Applescript launcher for PHP scripts

I wrote a few PHP 4.3.2RC1 photo processing scripts on Mac OS 10.2.5 that I'd like to either run as a droplet or have an AppleScript droplet somehow run the scripts when a user drags files onto it. The best I can figure is that I'll need to use Applescript's "do shell script" scripting addition to run a unix script which in turn runs a php script. Does anyone know of a better way to create a droplet just in unix to eliminate the Applescript step? Also, after reading the CLI documentation for PHP, I find that although everything seems to be set up correctly for running scripts in CLI, doing a: shell> ./my_photo_script I get a line of output in the terminal that consists of a few lines of code in the class initialization routine then nothing happens. This script works just fine when run from a browser, what am I doing wrong? (NOTE: I did prefix the file with "#!/usr/local/bin/php <?PHP" so it should work, right? Thanks for any help Ken