Film

Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors is a doo-wop musical about a man-eating plant, and it commits to that premise with total, gleeful sincerity. Rick Moranis plays the meek florist whose new houseplant demands blood and delivers hit songs; Steve Martin turns up as a sadistic dentist. It's horror staged as candy-colored Motown pastiche — funny, filthy, oddly touching, and perfect for anyone who wants their monster movie to make them dance.

TMDb rating7.0

If you liked this

Beetlejuice1988

Tim Burton's own monster-comedy hybrid, with Michael Keaton unleashed as the world's most obnoxious ghost and a sandworm-filled afterlife bureaucracy. Same gleeful collision of the macabre and the ridiculous, same appetite for practical-effects craziness played entirely straight-faced.

But No songs, and Beetlejuice himself is onscreen less than you'd remember — it's really the Deetz family's story.

Beetlejuice poster

The Rocky Horror Picture Show1975

The other great campy horror-musical, and one Little Shop owes a real debt to — glam, queer, deliberately trashy, built for singalong midnight-movie communion rather than polish.

But The plot barely holds together and the pacing sags in the middle; it works far better live, with an audience throwing rice.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show poster

Gremlins1984

Joe Dante's creature comedy turns cute pets into a swarming, murderous horde using the same tonal trick Little Shop pulls: adorable becomes monstrous becomes very, very funny.

But It's more slapstick chaos than musical wit, and the practical creature effects, while charming, show their rubbery seams now.

Gremlins poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Nightmare Before Christmas1993

Both are stage-born musicals about a monstrous outsider who becomes strangely lovable, built from painstaking puppet-and-model craft rather than digital effects — one live-action, one stop-motion animation.

Tim Burton and Danny Elfman's stop-motion musical proves the horror-musical hybrid works just as well without a single live actor — Jack Skellington's songs carry the same theatrical, spooky-sweet DNA as Seymour's.

But It's gentler and more melancholy than gory; nobody gets eaten, and the register is wistful rather than gleefully nasty.

The Nightmare Before Christmas poster
More like this (8)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street2007

Sondheim's musical about a vengeful barber and Mrs. Lovett's meat pies proves horror-musical can go operatic and genuinely grim, not just campy — Depp sings, imperfectly, and it still works.

But Burton drains the color and most of the fun; this is bleak and gory where Little Shop is buoyant.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street poster

Evil Dead II1987

Sam Raimi's slapstick splatter classic swaps musical numbers for possessed hands and chainsaws, but the same anything-goes glee — horror as pure physical comedy — runs right through it.

But It's gorier and much less tuneful; if you came hoping for songs, there simply aren't any here.

Evil Dead II poster

Hairspray1988no page yet

John Waters' original, pre-Broadway version is scrappier and stranger than the musical it later spawned — same era, same tacky-glorious energy, same love of outsiders turning the tables on the establishment.

But It's not actually a musical, which might disappoint anyone hoping for more songs after Little Shop.

Death Becomes Her1992

A pitch-black comedy about vanity, mortality and body horror played for huge, cartoonish laughs — Streep and Hawn commit to grotesque physical comedy the way Audrey II commits to eating people.

But No music, and the satire targets Hollywood vanity rather than Skid Row survival — a very different world.

Death Becomes Her poster

Shaun of the Dead2004

Proof the horror-comedy hybrid travels well to zombies: dry British wit, real gore, and a sweetly earnest romance buried underneath the carnage, much like Seymour and Audrey's.

But It's a very different comic register — deadpan and British rather than broad and musical — so the kinship might not land.

Shaun of the Dead poster

Tremors1990

A monster comedy that knows exactly how silly its giant subterranean worms are and plays the horror completely straight anyway — the same trick of taking a ridiculous premise dead seriously.

But It's a desert creature-feature with no songs and much less style; charming rather than dazzling.

Tremors poster

Bride of Frankenstein1935

Both hinge on a monster you can't help rooting for even as it kills, and both treat that moral discomfort as the joke rather than hiding from it.

James Whale's sequel is the real ancestor of monster movies that make you laugh and wince in the same breath — a sympathetic creature, a mad genius, and startlingly dry wit for 1935.

But It's black-and-white, 75 minutes, and stagey by modern standards — silent-era rhythms that take patience if you're not used to them.

Bride of Frankenstein poster

The Toxic Avenger1984

Same core joke — an unlikely monster born of urban grime and neglect becomes the underdog hero of people the world has written off — played for splatter instead of song.

Troma's DIY superhero-horror-comedy is Little Shop's trashier, punker cousin — a mutant born from urban neglect who dishes out gruesome justice with a completely straight face and zero budget.

But It's deliberately cheap and gross in ways that read as charming to fans and simply repellent to everyone else — no craft polish here.

The Toxic Avenger poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by

Evil Dead, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Santa Clarita Diet, Slither, House, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Anna and the Apocalypse, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Night of the Creeps