour’s coworker, Audrey Fulquard.)

The plant becomes a local celebrity.  Seymour finds that this comes at a cost, though.  Audrey, Jr., needs blood to grow.  The bigger the plant gets, the more blood it needs.  This leads Seymour (and Mushnik) down a slippery slope, as the missing victims attract the attention of the police.  Seymour eventually becomes a victim of his own success, quite literally.  The movie ends with Seymour being eaten by the plant, which eventually dies.

As with other public-domain movies, you’re probably going to find this movie readily available.  (YouTube seems to have several different versions available.)   I don’t imagine that too many will have great sound or video quality.  Many are packaged with profit in mind.  In fact, Roger Corman was known for knocking out a lot of movies, presumably for the same reason.  IMDb has him listed as producer for 415 titles and director for 56.  This is an example of what happens when you favor quantity over quality.

The movie was made in under two days for about $28,000.  A lot of this shows.  Charles B. Griffith, who wrote the script, filled in for the voice of Audrey, Jr., during shooting.  According to IMDb, Corman decided to keep his voice in the final print.  Part of this was because Griffith did a pretty decent job.  Not having to spend the money also factored in to the decision.

The movie is on par with other b-movies that I’ve seen.  It’s not going to be great, but it will probably be watchable, even if just once, by most people.  For me, a lot of that had to do with having seen the 1986 version.  I kind of wanted to see how it played out.  It’s also interesting to note that Jack Nicholson appears as the masochistic dental patient, so there was that.

If you have to decide between renting the two movies, I’d say watch the 1986 version.  The humor in this one is very different and seems to be more a product of its time.  I did feel like a lot of the humor was going over my head.  The two police officers, for instance, ask for just the facts.  It would seem to be a play on Dragnet, but I wasn’t necessarily prompted to laugh at it.  It seems like there‘s a lot I don‘t understand about the movie.

Aside from the print quality, the only thing of concern would be the plant eating people.  This is shown on screen.  There’s no blood, but it’s pretty clear what’s going on.   (It’s the kind of thing that maybe impressionable children might have a problem with.  I don’t imagine too many adults having a problem with it.)  I’d really only recommend watching this version if you can get it streaming for free.  I’m not entirely sure it would be worth the price of one of those 50-movie sets.

IMDb page

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

There’s talk of a third Gremlins movie.  There was some debate as to whether it would be a sequel or a reboot.  However, it doesn’t seem to make a difference in some cases.  Sequels are kind of like reboots with a history.   Case in point is Gremlins 2: The New Batch.  It has the same basic plot of a cute mogwai producing more mogwai, which eventually turn in to the titular little monsters.

Billy Peltzer and Kate Beringer from the original movie have moved from Kingston Falls to New York City.  They have jobs in Clamp Tower, working for Daniel Clamp.  Visiting them in the big city are Murray and Sheila Futterman.  Murray still remembers the events of the first movie.

For those that don’t, Billy’s father got a mogwai from a store in Chinatown, which Billy named Gizmo.  There are three rules for a mogwai:  Don‘t expose them to light, especially not sunlight; don’t get them wet; don’t feed them after midnight.  Once again, the rules are broken, although not necessarily in that order.

Daniel Clamp is trying to buy out the same store that Gizmo went back to at the end of the first movie.  After the owner’s death, Mr. Clamp is able to buy and demolish the building to make way for his new project.  Gizmo escapes, only to be captured by someone who works in the Clamp Building.  Gizmo is take to a genetics lab, ostensibly to be experimented on.

Through a coincidence, Billy realizes where Gizmo is and rescues the little guy.  Much of the rest of the movie is similar to the first.  Three new mogwai are formed and immediately torture Gizmo.  They become Gremlins, who make a lot more gremlins, who then terrorize the building’s occupants.  In this sense, the sequel seems like a rehash of the first movie, although it’s not as blatant as I would have expected in a sequel.

There are some new elements, like the gremlins getting into the genetics labs and getting new attributes like wings or a more-developed brain.  There are also a few in-jokes and self-referential humor, like Leonard Maltin briefly reviewing the first movie.  If you haven’t seen Gremlins, some things might seem confusing or go over your head.  Strictly speaking, it’s not entirely necessary, but I would recommend it.

The New Batch also seems to rely more on CGI than on puppets.  The CGI is almost seamless, but is a little obvious in a few places.  I’d say that the puppetry in the first movie could be more distracting than the CGI in this one.  Even the puppetry is better.  It’s actually better than what I’d expect of a movie from 1990.

I’m kind of curious to see what they’d do with a Gremlins 3, especially considering that almost 30 years have passed since Gremlins 2 was released.  It could be that the responsibility of Gizmo is handed off to a new generation with Billy and Kate taking on a parental/Mr. Wing role or that the main characters would be recast or replaced.  (I would hope for the former rather than the latter.)

I am curious as to where Gizmo came from.  I don’t think this was directly addressed in either movie.  One would think that there are more Mogwai, even if they’re not all like Gizmo.  Someone once said that it’s hard to imagine hamsters running around in the wild.  Similarly, it’s hard to imagine wild mogwai/gremlins.  The reason I thought of this is that if Gizmo ever ate after midnight, would that necessarily be the end of mogwaikind?  No one ever seems to be worried about this.

IMDb page