It’s not often you see a “director’s cut’’ that totally changes a movie for the better. But that’s definitely the case with the version of “The Little Shop of Horrors’’ recently released on Blu-ray, which restores Frank Oz’s significantlydarker ending.
Howard Ashman, who wrote the original musical and the script for the 1986 film, ended both with the deaths of its two main characters, the nebbishy Seymour (Rick Moranis) and his girl Audrey (Ellen Greene, repeating her stage role).
After that, the man-eating plant Audrey II and its offspring lay waste to 1950s New York City in an extended 15-minute homage to the era’s giant-monster movies .
Oz says he was especially proud of the model and puppet work in this sequence, which took a year to design and shoot, and included a miniature version of the Brooklyn Bridge. There was only one problem: Test audiences really hated this ending. “Only 13 percent of [them] said they would recommend it,’’ Oz says.
The elaborate ending was scrapped for a more conventional happy one, in which Seymour and Audrey survive.
In 2009, Warner Bros. told Oz they wanted to create a full-length version as he originally intended it. “I was overjoyed,’’ Oz says. “A lot of people worked for a very long time on this, and it was heartbreaking to tell them it wasn’t being used.’’
Does Oz think contemporary audiences will be more receptive to the darkly comedic ending? “I really don’t know,’’ he says. “The audience was so emotionally invested in Seymour and Audrey that it was hard to accept their deaths.’’
Still, Oz says he’d be thrilled if Warner Bros. were to give this new version of “Little Shop’’ a theatrical release. It got him a standing ovation when it was shown last month at the New York Film Festival.