Happy November everyone. Today is November first and for me that means the beginning of NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) so I should be writing a book right now, instead I’m watching cartoons. I make the big sacrifices for you guys. Last week we watched three horror short films in honor of Halloween, this week we’re going to keep the tone but bring it down so as to not cause trauma to any little ones that may be around. Feed me, you bunch of Seymours!
“Little Shop” Episode 1.1 – Bad Seed (5 out of 10) – Produced by Marvel Productions, Saban, La Cinq and Concorde – New Horizons; Starring Jana Lexxa, Jennie Kwan, Michael Rawl, and Terry McGee; Originally aired September 7, 1991.
“Little Shop” is based on the Broadway musical, and subsequent live action movie “Little Shop of Horrors” starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin, both of which are based on a 1961 film of the same name. My first introduction to this universe was when I was probably ten years old. My Dad had the original Roger Corman flick in his collection of VHS tapes. I used to lay out in the living room and watch it while I went to sleep. Later I came across the Rick Moranis musical version; at first I didn’t like it. It changed the tone of the story too much for my taste, I was used to the black and white flick that scared me a little when I was younger, this lighter version had lost what was special about the story. However, as time passed I learned to appreciate what the musical had to offer, eventually I came to love the later version. This cartoon is based on that but unfortunately it just doesn’t have the same hook.
Though there are still songs, much else has changed as the story that once made me afraid of the garden has been watered down both by songs and then by the adaptation to children’s television. Essentially it became a poorly made moderately written Disney flick. The show isn’t bad necessarily, it just isn’t that good. In this iteration Seymour and Audrey are children, Seymour works at the flower shop owned by Audrey’s father Mr. Mushnik. One day while on his way home from school, Seymour encounters a bully who throws him in a dumpster, he is then picked up by a garbage truck and taken to the dump where he finds a seed in the ground.
Seymour takes the seed back to Mushnik’s flower shop and plants it, the plant quickly begins to thrive and soon reveals itself to be a sentient 200 million year old dormant plant. Seymour names the plant Junior and the plant continues to grow, hiding its true nature from everyone but Seymour.
Junior, called Audrey Junior and Audrey II in the previous films, doesn’t want to eat people, he just wants to go home, in addition to Juniors obvious intelligence and awareness it is also revealed that the plant can infuse its own seeds with an idea and plant them in the mind of a human being ultimately brain washing them for a short time. When Seymour and Junior make it back to his previous home they find that the forest where he once lived has since been petrified by the machinations of time and Seymour agrees to return to the store and stay with Seymour.
Junior is horrified when he soon learns that humans consume plants and vows his revenge, though his attempts to militarize the flowers in Mr. Mushnik’s store are….. ahem… fruitless.
When I started to watch it I noticed that something bothered me, it felt familiar somehow but not quite right, then it hit me. This show is basically “Peanuts,” the animation looks similar and you could replace Seymour with Charlie Brown and not notice a difference accept maybe the shape of the head. So there you have it, the unlikely friendship of the loneliest kid you know and a sentient plant sort of hell bent on destroying humanity. It isn’t the greatest, but at least it’s not “The Legend of Zelda.”
One last thing, as an added bonus this episode still contains the original commercials played along with the show. Seeing the commercials was like finding a prize in your cereal when you didn’t expect one, an awesome piece of nostalgia to help cement the experience. You could skip them but I wouldn’t recommend it.
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE