The Little Shop of Horrors

Context & Trivia

Audrey Jr. is a simple construction compared to the creatures it would go on to inspire: a handful of dialogue lines, a budget of $28,000 to $34,000, and a voice provided by screenwriter Charles B. Griffith himself — details that give this puppet an intimate, almost handcrafted quality. Built with minimal resources, it still commands enough presence to carry the entire film.

This 1960 Audrey Jr. is the original sketch behind a long puppet lineage. It inspired the 1982 Off-Broadway musical and Frank Oz's 1986 film, where the plant — renamed Audrey II — became a large-scale animatronic undertaking, with multiple puppet builds ranging from a small seedling to a massive version constructed for the finale. To achieve fluid movement, scenes were shot at 12 or 16 frames per second and sped up to the standard 24 fps, requiring actors such as Rick Moranis to lip-sync in slow motion. Corman's creature is, in that sense, the starting point for one of the most recognizable puppet builds in twentieth-century cinema.