Roger Corman’s Drive-In: How “Little Shop of Horrors” Got Found, and Got Copyrighted

Well, now that summer’s almost here, it’s time for some drive-in movies. Of course, flicks you watch from your car are pretty much a thing of the past. But B-movie maven Roger Corman has just launched his very own YouTube subscription channel, which has been aptly dubbed “Corman’s Drive-In.”  For a mere $3.99 per month, subscribers can enjoy old movies culled from the Corman archives. First up is a rarity, 1958’s The Cry Baby Killer, in which Jack Nicholson made his screen debut. It will be followed by a Corman classic, the original Little Shop of Horrors.

Little Shop, of course, is the two-day wonder that was cranked out by Roger to take advantage of sets left standing when another production wrapped. Chuck Griffith dashed off the story of a dimwitted flower-shop assistant who breeds a plant that thrives on human blood. The young Jack Nicholson joined forces with Corman regulars Jonathan Haze, Dick Miller, and Mel Welles in this gruesome but hilarious farce. The budget totaled about $27,500, and the film’s threadbare look became part of the fun.

Typically, Roger didn’t get around to copyrighting his quickie movie. But when Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s musical version of Little Shop became an off-Broadway hit in 1982, he discovered that his earlier laxness was now costing him money. Television stations were frequently airing his 1960 film, and people were even circulating pirated home video versions. In order to sell his own authorized videos, Roger needed to locate the master print. But given the chaotic state of record-keeping at Concorde-New Horizons Pictures, no one had any idea where it was. It fell to a young staff editor named Steve Barnett to track down the elusive print.

As usual, Roger had never bothered to make what’s called an “interpositive” as a backup in case of damage. Steve has detailed for me how he located the original Little Shop cut negative at a film lab’s storage facility. The optical soundtrack was also there, but not the “three-stripe,” the magnetic tape of the dialogue, music, and effects soundtracks. An optical soundtrack is celluloid, and can be extremely fragile when it’s old. Steve remembers that “I was deathly afraid to put the soundtrack into the printer, for fear it would crumble and we would lose it forever.”

Fortunately, Roger’s brother Gene suggested that the magnetic tape of the film might be in the vault at a local sound lab, possibly stored under another name. So Steve’s sleuthing continued: “Down there in the basement of Ryder Sound in Hollywood, dusting off all these old boxes, we found this one stack that said, ‘Passionate People Eater’—barely visible. The ink was on masking tape and it was evaporating. So we almost didn’t know what it was.” It was, in fact, the object of Steve’s search, labeled with the film’s working title. After his eureka moment, he quickly went to work making copies of Little Shop’s various elements: “I wanted as much protection for it as I could get, as much for Roger’s own good as for what I felt was this amazing piece of film history. I was just thrilled to be able to protect something that I’d watched as a kid on television. And so if you buy the authorized video now, it’s this pristine, beautiful copy. I don’t think Roger knew I went as far as a fine-grain interpositive and an internegative—but he knows now, so there you go.”

Sounds like Corman’s Drive-In owes Steve Barnett a big debt of gratitude. And a generous reward — but that’s hardly Roger’s style.