#orin scrivello dds

[shiggybruh]

catboy orin. context is that my minecraft skin is orin, we play with origins and i picked some cat thing. i can meow at people now

[rockabully]

hey.

[calliemity]

Orin Scrivello's Lost Head Prop: A Masterpost

Written and researched by Calliope Avery

Content Warning: Very very mild and low quality special effects gore, implied violence, uncanny valley stuff(?), Orin Scrivello's face.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986) has an unfortunate reputation of leaving a lot of really cool things on the cutting room floor. The most infamous would be the movie's original ending, a beautiful and impressive sequence of puppetry that ended up completely scrapped. However, today we're talking about a prop that never made it into the final movie in any form:

Orin Scrivello's Decapitated Head!!!

Pictured above are the only 2 photos of the prop in its original state that I can find at the moment. The left photo was taken for promotion and advertising purposes, and the right image is actually a Topps trading card! (Which I have a physical copy of, hehe!)

To put it bluntly, I am slightly (very) obsessed with this prop head. There's so much mystery around it, and everything I've managed to dig up both fascinates me and makes me very upset. So much thought and hard creative work was put into the creation of this thing, and it was left completely left out and forgotten! I desperately want more people to be aware of this, so here is my big and (hopefully) well organized masterpost on everything for your learning pleasure. Alright, let's talk about some heads!!!!!!!!!

Forming a Timeline

The earliest mention of the head can be found in an early draft of the movie script, dated February 14th, 1985. There's plenty of concepts in this script that never seemed to get past this draft, but the severed head concept was not one of them. Here, take a look!

source

This section, found on page 66 of the script, not only established the existence of the head, but also establishes the facial expression it will later take on! Clearly, this concept was good enough to be held onto once actual production started, which is good for us! If it wasn't, then this post would be a lot shorter.

Early production of the prop began after the actors were cast, as face molds of Steve Martin were created as bases for the head.

source for the left image - source for the right image

Oooo, check these guys out!!! The left one is made of plaster, and the right one is made of rubber. The website sourcing these images included a quote from Steve Martin about the casting process. Here's the full provided quote:

"These molds were taken of my head for Little Shop of Horrors. It was cast on the lot at Pinewood Studios outside of London, and I got exceedingly claustrophobic during the casting. My entire head was covered with plaster and two straws were placed in my nose for breathing. Argh." - Steve Martin

I unfortunately don't have much information about the crafting process of the prop. I'm currently trying to track down anyone who could've worked on it, but the few people I've managed to contact haven't responded to me yet. So I can't say anything concrete about who worked on it and what went into creating it. The only thing I can assume somewhat confidently is that the creation of the prop happened around the same time as filming for Orin's scenes. It would allow them to make the face molds and also match up Martin's post-mortem Orin face with the facial expression of the prop.

Here's where it starts going downhill. From what I've found, the prop was never filmed with its face toward the camera. In the workprint that I accessed from the Internet Archive, the prop appears for 2 shots, and both of them only show the back of the head. Take a look:

source - timestamp: 1:02:59

[Video description: a low quality, slightly green tinted video depicting a deleted scene from Little Shop of Horrors (1986) where Seymour is feeding the decapitated head of the dentist, Orin Scrivello, to the plant. The video starts with a man in glasses reaching into a garbage can and pulling out a dark-haired decapitated head, holding it upside-down by the fabric on its neck. The head is faced away from the camera, so only the back of its hair is visible. There are vines flailing in the foreground of the shot. The video cuts to a shot of the plant puppet laughing silently. The video cuts again to a shot of the man slowly shuffling forward while dangling the head in front and away from himself. The plant is seen on the left side, still laughing and flailing its vines. Throughout the video, there are brief flashes of light that resemble lightning. The video's audio only consists of thunder noises and an unidentifiable sound that resembles chewing noises. End ID.]

My best guess for this choice is maybe it isn't as convincing when filmed? In the photos it looks really well made and realistic, but perhaps it didn't come across that way during shots. Regardless, the head was still in the film at this point, so that counts for something!

But as you and I both know, those 2 shots were left on the cutting room floor, completely removed from the final product. The prop was left completely unused and unspoken of... except for one instance.

Remember the trading card I mentioned at the beginning? It's a part of a full set of trading cards that were made and distributed by the brand Topps. Back when the movie first came out, you could buy a pack of 5 mystery Little Shop of Horrors themed trading cards, along with a stick of bubblegum. This 44-card set is notable for featuring a lot, and I mean a LOT of images from cut movie scenes. There's photos of the original ending, there's photos from the cut sequence The Meek Shall Inhereit, and of course there's also the card featuring the prop head! However, those 2 sequences would later be rediscovered, cleaned up, and then added into the Director's Cut rerelease of the movie. The prop head wouldn't get this treatment, staying obscured, unknown, and unmentioned.

Fast forward about 30 years. A certain unused movie prop would be offered in an auction, allowing us to not only see high-quality photos of said prop in its current state, but also to allow us to know the exact materials it was made of! Without further ado, I present Orin Scrivello's decapitated head, circa 2018:

source

This absolute freak of a guy was up for auction at the "Profiles in History: Icons and Legends of Hollywood" auction on June 5th, 2018. No one ended up buying it (I would. I need to buy it actually. Please sell it to me.), but the auction gives us some absolutely divine information about the prop, such as what it's made of and its dimensions! Here's a quote from the auction website describing its materials:

"Vintage original hollow cast resin character head painted in realistic flesh tones with brown eyebrows and eyes. The 13 x 8 x 9 in. head has been polyfoam filled for stability. Exhibiting cracks to the crown, which is brittle and with other wear and age. A striking likeness of Steve Martin. In vintage good condition."

How neat! The high-resolution images allow us to see the detailed sculpting of the prop, which is still evident and impressive with its age and missing parts! The creases on the forehead, and around the mouth and eyes, the realistically colored teeth, this was clearly sculpted with a lot of attention to detail. I would've loved to have an image like this back in the prop's prime, back when it still had hair and a fresh coat of paint.

Why was it Scrapped?

This is entirely just me theorizing, but I have a feeling it's for the same reason the original ending got snubbed.

If you take the time to watch the archived workprint, you'll find a lot of cuts and changes were made that changed the tone of the whole finished project. Orin's death and dismemberment scenes got edited down a lot. Shots of him struggling and knocking things down as he falls to the ground got cut, the voiceline where he begs Seymour for help is gone. The shot where Orin's legs jolt when Seymour brings down the axe is gone too.

It's not just Orin-related scenes either! Mushnik no longer cries out for Seymour when being killed and eaten, and that's ignoring how different the scene happens in the stage musical. And obviously, the entire ending got changed so that Audrey and Seymour survive, leading to the cut of the magnificent ending sequence where all the Audrey II's destroy New York. In a way, the film got murdered and gutted of any of its real horror, with attempts to cover up any of the blood they couldn't scrub out.

In the movie's later quest to rebrand as a softer version of itself, it only makes sense that 2 shots of a decapitated head wouldn't make it. The appearance of the dismembered leg made it through, probably because it's less gruesome, but a head is... different. I obviously think it should've been kept it in, along with almost everything they trimmed from the workprint, but alas.

Tldr, they cut the head off of the movie because it wasn't funny enough.

Conclusion

This is where the information I have ends, unfortunately. I do have more research routes I would like to take, but one of them involves desperately contacting random people who I suspect could've been involved (I've tried this, I've gotten no responses from those who I've managed to find an email for), and the other route involves taking a road trip to the actual goddamn Library of Congress, which is not something I can do right now or even in the near future. So this is probably as far as I'm getting!

However! If I find anything new, this post will be updated and/or remade again, depending on how big or little the info is. For now, I think this is good enough to share, and maybe letting people know will encourage others to research this prop as well! It'll probably be easier if it's not just me, y'know.

I'll finish by saying that I think research and preservation of art like this is very important. While it's common for cool artistic things to end up cut from movies, I think preserving that those cool things existed in the first place is something worth doing. Even though this prop head was a very small part of the movie, it's clear a lot went into creating it! I feel bad that I'm not able to credit any person or people for their work, but I hope getting the word out about it will do some justice.

If you've read this whole thing, thank you so much! I appreciate your interest and I thank you for taking the time to read all this. I hope you found it as interesting and fascinating as I do!

Oh, by the way, if this post looks familiar at all, you've probably seen the original version of this post I made awhile ago. I wasn't happy with the formatting of that post, and I ended up making too many discoveries to just continue updating it. I'll keep the original up to preserve it, but reblogs will be off for it, as I want this version to be the one to go around. Thanks!

[lithuanianking]

I know there's this whole thing on etsy where people will write like comfort letters from the buyers character of there choosing and I think that's pretty cool.

But where's the uncomfort letters?

Where's my letter from Oscar delancey telling me he's gonna bash my head in with a rock?

I want a letter from orin scrivello telling me in detail how he's gonna rip out all my teeth one by one

I would pay for that.

[ohnoitsjetster]

So awhile ago I said I would make some Orin text post memes with pics from my production

And yeah I had way too much fun making these and I made perhaps too many so here’s part one

(Featuring a few of my awesome casemates)

[controversial-blorbo-bracket]

Controversial Character Tournament Round 2: Orin Scrivello DDS from Little Shop of Horrors vs Berdly from Deltarune

(remember that these characters are fictional and your fellow tumblr users are real. i will block you if you harass others in the notes, please consider sending your unhinged harassment to my inbox instead)

Propaganda under the cut, may contain spoilers:

Orin Scrivello DDS:

BOTH: - "The whole joke with his character is he’s the worst kind of person and everyone hates him and he’s the most easily justifiable murder (domestic abuser and sadistic dentist) and as a person I definitely find him morally reprehensible (especially for his realistically controlling dialogue with Audrey) but as a character the enthusiastic way he is portrayed is always really fun and silly to me. Dentist! is a delightfully mean song and Steve Martin’s portrayal and mannerisms of him in that leather (vinyl?) apron is honestly hot and he’s hilarious as fuck. Still a domestic abuser though"

Berdly:

LOVE: - "He DOES NOT deserve to be controversial, at least to the level he is. Yeah he can be an asshole both intentionally and unintentionally, and his personality can be understandably grating on some people, and he is a bit of a pathetic loser, and he was a shitty friend to Noelle, but that's not the reason he's so controversial. Just because he fits the "cishet incel nerd" archetype doesn't mean he is one! He isn't transphobic or homophobic he's not a chaser he's not the guy they hate but they act like he is, they don't hate his character they just use him as a vessel to hate people they do hate, which is annoying, he wouldn't say that, just because he reminds you of someone who would say that doesn't he is like them use critical thinkings skill god hell. although i'll be real though some people kinda over shoot in the other direction and act like he did nothing wrong.. like he had a arc about learning he was wrong you kinda have to do things wrong to have an arc about that" - "He is my scrunkle skringus and I love him very much but also he is designed to be the MOST ANNOYING CHARACTER so many dislike him. He is soooo funny and pathetic."

[scrivellc]

Put together a single post for my pics from Little Shop of Horrors yesterday (Also featuring my tooth mug and the magnet I got. Now my favorite plant themed musical comedies can live on the fridge together)

[hardestwaypossible]

who wants their teeth done by the marquis de sade?

[theverycoolestdude]

i see any orin content and start frothing at the mouth and barking and just in general going feral

[vintageaerith]

had the distinct privilege to see Bryce Pinkham (Stolas' voice actor and Tony nominee from A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder) as the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors in NYC this past weekend, and had to draw something very silly after his unique brand of Bloody Curtain Pageantry. pls enjoy this incredibly niche joke

[surprise-dentistry]

Open wide, here he comes!!!

…again

[shiggybruh]

was looking for cool poses on pinterest to draw orin in. saw this and thought Sure

[rockabully]

he changes everytime i draw him lmfaoo

[calliemity]

orin scrivello's alternate death deleted scene (this is real guys i swear)

[lithuanianking]

Dentists in the little shop of horrors franchise ranked from least to most gay

4. Dr.Driller

He just does not give us any hints of homosexuality also he has a child.

3. Dr. Phebous Farb

Ok he kinda seems gay like I can't explain it,but like he passes as straight. Also he litterly sticks his fingers in Seymours mouth like twice and it's not sexual so he can at the very least keep it in his pants.

2. Orin scrivello

Come on we all know it. I could go through and rank which orin Is gayer but it really doesn't matter he's just gay there's no denial.

Now you may be thinking,who could be number 1? Aren't those the only dentists?

1. Mervin goldsmith

I'm calling comic orin mervin because both @/calliemity and @/mellowyellow56 called him that on different occasions. This man is the whole fruit basket,he litterly struts into the office. The way he leans back In that one pannel?? Come on! Gayest man I've ever seen and I've looked in a mirror.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk

[such-a-constellation]

My goal in life is to be as passionate about my job as Orin Scrivello D.D.S. enjoys the career that he picked