The Little Shop of Horrors face of Seymour, which pitifully moans, "I didn't mean it!" before drooping over—apparently ending the life of Audrey Jr. "The Little Shop of Horrors" was developed when director Roger Corman was given temporary access to sets that had been left standing from his previous film, "A Bucket of Blood". Corman decided to use the sets in a film made in the last two days before the sets were torn down. Corman initially planned to develop a story involving a private investigator. In the initial version of the story, the character that eventually became Audrey would have been referred to as
The Little Shop of Horrors has been denied by Mel Welles. According to Joseph, Corman shot the film quickly in order to beat changing industry rules that would have prevented producers from "buying out" an actor's performance in perpetuity. On January 1, 1960, new rules were to go into effect requiring producers to pay all actors residuals for all future releases of their work. This meant that Corman's B-movie business model would be permanently changed and he would not be able to produce low-budget movies in the same way. Before these rules went into effect, Corman decided to shoot one last film and scheduled it