The Little Mermaid (1989 film) "Oliver & Company". He proposed changing the minor character Clarence, the English-butler crab, to a Jamaican crab and shifting the music style throughout the film to reflect this. At the same time, Katzenberg, Clements, Musker, and Ashman revised the story format to make "Mermaid" a musical with a Broadway-style story structure, with the song sequences serving as the tentpoles of the film. Ashman and composer Alan Menken, both noted for their work as the writers of the successful Off-Broadway stage musical "Little Shop of Horrors", teamed up to compose the entire song score. In 1988, with "Oliver" out of the
The Little Shop of Horrors father appears as a dental patient, and his grandmother, Myrtle Vail, appears as Seymour's hypochondriac mother. Dick Miller, who had starred as the protagonist of "A Bucket of Blood" was offered the role of Seymour, but turned it down, instead taking the smaller role of Burson Fouch. Production at the "Bucket of Blood" sets was compressed into three days of cast rehearsals, immediately followed by two days and one night of principal photography. It had been rumored that the film's shooting schedule was based on a bet that Corman could not complete a film within that time. However, this claim