Sunday, December 24, 2006

Little Shop of Horrors: The Original Ending

Little Shop of Horrors: The Original Ending

"Little Shop of Horrors" original ending part 1

"Little Shop of Horrors" original ending part 2

"Little Shop of Horrors" original ending part 3: Part 3 may not play at all, because I had problems with it.

When LSH was remade into the 80s version, it originally had a much darker ending to the film, which the play and older film had as well. Both Audrey and Seymour die in the original version of the film, and the killer plant takes over the planet. Test audiences hated this ending, and the studio demanded a change. They said it was too dark for a comedy. (Note: If you look closely in the theater cut, Audrey still retains a bloody wound near her stomach, but the wound disappears within a minute, thus showing where the re-shot footage was placed.)

While the ending we see in the final film is pretty good, this ending gives us a whole new spin on the movie. Seymour shows guilt and climbs up a building to kill himself, but is stopped by Paul Dooley (Jim Belushi in the final version) who informs him that they’ll be selling baby killer plants across the US, and Seymour realizes he needs to stop Audrey II. He fails and is eaten by Audrey II.

You decide if this ending is better than the one in the movie.

BTW, The Mean Green Mother song is slightly different than the one in the final film

Here’s some info from Answers.com

Little Shop of Horrors was the first DVD to be recalled for content.

David Geffen, the film's producer and owner of the rights, apparently wanted to re-release the film to theaters with the original ending intact. Geffen became angry at Warner Bros. for including this footage on the DVD without his consent, and as a result, the studio yanked it off the shelves in a matter of days and replaced with a second edition without the extra material. The original first edition DVD is now a much sought-after collector's item and sells for upwards of $150 on eBay, although there are copies of the ending floating around the net. Some guess that, with the coming 20th anniversery of the film's theatrical release, it will be featured on a new DVD, though with no announcement regarding this as of October 2006, (two months from the 20th Anniversary) this seems unlikely. Some even speculate that they're aiming for the 25th anniversary for a re-release.

2 comments:

  1. ooh... you don't want to piss off David Geffen. That is a fatal Hollywood mistake.

    I like that ending better(could be edited a little more tightly though).

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  2. Yeah, it does tend to drag a bit. Part of me sees why people didnt like this ending, but I do think we should be given a choice which ending we'd like to see via the DVD.

    I'm going to try to get the third section of that ending on this blog, because it has a whole new song "Don't Feed the Plants" that goes on another 6-8 minutes and has a lot of FX and stunt work.

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