Programme notes CH 03 — The Haunted Screen
The Little Shop of Horrors
A florist's assistant breeds a plant with a diet problem.
Shot in two days and a night on a bet and a leftover set, and the speed is legible on screen as a kind of jazz. Corman's black comedy about retail, appetite, and giving the public what it wants — the plant is a hit; the shop thrives; the arithmetic is the joke. A young Jack Nicholson appears for one scene as a dental masochist and walks off with the picture's id.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Roger Corman
- Photographed by
- Archie R. Dalzell
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Two graduates of the Corman factory: a 24-year-old Coppola given a castle and a schedule, and a two-day comedy that hands Jack Nicholson his first unforgettable scene. The B-movie as film school, tuition paid in speed.
Corman’s speed as a style, three years apart. Little Shop was shot in two days on a set built for another film; The Terror was begun on The Raven’s castle before it came down. Jack Nicholson is in both, first as a dental patient who loves the drill, then as the leading man.
The same writer, the same director and the same joke, a year apart: an underdog who becomes a success by feeding the customers something terrible. Dick Miller is the busboy-sculptor in the first and the flower-eating customer in the second.