10 Horror Musicals You Need To See

Legendary as “The Film Shot In Two Days”, you wouldn’t expect Roger Corman’s The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960) to inspire an off-off-Broadway musical but that’s exactly what happened in 1982 when Alan Menken and Howard Ashman took it to the stage.

Directed by Frank Oz, this film version boasts incredible creature design (by Lyle Conway) and pitch-perfect casting with Rick Moranis just right as the florist’s assistant (and full-time loser) whose “unusual” new plant needs blood to survive. He’s matched by Ellen Greene (reprising her stage role) as his would-be girlfriend, while the excellent supporting cast includes Bill Murray, John Candy and Christopher Guest. Steve Martin, as the dentist, should’ve gotten his own movie.

In this version, the plant (“Audrey II”) speaks with the voice of Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops, and in one of the standout scenes, Audrey II performs “Mean Green Mother From Outer Space”, which became the first song containing profanity to receive an Oscar nomination (it lost out to Top Gun – boo!).

“You can keep The Thing, keep the It, keep the creature, they don’t mean sh*t!” Audrey II sings. They really don’t remake them like they used to, do they?