The Little Shop of Horrors Wells story "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid"). Mythology about man-eating plants dates back to at least the 1800s, and probably much earlier. The film stars Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, and Dick Miller, all of whom had worked for Corman on previous films. Produced under the title "The Passionate People Eater", the film employs an original style of humor, combining black comedy with farce and incorporating Jewish humor and elements of spoof. "The Little Shop of Horrors" was shot on a budget of $28,000, with interiors being shot in two days utilizing sets that had been left standing
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