This weekend I got caught up on last week’s The Colbert Report, and I saw the interview with Frank Oz mentioning . . .
The Bluray Release of the Director’s Cut of Little Shop of Horrors!!!
According to Wiki, this was released way back in October and somehow I am just now finding out about it. In part, I blame you people. I happen to know that there are some fans here and yet I did a search and found nothing.
I love the stage show and I love the movie right up to the point where they tack on the lame happy ending. It’s not the only flaw of the movie, but the movie is pretty damned good and if it weren’t for the Hollywood Ending it would more than suffice as an excellent take-home version of the wonderful stage musical. But the ending, that totally lame happy ending!
I had read about how Oz originally shot an ending that was more faithful to the stage show. I had read about the recalled DVD Release that had, as a special feature, the black and white undubbed work print for the original ending. I have long dreamed of the opportunity to see a restored version of the film.
YAY!
I haven’t picked it up yet, and I won’t have $25 to spend on myself until after the Holidays. So, unless someone intuits that it would be a great Christmas present for me, I won’t get it until later in January. I am really looking forward to it though!
YAY!
One rreason you’re hearing about this, I think, is because Frank Oz has been hyping it on on The Colbert Report, and possibly elsewhere.
I read about this (and saw scenes from it) when the movie was first released – it wasn’t exactly a deep dark secret. For one thing, the stage musical ended with the Plants taking over, so you’d sort of expect the movie to end the same way. Magazines like Cinefantastique featured scenes from the deleted ending. (Among other things, there are stop-motion scenes that directly pay homage to Ray Harryhausen by having the plants crash through a painted posted for Jason and the Argonauts).
Ijn fact, IIRC, the Original Ending has appeared as an extra on at least one DVD release. The difference now is that the ending now appears as the “standard” ending on the new Blu-Ray?) release.
I checked and the Blu-Ray is only $17.99 at Amazon.
Do they have any new songs on the DVD?
The “original ending” has the song “Don’t feed the plants”, which isn’t in the as-released version. But, as I say, I think the “original ending” was available on at least some DVDs before this.
CalMeacham, it’s not that I’m just now hearing about the alternate ending- it’s that I’m just now hearing about the newly released restored version of the film. And, yes, the first I heard about the new release was the Frank Oz interview on Colbert last week (which I just watched over the weekend).
My teasing of “I blame you people” was because the Bluray was actually released back in October. I was feigning offense that no one on the SDMB started a Thread back then to inform me.
And I am sure that the previous DVD release that you are referring to is the same release I mentioned in the OP. According to Wiki, the black and white undubbed workprint was a special feature on a DVD release that was recalled just days after it first hit store shelves. David Geffen was apparently unaware that the work print of the alternate ending was included as a special feature until the DVD had already been released. Within days all copies of the DVD were recalled on Geffen’s command.
Wiki entry on the DVD release and immediate recall.
Other than that recalled DVD release, the alternate ending has never been commercially available- and that special feature was just a work print anyway. This new release is the very first release with the original ending restored to a director’s cut of the film.
JoelUpchurch, thanks for the price check!
In addition to “Don’t Feed the Plants” the reprise of “Suddenly Seymour” from the theatrical version is cut and replaced by a “Somewhere That’s Green” reprise matching the reprise from the stage show.
The other songs from the stage show that didn’t make it to the film are all from the middle of the story. The only previously cut footage being reinserted is the alternate ending, so none of those other songs are added. They were all cut when the play was adapted to the screenplay, they were never filmed.
Well, no, the difference is the ending is complete - full colour with all the music, &c - not black and white with incomplete sound, which is all they had before. There might possibly be some other stuff missing from the DVD version, too, but I’ve never seen it intact, only intercut with some of the footage from the theatrical version in a (mostly successful) attempt to recreate the original ending (or part of it…the guy only posted up to Seymour going to confront Audrey II after whatsisface goes to talk to him).
Thanks for the heads up! Love the show and the ‘real ending’.
Very odd. I know that I’ve seebn the original ending before, and in color, not blaxck and white. But I probably didn’t see it on a DVD release.
Just looked over the wiki page and elsewhere in this enfding. I find it odd that it claims that color copies werre destroyed by studio fire in 2002. I know that i saw portions of the original ending, in color, and with sound , and that it was possibly before that time. ( I’ve definitely seen the plants breaking through the brick wall with the Jason and the Atgonauts poster painted on it, and definitely in color) There m,ust have been copies circulating privately, besides the one that Geffen claimed to have. If anything, this is the first legal release.
I can’t help but wonder if, over the past 25 years, your mind created the memory by animating the stills you had seen in the magazine articles.
. . . or maybe you were in either the San Jose or Los Angeles test audiences?
I knew someone would say that.
No, I really did see excerpts from the color original finale, with singing plants. I know that I never saw black and white images, because until this thread I didn’t realize that the limited-release DVD had stuff from a black and white workprint on it.
Not my mind making things up, I guarantee.
Perhaps you worked on the film? An editor perhaps? Sound mixing? Are you David Geffen, maybe, and you just forgot?
A more serious guess: Could it have been a promotional television special like a “behind the scenes” or a “making of” kind of a thing? Perhaps some other kind of documentary?
I don’t recall. It wasn’t at a con or anything, probably on television. But it was in a pretty common venue, which is why I’m surprised this footage is being treated as some long-lost revelation.