Written by Charles B. Griffith, the film is a farce about a florist's assistant who cultivates a plant that feeds on human blood.

[10][11][12][13] The film slowly gained a cult following through word of mouth when it was distributed as the B movie in a double feature with Mario Bava's Black Sunday[10][14] and later with Last Woman on Earth.

Hoping to change his mind, Seymour talks about a plant he has grown from seeds he got from a "Japanese gardener over on Central Avenue.

Throwing a rock to vent his frustration, he inadvertently knocks out a drunken man who falls on the track and is run over by a train.

A representative of the Society of Silent Flower Observers of Southern California announces that Seymour will receive a trophy and that she will return to the shop when the plant's buds open.

Lacking clues about the disappearances, Fink and Stoolie attend a sunset celebration at the shop during which Seymour is to be presented with the trophy and Audrey Jr.'s buds are expected to open.

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.

According to Mel Welles, Corman was not impressed by the box office performance of A Bucket of Blood, and had to be persuaded to direct another comedy.

[14] After Corman rejected the idea, Griffith says he wrote a screenplay titled Gluttony,[14] in which the protagonist was "a salad chef in a restaurant who would wind up cooking customers and stuff like that, you know?

Officers Fink and Stoolie were obvious take-offs of Dragnet characters Joe Friday and Frank Smith.

[14] 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.

"[14] At the time of shooting, Jack Nicholson had appeared in two films and worked with Roger Corman as the lead in The Cry Baby Killer.

"[6] However, Welles states that "Absolutely none of it was ad-libbed [...] every word in Little Shop was written by Chuck Griffith, and I did ninety-eight pages of dialogue in two days.

"[14] Griffith and Welles also persuaded a funeral home to donate a hearse and coffin—with a real corpse inside—for the film shoot.

[14] Griffith and Welles were able to use the nearby Southern Pacific Transportation Company yard for an entire evening using two bottles of scotch as persuasion.

[7] The scene in which a character portrayed by Robert Coogan is run over by a train was accomplished by persuading the railroad crew to back the locomotive away from the actor.

[14] The Little Shop of Horrors was screened out of competition at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival on the strength of its reviews in trade papers.

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.

[10] 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 film entering the public domain.

"[42] Jack Nicholson, recounting the reaction to a screening of the film, states that the audience "laughed so hard I could barely hear the dialogue.

He cited the hilarious performances delivered by the ensemble cast and Corman's strong results while working under the self-imposed pressures of a cheap budget and a fast shooting schedule.

Seymour and Audrey were depicted as 13-year-olds, and the plant, "Junior", was a rapping carnivorous prehistoric creature that sprouted from a fossilized seed.

[47][48] Legend Films' colorized version was well received,[49][50] and was also given a theatrical premiere at the Coney Island Museum on May 27, 2006.

[51] The DVD included an audio commentary track by comedian Michael J. Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame.

[16][49] A DivX file of Legend's colorized version with the commentary embedded is also available as part of Nelson's RiffTrax On Demand service.

[52] On January 28, 2009, a newly recorded commentary by Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett was released by RiffTrax in MP3 and DivX formats.

On December 7, 2016, Deadline reported that Greg Berlanti is set to direct a revamped film of the musical adaptation with Matthew Robinson writing the script.

[60] The 2023 Christmas advert for British department store John Lewis & Partners took inspiration from Little Shop Of Horrors, featuring a giant Venus flytrap called "Snapper".

[63] In March 2024, Deadline announced that Joe Dante and Roger Corman were working on a reboot to be titled Little Shop of Halloween Horrors.