Suck it, Geffen

I recently had a nerd high anc decided to order some back issues of Cinefex, the definitive magazine for all things visual effects. One of the ones I got has an article about Frank Oz's 1986 "Little Shop of Horrors" starring Rick Moranis. It's a fantastic movie, one that my girlfriend and I adore with varying degrees of ferocity for different aspects of it's production.

Since the issue came out around the same time as the movie, if not just before, it contained some beautiful images that I had never seen before- beautiful pictures of the oft referenced, never-seen, original ending [SPOILERS] where everyone dies and Audrey II rampages across America and the movie ends with the image of Audrey II strangling the statue of liberty. They really shouldn't be spoilers because this is how the play ends.

In 1998, as DVDs were quickly flooding media culture, they released Little Shop of Horrors with a good chunk of special features, including this rarely seen, unfinished ending as a bonus feature. Within a few weeks, every single DVD was recalled from video stores and the company had to reauthor the DVD without that deleted scene.

Apparently David Geffen was not informed they would be releasing this scene and had wanted to include it on a future release of the DVD. When he found out they had released the thing he raised hell and the DVDs vanished. You can find one selling for upwards of $150 on eBay right now and the Amazon.com listing includes a specific note saying this is NOT the edition with the alternate ending.

The Cinefex article goes into fascinating detail about the ending where they did some pretty awesome effects. They used the same puppets they had, but to make Audrey II look like it was growing just made a bunch of increasing smaller scale miniatures. Things like that. I read the article desperately wanting to see this original ending that I thought was merely myth; to find out that for the modest price tag of one hundred and fifty dollars would enable me to see it wasn't good enough.

So where do I turn? The Angel YouTube. The entire 23 minute original ending sequence, sans sound effects and in black and white is available to registered users in one complete chunk or in three parts for those of us who didn't know you could even register with YouTube.

So fuck off David Geffen- as much as I love this movie and i want it to increase it's commercial revenue so people make movies like this again, that's what you get for being a greedy bastard and not letting people enjoy special features they want.

You got NAPSTERED!