So long, Gravis!

According to Mark Evanier's News From Me site, Mel Welles has died at the age of 81. According to a very short brief found via Google, Welles died in Virginia on Aug. 18 of heart failure. His Web site is still up, so you can read all about him and his extensive screen credits, which besides LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (which alone is enough to earn a spot in my pantheon) also includes such cult classics as THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN, HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, THE BIG KNIFE, WOLFEN, CHOPPING MALL, ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY and HOLD THAT HYPNOTIST! (I've never seen that last one, but great title, eh?)

But, if you've ever seen a late-night airing of Roger Corman's sick humor classic LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (and I'm talking about the black-and-white original, not that stupid musical), Mel Welles will always be Gravis Mushnik, skid row florist.

That's him, above, in between doomed lovers Audrey (Jackie Joseph) and Seymour (Jonathan Haze), trying to figure out a way to make a buck from Seymour's meat-eating plant, Audrey Jr. When I was a kid, the Cleveland CBS affiliate had a comedy/monster movie show on every Friday night called "Houlihan and Big Chuck," and every year before Christmas they'd show LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. (I'm assuming it was because they knew kids would be on break and more likely to stay up late, but maybe it was for the memorable scene when Mushnik watches, horrified, as Seymour feeds a corpse to Audrey Jr. while singing a strained version of "Deck the Halls.")

As funny as the movie is -- and it's damn funny, with a dead-on "Dragnet" parody, sharp comic timing from the whole cast and an early but memorable appearance by Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient -- what really cracked us up as kids was Mushnik's twisted take on the English language. One of the signs in his store says, simply, "Lots Plants Cheap" and Mushnik is prone to such manglings as "It's a finger of speech!" Classic Bortsch-belt comedy, I realize now, but back then we were just a bunch of sleep-deprived sixth-graders and we just thought it was damned funny. And it still is -- I watched the movie not long ago, and it holds up. It's not so-bad-it's-good, it's actually good. You can find it cheap on various public domain DVDs, but this one really cries out for a nice, remastered treatment with commentary from Roger Corman, writer Charles B. Griffith (who cameos as the gunman and provides the voice of the plant) and anyone else they can find. Criterion? Warner Brothers? Someone? Please?

And now, though it has nothing to do with Mel Welles specifically (though it is an obit), I'd like to present this newspaper clipping from my misspent youth...

Despite appearances, this is not the obituary of Jonathan Haze, star of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. In fact, it's not even a real obit. When I was young, our local newspaper was so bad that they'd print virtually anything you gave them. A friend and I tested this theory with a fake press release about a fake foreign exchange student coming to our high school. We dropped off a typewritten note on school stationary, and they printed it a few days later...on the front page. So I cooked up this little tribute to LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and slipped it into the same overnight drop box. And sure enough, a few days later...

If you're a fan of the movie, see how many references you can spot. If you're not a fan, just marvel at the irony of a high school smartass who tricked his hometown newspaper growing up to work as a journalist. Sick, ain't it?