Please Don't Eat My Mother!

Roger Corman's "The Little Shop of Horrors" (1960) was filmed in under five days with the teensiest of budgets, yet it is a very funny, consistently entertaining little gem of a movie. The 1972 soft-core remake, "Please Don't Eat My Mother," looks to have a practically nonexistent budget, too, but it is hardly ever funny and something of a chore to sit through. In this cheesy cheapie, we meet Henry Fudd, a middle-aged Jewish voyeur who lives with his kvetching mother and basically spends his time ogling horny couples "doing it" in the great outdoors of L.A. He comes into possession of a plant with an alluring female voice and, like Seymour Krelboin in Corman's original, soon finds himself procuring ever-larger animal species for it to consume and grow on. This houseplant is soon around 8' tall, and pretty hard to conceal from Mom in his bedroom.... Anyway, this film has absolutely no FX to speak of; the monster plant looks like a 4th grade papier-mache project. We never even get to see the plant attack its human victims; how they wind up inside the plant at all is a mystery to me. But why even critique this movie like a regular film? The flick is essentially just an excuse to show some fairly boring simulated sex scenes, strung together by a very silly story. I must say that it is very strange to see these X-rated scenes, with full male and female frontal, alternating with juvenile-humor vignettes. I can't imagine who this picture would appeal to today, in this age of XXX-rated DVDs and sci-fi/horror films with top-notch FX. If you want to see what the poor raincoat crowd had to settle for back when, I guess check it out. Beyond the awesome title, there's little of interest here. By the way, isn't it strange that Buck Kartalian, the film's star, recently played a guy named Henry on CBS' "HOW I MET YOUR Mother"?

Please Don't Eat My Mother! (1972)

** (out of 4)

Softcore remake of Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors manages to show a lot of skin as well as turn out to be a smart spoof in its own right. Buck Kartalian (from Planet of the Apes) plays a loser who lives with his mom and hasn't even been with a woman. One day he buys a plant, which turns out to have a sexy female voice but even weirder is that the plant needs live food to stay alive. There's no question that this one here is more sex than horror but as far as these Something Weird type films goes this one is pretty good. There are quite a few funny scenes with our loser trying to comfort the plant who is dying of hunger. There are even better scenes of him battling with his mother who hears the female plant's voice and thinks that her virgin son has a real woman in his bed. There are countless sex scenes and I was rather shocked at how far one went but for the most part they are fairly harmless and not too erotic.

A 40-something mama's boy (Buck Kartalian in a starring role!) is still a virgin and can't get any girls, so he obtains a plant which he keeps locked in his bedroom. The damn thing speaks in a sexy woman's voice and grows to huge proportions as it keeps asking its owner for more and more food - starting out with flies, but gradually moving on to humans. This is a completely ridiculous and crazy comedy that's reminiscent of Roger Corman's LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS, and the main reason it gets one star is because Buck Kartalian is actually perfect for such a wacky part. It's very strange seeing him, an actor of many trades who's been in movies such as PLANET OF THE APES and COOL HAND Luke, headlining a thing like this. When he's not trying to secure victims for plant food he's got a habit of being a voyeur who watches couples having sex - and I mean bordering on hardcore pornography, with even male frontal nudity as well as the females. This is pretty much a tiring film after awhile, and though it shouldn't have been more than 70 or 80 minutes, the damn thing stretches on for nearly 100. * out of ****

From what I've read about this movie I was expecting a softcore version of Corman's "Little Shop Of Horrors". Instead I've got a retarded almost hardcore horror comedy which has none of the wit or plot of Corman's classic. Yes, there's a maneating plant (with a sexy female voice) and a lonely geek/voyeur, Buck Kartalian, who kinda looks like Mel Brooks' goofy twinbrother! I'm huge sleazefan but 2/3 of "Please Don't.." is one sex scene after another (the last one incl. XXX-veteran Rene Bond). The plant DO get to eat, first frogs & dogs then humans. Well, It IS kinda fascinating to see Buck - who acted with Heston, Eastwood & Elvis! - in this Harry ("Sinful Dwarf", "Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman!" etc.) Novak produced mess, you wonder which kind of audience would go for this. The monsterplant is ultracheaply made but funny in a braindrainin' sort of way. The end is pretty neat, though. Check out this Something Weird Video release at your own risk!

This movie is very strange in that it really is essentially a sexed up version of The Little Shop of Horrors complete with human-eating plant and full frontal sex.

Strange.

It's in color and the sets are very colorful.

The director apparently had a pedigree background and started a theatre group whose alum included the likes of Gene Hackman.

But on the side he mad a handful of these low budget horror films like this.

The plant starts small eating flies, graduates to frogs ("Come on frog me." it says in its sexy voice) and then dogs. You get the idea.

The movie is really an oddity. Not as good as TLSOH, due to the fact that the centerpiece is really sex, but it is watchable.

Everybody in the film is talking about sex in one way or another and there is a seemingly endless scene with some 70s porn queen and her husband doing it in a car. It goes on forever and is pointless except to throw in an example of how grooming was not important 40 years ago.

There is no explanation how the plant can see when there are no eyes, but I spouse considering everything else that happens in this film, that's a minor point!

In all, it's not a horrible movie, within this genre and if TLSOH hadn't been made beforehand, I would have given it a couple extra stars.