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The Little Shop of Horrors, a review by Jon

The Little Shop of Horrors
4 out of 5



The original movie of this classic black comedy/horror about a rather dim-witted young man, Seymour (Jonathan Haze), working for $10 a week in Mushnick's flower shop on skid row who develops an intelligent, bloodthirsty plant. He names the plant ' Audrey Junior' and, as it grows, it demands human meat for sustenance and Seymour is forced to kill in order to feed it.

The Little Shop of Horrors is a little gem of a film the making of which has muddied by legend, but the story goes Roger Corman filmed it in just two days after developing the script in less than a week. He couldn't have filmed it any cheaper and to say it was a rush-job to make use of a set about to be pulled down, it's excellent. It's creaky, but holds up well and you don't feel like you have to make excuses for it. It really is a great story and very witty. It's so irreverent, it borders on a spoof.

It could have been a Hammer horror in another time and place, but it's set in an L.A. Skid Row florists, populated by a collection of characters who all have their own quirks beyond what the plot needs to the point it runs like a sketch show. Like Seymour's mother, who is such a hypochondriac she serves cod liver oil as soup! Or Corman regular Dick Miller who eats flowers, and of course, a young Jack Nicholson in a cameo as a masochistic dental patient. Obviously Corman thrived on pressure and wrote like there was a gun to his head! It's not just the writing though. The timing between the cast is really well done, especially when Jewish florist owner Krushnik (Mel Welles) is at the centre of the scene. Everyone just seems to bounce off him.

It's a huge amount of fun and very short, so well worth you digging it out, especially as the DVD only costs pennies.



(From Jon's Random Reviews on January 6th, 2010)

Wonder Man, a review by GSyren

Title	Wonder Man (Disc ID: 3436-D993-1ED6-14F2)
Director	H. Bruce Humberstone
Actors	Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen , Donald Woods, S. Z. Sakall
Produced	1945 in United States
Runtime	98 minutes
Audio	English Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles	None
Overview
My thoughts	Well, this was definitely a big step up from Up in Arms. Danny Kaye's second feature film shows him in a much better form than the first. The only thing that I didn't particularly like was the Otchi Tchorniya number. There is a thin line between silly/funny and silly/annoying, and for me this number crosses that line. That's the only thing that prevents me from giving this film 4 stars. Not only does this film have a vastly superior script to the previous one. It also has vastly superior female actors. Vera-Ellen is very good, but I absolutely love Virginia Mayo. She would come back to star against Kaye in three more films; The Kid from Brooklyn, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and A Song is Born. She was actually also in Up in ArmsThe Invisible Man invisible, and helped Moses part The Red Sea in The Ten Commandments
My rating

(From Reviews and ramblings by Gunnar on April 13th, 2014)

"Due South" marathon, a review by Tom

2.17 Red, White or Blue (1996-05-16)
Writer: Paul Haggis (Created By), Paul Gross (Story By), John Krizanc (Story By), Paul Gross (Screenwriter)
Director: George Bloomfield
Cast: Paul Gross (Constable Benton Fraser), David Marciano (Detective Ray Vecchio), Beau Starr (Lt. Harding Welsh), Tony Craig (Detective Jack Huey), Catherine Bruhier (Elaine), Camilla Scott (Inspector Margaret Thatcher), Kenneth Welsh (Randal Bolt), Raye Birk (Francis Bolt), Alex Carter (Agent Ford), Gary Reineke (Judge Brock), Ellen Dubin (States Attorney), Mark Melymick (Agent Deeter), Shawn Wright (Mountie Trainee), Norm Spencer (Agent Shorren), James Allodi (Asst. States Attorney), Maria Ricossa (Vivian Richards)

A good episode. I love the scene, where Ray and Fraser have a conversation with each other without being in the same room. It's a throwback to an earlier episode. This shows how well they know each other and can tell exactly what the other would be saying to them. I also find it nice that they have some small moments between Fraser and Thatcher showing us, that their "contact" on the train is not entirely forgotten.

Rating:

(From "Due South" marathon on September 1st, 2009)