The Little Shop of Horrors AIP distributed the film as the B movie for their release of Mario Bava's "Black Sunday". Despite being barely mentioned in advertising (it was only occasionally referred to as an "Added Attraction" to Bava's film), "Black Sunday"'s critical and commercial success resulted in positive word of mouth responses to "The Little Shop of Horrors". The film was re-released again the following year in a double feature with "Last Woman on Earth". Because Corman did not believe that "The Little Shop of Horrors" had much financial prospect after its initial theatrical run, he did not bother to copyright it, resulting in
The Little Shop of Horrors with us, and the three of us worked out the rest of the story together. The first screenplay Griffith wrote was "Cardula", a Dracula-themed story involving a vampire music critic. After Corman rejected the idea, Griffith says he wrote a screenplay titled "Gluttony", in which the protagonist was "a salad chef in a restaurant who would wind up cooking customers and stuff like that, you know? We couldn't do that though because of the code at the time. So I said, "How about a man-eating plant?", and Roger said, "Okay." By that time, we were both drunk." Jackie Joseph later