Howard R. Cohen learned from Charles B. Griffith that when the film was being edited, "there was a point where two scenes would not cut together. It was just a visual jolt, and it didn't work. And they needed something to bridge that moment. They found, in the editing room, a nice shot of the moon, they cut it in, and it worked. Twenty years go by. I'm at the studio one day. Chuck comes running up to me and says, 'You've got to see this!' It was a magazine article--eight pages on the symbolism of the moon in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)."
The The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) was shot on a budget of $22,500 to $28,000 (about $240,000 in 2019), with interiors being shot about two days, utilizing sets that had been left standing from A Bucket of Blood (1959).
Jack Nicholson, recounting the reaction to a screening of the film, states that the audience "laughed so hard I could barely hear the dialogue. I didn't quite register it right. It was as if I had forgotten it was a comedy since the shoot. I got all embarrassed because I'd never really had such a positive response before."
At the time of shooting, Jack Nicholson had appeared in two films, and had worked with Roger Corman as the lead in The Cry Baby Killer (1958). According to Nicholson, "I went in to the shoot knowing I had to be very quirky because Roger originally hadn't wanted me. In other words, I couldn't play it straight. So I just did a lot of weird shit that I thought would make it funny."