Ani's DB Analysis Blogs: The Big Green Greedy from The Shop of Horrors! Audrey II'nd
Just a few things before we start…
(Guess I’m doing musicals now huh?)
Hello there, and yes the title of this Blog does not deceive you, if you wondered what the hint on that V1 vs Neon White blog meant (the Hint was this btw) this is what I meant by it. Yea, this was it lol.
This time I come back with a short but hopefully sweet little blog, something about a movie/musical that I really like, I admit to be a bit of a theater/musical kind of guy, and just wanted to unwind a little after the massive undertaking of the previously mentioned blog and I said “hey, this sounds fun” and It was! So I wanted to share that fun with everyone. Hope this suffices.
Thankfully the show, despite its popularity and status as a cult classic doesn’t have a lot of stuff to it, the original source is the movie from the 60’s from which the musical was inspired and turned into the classic we all know. From there other productions of the Musical have been made, all conserving the same structure with changes only really in aesthetic, and to complement the movies 2 comics were made and released, one much later than the other but hey it's a pretty faithful adaptation! So for this blog I just wanted to be thorough with it, if this interests you in any way I would honestly advise looking into the movies and the musicals. They are so much fun and its clear so many talented people worked on them and it just makes me so happy. Down here I put down my sources:
- The Original 1960’s movie (Link here).
- The original musical inspired by the movie (Links here aaaand here); its script (link here) and its subsequent re-runs.
- The 1986 Movie both Theatrical and Original endings (Link to the whole thing here).
- The Graphic Novel Adaptation of the 60’s movie. (Link here).
- The DC comic adaptation of the 86’s movie (Link here).
Surprisingly, some of the more knowledgeable might notice I’m not including some stuff, specifically a tv show by the name of Little shop. Frankly, even though realistically applicable aside from some key differences like tone, the look of the characters (but most impotantly story), I decided against it due to it simply not providing much and feeling like more of a side-material. However it is an interesting product of its era and if you’re into things like old media I can say that I sorta recommend it. It's fun on how dated it is.
Also before I start this blog just… Huge shoutouts to the LSoH Wiki and The Little Shop Archive on YT, they were incredible sources for this blog. Without much else to say, let’s dive into this little blog of horrors!
Background
(The New broadway Cast Recording - Prologue / Little Shop of Horrors)
On the twenty-first day of the month of September, in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. And this terrifying enemy surfaced – as such enemies often do – in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places.
The place? Skid Row, a poor downtown area where the people fought for the powers to be, where the food was slop, and depression was simply the status quo... all around, not the nicest place to live and most definitely not the one to start a business. But alas, our story starts in a little flower shop by the name of Muschnik’s Flower Shop, in there a man by the name of Seymour Krelborn; an orphan picked by the man of the shops namesake from whom he worked for, having low self-esteem and a crush on a woman he thought he would never have by the name of Audrey the man lived his days asking god what was his purpose, his answer? “Gee I Don’t know”.
So the days passed by, business was blowing up (in their faces that is) and all around not a fun time, but all would come to a sudden change one faithful day at the dawn of a solar eclipse, for in a shop Seymour frequented a mysterious plant came to appear (in the original version he is given seeds), he took the plant thinking it would make the perfect talking piece for people to come and see the newborn plant and named it after Audrey, becoming Audrey Jr/2nd.
Now, one would simply wave this crazy bumbling dork aside and fire him but no his plan actually worked for once, people came to admire the plant, business began to bloom Audrey and Seymour seemed closer than ever before! Green was everything that the young entrepreneur could see. However, that green did not come from nowhere, for behind curtains a dark secret brewed, the plant was alive. Audrey 2nd was alive! It spoke, it wanted to feed, but not just on any regular compost or minerals, it needed a more… human kind of food, insecurities and blood. For Audrey 2nd desired more and more, leaching on the poor man’s insecurities and greed to commit horrible acts under the threat that if its hunger was not quelled, it would destroy everything he had become.
Soon the problem plant would become, quite literally, too large to ignore, its wicked machinations culminating in a plan to take over not only the shop and of Seymore’s life, but to take over the entire world. Seymour himself realized this, and through heartbreak and tribulations he confronted the wicked weed.
What would happen next varies from tale to tale, in some out hero is victorious and the threat is destroyed, its plans never to be fulfilled, in some both Seymour and Audrey 2nd perish as a symbolic representation of their ambition, and in some, the worst of them all, the plant is feed too much, and the world is crushed under its diabolic weight.
Regardless of the side of the story you prefer, one thing is undeniable, not all green the future presents is green worth watering.
Equipment
(TlSoH 86’s Movie OST - Big Green Mother from Outer-Space)
Gun
(Plants vs Zombies be like: )
It's a big mean glock from planet earth and it’s bad~
Abilities
(LSoH The New Cast Album - Feed Me (Git it!))
Funky Alien Plant Physiology
It must be blood, and it must be fresh! The more the plant eats the more it will grow and grow until it eventually becomes too much to handle, however for Audrey 2nd itself this is good news, as the liquid seems to allow it to evolve pretty quickly allowing it to learn speech and sufficient intelligence to use appliances such as phones. It will also grow strong, its hide so strong bullets just bounce off it and become even immune to being poisoned! Just remember kids, eat your veggies or they will most definitely eat you :)
Hypnosis
Straight out of the original movie, Audrey 2nd does seem to have some latent supernatural ability to mind-control people and force them to do their bidding, how is done its not entirely shown, in the original 60’s movie the plant simply takes over Seymour and tells him to go and find him food, in the comic (as shown above) it seems to be thanks to a special type of vine. Regardless of the case, hypnosis seems to be pretty powerful, even to make people act like a chicken!
Vines
It only makes sense that a plant has roots, and the wicked weaves that Audrey 2nd can spawn are nothing short of impressive, capable of overpowering people and destroying things such as brick to concrete to floors! Audrey 2nd has shown to be pretty smart and versatile with these vines, being able to use them as hands and tools of ensnarement so Audrey 2nd can later munch on its victims, amazingly these vines are even strong enough to pull itself as a form of walking! Even more Surprisingly (or not so much) the vicious psychotic plant has been able to grow different types of vines, from normal ones to ones that can hypnotize people (like seen in the hypnotizing section) even to smaller singing versions of itself, great for musical numbers! It should be mentioned as well that the amount of vines that our fella here seems capable of growing seems rather extreme, in the most insane of situations is shown to cover the entire theater with vines!
In the creepiest of cases however, it seems that Audrey 2nd can somehow keep the escenses it devours, allowing those eaten by the monster to later sprout like flowers with their faces, faces fully capable of speaking, and having sick as fuck musical numbers too!
Duplication
Although not a particularly quick process, it seems that Audrey 2nd can create duplicates or at least produce spawn to keep up the party if it needs to, how long these spawn take to grow and become active is unknown. Can we make safe assumptions that it's relatively quick? Sorta, In the Musical (and the 86’s movie) leaves of Audrey 2nd are synthesized so the whole of the US can have them and it seems to be a short time, in the original movie they even say that it grows from seeds. The speed at which they develop might be tied to how much they can eat which could explain the variability, however even with that in mind it’s not an instantaneous duplication ala Gremlins.
Size Growth
The bread and butter of Andre 2nd, by consuming blood and flesh the plant can grow, and I do mean GROW, this fella can boom in size with just a good feeding, in just one night of drinking of the tasty substance it was able to go from a simple bud to almost a foot tall! And by the end of the story it is about 2-3 meters high, however, we can go even bigger! In the musical it is shown that by time Audrey 2nd has conquered the world it< is as big as the whole auditorium (so about 6-10 meters) hell going even FURTHER in the original ending of the 86’s movie the Audries’ are shown to be as large as buildings, some even as big as the head of Lady Liberty herself. Tho we are never given an exact limit on this size, we can assume that the more it eats, the larger it grows (metaphor-for-greed moment).
Teleportation
There does seem to be an implication that Audrey 2nd might be able to teleport, or at least zap itself through mysterious ways that we don’t really know about brought on by the musical and the subsequent material related to it. In the Musical itself is simply described as: - “and then I heard a strange humming sound like something from another world, then the light came back this strange plant was just sitting there!” - in the movie adaptation of the musical it is shown as a beam of light shooting from the eclipse to earth and in the comic the quote from the original Musical seems reinforced.
However it should be noted that this is the only occasion this ability has been shown so, it's likely to be some sort of one-way teleportation and not an innate ability to Audrey 2nd, so take it with a Broodway-sized room of salt.
Feats
(The New broadway Cast Recording - Finale Ultimo, Don’t Feed The Plants)
Strength
- Can punch through buildings of brick with ease.
- Collapsed Mushnik’s flower shop on top of itself.
- Can completely crush a man just by closing its mouth.
- When in giant form it blew up a whole building by blowing it.
- A big Audrey shakes the entire Brooklin Bridge
Speed
- Snatches a gun away from Seimour’s hand before he can react.
- Dodges some Axe swings (as seen above).
- Munches a train as it comes by (yes ik its not a speed feat give me a break I needed to fill this someho-).
Durability
- Can survive a flower shop falling on top of it.
- In the original Musical it survived an attempt by Seymour to kill it from the inside.
- In the Movie is shown bullets just bunce of it (as shown above), in the movies it is even shown that military-grade weaponry does little damage.
Scaling…?
None notable, like, legitimately none, it makes sense considering Audrey is the only supernatural entity in the series, unless you count inhaling lethal doses of Nitrous Oxide as a form of scaling. Regardless, because I wouldn’t like to leave this section empty I made a small compilation of funny faces from the comic book I found and put in this collage, have fun!
Weaknesses
Despite it being a sweet-talking super alien plant from the very eighth ring of hell itself, Audrey 2nd does seem to have some weaknesses at least. First and foremost is that if it doesn’t have a steady supply of food it will simply die like any other plant even if grown to a sizable degree. Aside from that, despite its hide being night impenetrable its insides are not, this is how it was originally killed in the 60’s movie, by Seymour killing it from the inside (bit hard to tell in the OG movie but in the comic they do specify that it died) and famously in the 86’s movie electricity seemed to do the trick, as a high enough current was enough to give the big mean plant a case of Self-Exploding itis. However, for a fully grown Audrey 2nd it is hard to tell if they would have any meaningful weaknesses… so your safest bet is to kill it before it gets to that point honestly, you know what they say, don’t feed the goddamned plant!
Before we go…
Hey there! Happy to be here, even if its just for
a very short blog, I hope that you had fun with it, this is one of those very
weird ones that I wanted to do a while now and idk, just had a lot of fun
seeing the movies again and wanted to share that love for it, hope this blog
founds you well and as always I would like to thank all my friends that support
me through everything.
And, as always, thanks to you the reader! I
hope you had fun with this and I hope to have something else in the near
future, have a wonderful time.
Be good to one another
Stay strong
And remember to drink water
Much love!
-Ani
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