Please Don't Eat My Mother! – review

Director: Carl Monson

Release date: 1973

Contains spoilers

We have looked several times at films about vampiric plants and, to be sure, the Venus Flytrap is displayed as vampiric in the classic Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922). However, the reason for listing this as a vampire film is down to the Little Shop of Horrors because, having listed the Corman film as a vampire film it follows that this low-brow rip-off of the film is one also.

This is a sex-comedy and when I say sex, well let’s just say there certainly weren’t intimacy coordinators involved in this one. With nudity and, likely, actual sexual acts this doesn’t quite become a hardcore film but the sex is prominent (and more than a tad creepy).

lunchtime voyeurism

The film starts with a couple in a car. He is clearly randy and she (Flora Weisel) is unsure, after all he is married. He encourages her to have a drink, to relax, and soon they are making out. Watching this, whilst eating his lunch, is Henry Fudd (Buck Kartalian, Monster Squad). Henry is a middle-aged virgin, who lives with his mother and has a knack of finding couples making out/having sex and watching them. The film has three couples in the film that he watches – the first two scenes are cut into multiple sections, clearly intended to be different days but each a continuation of the previous scene. The final scene is not treated like that and is continuous. The second time he watches this couple there is another voyeur watching and Henry shares his lunch with him.

with Eve

Before that, however, Henry is walking past a florist’s (more like a lot than a store) when he hears a strange noise. He follows it and reckons it is coming from a plant and so buys it. The plant, which is clearly a prop, looks a tad yonic and the plant, as it grows, also has a Venus Flytrap element to its design. Anyway, Henry sneaks in past his harridan mother (Lynn Lundgren) and feeds the plant some pro-pro grow plant food. At this point the plant (which has a female voice and is coded female, and later referred to as Eve) comments (to herself) that the plant food is really good stuff.

growing

Soon, however, she is talking to Henry (with whom she makes it clear, eventually, that she wishes to stay platonic with – he’s a mammal after all). At first she asks his to supply flies – and as he has to catch them (we only see him catch the one but he does later have more captured off screen) this kind of codes him as Renfield. However as she grows (and her plant pot mysteriously grows also) her tastes move on to frogs, and then dogs (with cats as a dessert). At this point Henry takes a second job in the pound. Eventually his mother breaks into his room, convinced that there is a woman in there, and is eaten and the plant has progressed to being a people eater.

eating the cop

In the main she wants young women – she eats a cop (Carl Monson) who comes snooping and keeps spitting out his badge and gun; the spitting of the gun lifted from the earlier Corman film. The plant sometimes emits smoke, which I assume is a carnivorous plant version of a fart. We later also get Henry forced to purchase a male plant (with male voice) called Adam. Adam and Eve do reproduce. The comedy in this is generally poor and Henry, in truth, is more than a little creepy. The sex scenes are thrown in ad nauseum, as this was aimed at that sex-comedy market, and this is far from the pleasing film Little Shop of Horrors proved to be. Nevertheless, this film apes the earlier film entirely. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK