Last year I picked up the blu-ray release of the musical film Little Shop of Horror and with than I owned copies of every film version (Original, Theatrical Cut, and Director’s Cut) of the story. The original film was a very low budget affair, written and shot in just a few days. It is notable for the first film appearance of screen legend Jack Nicholson, it is an amusing dark comedy. The film spawned a stage musical and that begat a film adaptation of the musical. When Director Frank Oz screened the film for test audiences they hated the dark ending and he rushed to film and edit a ‘happy’ ending for the movie. The movie never did big box office though it found a small devoted following and the original ending remained unseen at large until this blu-ray release. Now it is possible to view both versions, theatrical and Director’s cut, judging the merits of each. Spoilers follow, naturally.

In the stage and Director’s Cut the principal character die and the monstrous blood eating plant wins, taking over the world. Frank Oz has said that the film taught him the power of the close up and that audiences after living so closely with the characters were unforgiving of their callous deaths, but I think he learned the wrong lesson when they rejected his first cut. It is not the close ups that doomed his vision, but a lack of commitment to the ending and what that ending demands from the characters throughout the story.

If you purchase the original motion picture soundtrack for the musical there is a key song that differs quite a bit from the film version, The Meek Shall Inherit. During the course of the song the main character Seymour realizes that achieve his dream and maintain his sudden financial success he will have to participate in an unending stream of murders and mutilations. At first he rejects this, bt then quickly reverses himself believing that without riches he can never hold on to the lobe of the woman he adores. Committing himself to a future of murder he signs away his conscience as the songs intones ‘The meek are going to gets what’s coming to them.’ The song Foreshadows that Seymour will pay a terrible price for his decision. In neither version, the Theatrical or Director’s cut, is this crucial character turn present. Without this the character’s death at the end is needlessly cruel.

I remember reading in interviews at the time that the production had admitted to filming the deaths and murders in such a way to keep Seymour innocent preserving an alternate ending where he does not die, but they makes the entire premise weak.

As a writer I must know how my story is going to end before I write it. It is in the ending that the themes and plots are resolved. If your story has several different ends possible then your themes are muddled and you are less likely to strike a strong emotional cord with your readers or audience.

One other aspect also seriously damages the Director’s Cut ending – seven minutes without a single named character is the climax of the film. Everyone we have followed and cared about is dead and for seven very long minutes we are treated to a kaiju movie without a plot or a purpose. People engage in a story by engaging with the characters. Remove the characters and you left with very little.