Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street ( 2007 ) R | From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC The infamous story of Benjamin Barker, AKA Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop down in London which is the basis for a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett. Based on the hit Broadway musical.

Director: a list of 36 titles created 26 Nov 2010 a list of 24 titles created 20 Nov 2012 a list of 21 titles created 05 Aug 2014 a list of 33 titles created 20 Mar 2015 a list of 24 titles created 23 Sep 2015 Title: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) 7.4/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Oscar. Another 33 wins & 72 nominations. See more awards » Videos A gentle man, with scissors for hands, is brought into a new community after living in isolation. Director: Tim Burton Ichabod Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate the decapitations of 3 people with the culprit being the legendary apparition, the Headless Horseman. Director: Tim Burton An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins, is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection.

Director: Tim Burton A couple of recently deceased ghosts contract the services of a "bio-exorcist" in order to remove the obnoxious new owners of their house. Director: Tim Burton A frustrated son tries to determine the fact from fiction in his dying father's life. Director: Tim Burton Earth is invaded by Martians with unbeatable weapons and a cruel sense of humor. Director: Tim Burton Revolves around Frank, an American tourist visiting Italy to mend a broken heart. Elise is an extraordinary woman who deliberately crosses his path. Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Stars: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany The Dark Knight of Gotham City begins his war on crime with his first major enemy being the clownishly homicidal Joker. Director: Tim Burton A writer is accused of plagiarism by a strange man, who then starts haunting him for "justice." Director: David Koepp In Victorian Era London, a troubled clairvoyant police detective investigates the murders by Jack The Ripper. Directors: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes Stars: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm A vampire tells his epic life story: love, betrayal, loneliness, and hunger.

Director: Neil Jordan An ambitious but troubled movie director tries his best to fulfill his dream, despite his lack of support. Director: Tim Burton Edit Storyline In the Victorian London, the barber Benjamin Barker is married to the gorgeous Lucy and they have a lovely child, Johanna. The beauty of Lucy attracts the attention of the corrupt Judge Turpin, who falsely accuses the barber of a crime that he did not commit and abuses Lucy later after gaining custody of her. After fifteen years in exile, Benjamin returns to London under the new identity of Sweeney Todd, seeking revenge against Turpin. He meets the widow Mrs. Lovett who is the owner of a meat pie shop who tells him that Lucy swallowed arsenic many years ago, and Turpin assigned himself tutor of Johanna. He opens a barber shop above her store, initiating a crime rampage against those who made him suffer and lose his beloved family. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Never Forget. Never Forgive.

See more » Genres: Rated R for graphic bloody violence | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 21 December 2007 (USA) See more » Also Known As: $13,635,390 (USA) (21 December 2007) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia As of March 2010, Helena Bonham Carter still had not seen the film because she does not like watching her own performances, although she had said she "will get round to watching it." See more » Goofs Johanna is seen packing stuff neatly into a suitcase , she puts the last item into her suitcase neatly , but when Judge Turpin opens her door we see the item hanging over the side as if it was hastily thrown in. See more » Quotes [first lines] Anthony Hope : I have sailed the world, beheld its wonders, from the Dardanelles to the mountains of Peru. But there's no place like London. Sweeney Todd : No, there's no place like London. Anthony Hope : [spoken] Mr. Todd? Sweeney Todd : You are young. Life has been kind to you. You will learn.

(Los Angeles, USA) – See all my reviews As it happens more often than not, greatness is relegated to some obscure angle. In a year of brilliant opuses by the Cohen Brothers and PT Anderson, this Tim Burton film shines as the best from every angle. It's not just that Burton creates another superb, dark universe with Dante Ferretti's complicity or that Johnnt Deep breaks new ground, or that Helena Bonham Carter surprises us with a complex, marvelous realistic parody. The film touches visually a very private cord. Ed Wood managed that but Tim Burton with "Sweeny Todd" elevates it to the purest form of art. He will be punished for that, as Ed Wood was in its day. Disappointing grosses in a world that worship grosses will make it appear as a sort of a failure. My advise to you is run to see it wherever you can find it. Try to see it in a big screen with great sound. You will fly and dream and be taken away by the masterful hands of Tim Burton and the glorious faces of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. 154 of 198 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Certificate: 18 Synopsis Maestro of the macabre Tim Burton grabs Stephen Sondheim's haemoglobally successful musical by the throat and lets Johnny Depp cut loose as the Victorian hairdresser whose customers will never need another shave. Yet while he finds the ideal business partner in Helena Bonham Carter's meat-starved pie-maker Mrs Lovett, Sweeney lives only to take revenge on the judge who ruined his life (Alan Rickman). Arias meet arterial spray in Burton's gothic opera; a tragic but oddly touching tale of love lost, justice found and pastries filled with people. Director Tim Spall Review Troubled, secretive and unpredictable, the cutthroat coiffeur of London legend is another perfect misfit for the combined talents of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Sweeney Todd is their sixth collaboration. Neutrals will find it an enjoyably off-kilter slice of Grand Guignol; a satisfying marriage of Burton's gothic sensibility and Stephen Sondheim's brooding music and lyrics. Horror and musical purists, however, may be mortified.

We meet Sweeney on a ship pulling into London, soured by fifteen years of false imprisonment in Australia. Shunning his real name - Benjamin Barker - he presents a dim view of the world to his callow companion Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower). And all because covetous old lech Judge Turpin (Rickman) fancied Mrs Barker. But with Benjamin sent away on a trumped-up charge, she took her own life. So Turpin kept the next best thing: her daughter Joanna (Jayne Wisener). Sweeney learns all this from Mrs Lovett, purveyor of "the worst pies in London". Badly affected by a meat shortage, she rents him the upper floor of her shop. It's the beginning of a beautiful partnership. A fateful encounter with a preposterous rival barber (Sacha Baron Cohen) leaves Sweeney with a body to dispose of. And Mrs Lovett still can't afford meat... What to do...? What to do...? Before you can say "leave the sideburns", there's a cascade of carotid-cleaven corpses tumbling through Sweeney's trapdoor and into Mrs Lovett's cellar. Business duly booms.

But as the pastry-wench dreams of life with Sweeney, he can sing only of vengeance and his lost daughter. No, we hadn't forgotten about Joanna; it's just that the subplot in which smitten sailor-boy Anthony tries to rescue her from Turpin and his scuzzy henchman (Tim Spall) is, next to the fun and games at the pie shop, rather anaemic. Not many movies receive an 18 certificate for 'bloody violence' alone, which gives you some idea of Sweeney's gore quotient. Yet there's never any doubt that we're dealing in pure fantasy. (The musical and play on which the film is based both stem from a fictional story published 160 years ago; folklore aside, the consensus is that Todd never existed.) Burton steeps his production in typically gloomy richness and mordant humour, but drains away dread with a cartoonish tone set by the animated opening titles. The result is basically Edward Scissorhands with a vindictive streak; suitably horrid but never horrifying. And while the incidental cues are often thunderous, Sondheim delivers no standout numbers. Musically, it's solid but unspectacular.

Depp and Bonham Carter handle their songs confidently and competently - even if he has a tendency to go a bit David Bowie and together they look like long-lost ancestors of the White Stripes. So while it might not put you off your steak-and-kidneys for long, Burton's best film since Ed Wood will come in handy for anyone in need of something for the weekend. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Film) - TV Tropes Anthony has remarkably smooth skin despite his life at sea and the beating he takes early in the film. Johanna after her time in the asylum is beautiful, even with her yellow hair perfectly combed. Averted with Lucy. Bedlam House : Johanna's and probably Lucy's asylums. Bloodier and Gorier : Compared to the musical, which, being what it is, more implies its violence. The film gleefully shows it in all its morbid glory. Blood Is the New Black : When Sweeney takes final vengeance against Judge Turpin, his face and clothes are practically covered in blood. This makes for an utterly terrifying scene when he finds Johanna, doesn't recognize her due to her disguise, and almost kills her.

Bungled Suicide : Lucy's suicide attempt was unsuccessful, as Mrs Lovett reveals in the film's final sequence. Camera Abuse : Blood spatters the camera during Sweeney's rendition of "Johanna". Chekhov's Gun : Signor Pirelli's purse. When Mrs. Lovett takes it out, Toby becomes convinced that Todd has murdered him. Circle of Shame : The climax of "Poor Thing". City Noir : Tim Burton 's dark vision of Victorian London . Ominous steamy sewers, dark and polluted streets and alleys, dirty houses and filthy rooms, corrupted and utterly evil people... Not a nice place to live. Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are : Todd and Mrs Lovett call for Toby in the sewers but not with good intentions. Cool Chair : Todd rigs his barber chair to flip backwards at the press of a foot pedal, dumping his victims through a trapdoor and straight into the bakehouse. Costume Porn : Lovett's dress in the final scene, and perhaps the one she wears in "God, That's Good".

Crapsack World : To quote Todd himself: Todd: There's a hole in the world like a great black pit And it's filled with people who are filled with shit And the vermin of the world inhabit it... Crime After Crime Dark Reprise : "Not While I'm Around", "The Barber and his Wife". Dead Man's Chest : When Toby comes up to Todd's shop looking for Pirelli, Todd is startled to see Pirell's hand sticking out from the chest he stuffed his body in. And it's still twitching. Demoted to Extra : Johanna goes from the second female lead to an almost silent Living MacGuffin . Really all of the supporting characters get a lot of their parts reduced as the film chooses to focus mostly on Todd, Lovett, and Toby. Pirelli is the only supporting character whose screen/stage time remains roughly unchanged. Double Meaning : " We'll serve anyone ..." Do with Him as You Will : After freeing Johanna from Fogg's Asylum, Anthony leaves Fogg at the mercy of his "children." Downer Ending : Sweeney Todd may get his revenge, but he also unknowingly kills his long lost wife Lucy, and when he finds out Mrs.

Lovett knew who Lucy was all along, he throws her into the oven to be burned alive. As he begins to sing a reprise of "The Barber And His Wife," Toby, who is implied to have been driven insane by what he has seen and done, emerges from the sewers and kills Todd himself, with his own razor, no less. The last shot is the now-dead Todd holding his dead wife. Dulcinea Effect : Anthony comes across this way—see Relationship Compression for the reason. Even Evil Has Standards : One of the only men Todd changes his mind about killing is one who enters his shop with wife and child. Granted, it might be more because he simply doesn't want to get caught, but considering everything that happened to his wife and child, there's got to be some empathy going on here. Fauxreigner : Adolfo Pirelli a.k.a. Davey Collins (played by the English—and very Jewish— Sacha Baron Cohen ). Finger Twitching Revival : Pirelli, temporarily. Get Out : Todd screams this at Anthony after the latter unwittingly ruins his first attempt to kill Judge Turpin. Gorn : Oh so very much.

There are many graphic close-ups of throats being slashed and stabbed, the blood spurting out. Hanging Judge : Judge Turpin, even more than in the stage version. There's a new scene after he sentences a preteen to death, and it's not really clear whether the charge is true or not—and as he and the Beadle walk out of the courtroom, the Beadle expresses that the kid "must have done something to warrant a hanging." The judge agrees, as in his worldview, everyone has done something along those lines. High-Pressure Blood : Every throat that is slit by Todd's razor gushes rivers of blood. My God, What Have I Done? : Todd utters this line when realizing he killed his wife by accident . No-Holds-Barred Beatdown : Sweeney Todd is pummeling Pirelli's face with an iron water kettle. Of Corsets Sexy : Well, it is Helena Bonham Carter, after all. The fact that she was pregnant at the time and her breasts magically change size every other scene certainly helps . Ominous Pipe Organ : In the movie's opening theme. One-Hour Work Week : Yes and no.

Sweeney works, he just happens to use his work day to kill people. He's only ever seen completing two shaves: one during his duel with Pirelli and another when a man's wife and child are present in his shop. Overdrawn at the Blood Bank : The special effects people even admitted that all of the people who get killed spew forth far more blood than is typically in the human body (about 8 pints). The History of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - Time Out London - Time Out London Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett the pie-maker The story begins in the 1830s with one Edward Lloyd, an enterprising publisher of ‘penny dreadfuls’ who aimed his cheap weekly serials squarely at the working poor. Titles like ‘The Calendar of Horrors’ and ‘Varney the Vampire’ (a famous blood-sucking fiend, 50 years before Dracula) give some idea of his subject matter. He also specialised in pirated versions of Dickens' works at a time when copyright law counted for little. Thus poorer readers could buy a budget copy of his ‘Oliver Twiss’ or ‘Nikelas Nickelbery’.

Lloyd would later found a radical/liberal newspaper and become quite respectable. Nonetheless, his main legacy to modern culture was a story called ‘The String of Pearls’ published in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846/47, written by an anonymous penny-a-word hack. Set in 1785, it features as principal villain a certain Sweeney Todd (‘a long, low-jointed, ill-put-together sort of fellow’), and includes all the plot elements that have been used by Sondheim and others ever since. There is the barber’s shop, from which a remarkable number of customers never return (courtesy of a chair that flips them upside down, plunging them to their deaths in the stone-floored cellar), an ill-used apprentice boy (who is consigned to a lunatic asylum, a pair of deeply uninteresting star-crossed lovers (obligatory in any Victorian popular fiction) and the enterprising Mrs Lovett, whose pies are finally discovered to contain something rather more exotic than mince. ‘The String of Pearls’ isn’t great literature, but Lloyd was on to something.

The psychopathic barber’s story proved instantly popular: it was turned into a play before the ending had even been revealed in print. An expanded edition appeared in 1850, an American version in 1852, a new play in 1865. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd was a familiar character to most Victorians. Nothing so strange in that, perhaps; except that, according to contemporary accounts, most of them seem to have believed that Todd was real. Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin" width="210" height="139" /> A very close shave for Alan Rickman 's Judge Turpin Lloyd himself is largely to blame for a confusion that’s lasted for more than 150 years. He was a genius at marketing and knew the value of a so-called true story, not least one conveniently just beyond living memory. In a preface to an expanded edition, he stated that ‘there certainly was such a man; and the record of his crimes is still to be found in the chronicles of criminality of this country’. And it was this assertion, now easily disproved by records from the period, that stuck.

So much so, in fact, that the recently deceased connoisseur of pulp fiction, Peter Haining, once published a book claiming to have found ‘proof’ of Todd’s existence. Unfortunately, all of Haining’s proof is – let’s be generous – rather difficult to verify; indeed, the book is a carefully planned hoax. It seems much more likely that the story originated in urban myth. Dickens himself in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ (1843/44) mentions facetiously ‘preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis’. Even today, most of us have heard scare stories of various bits of anatomy appearing in fast food. Imagine, then, how it must have been in mid-Victorian London, when food was frequently coloured and doctored to make it more saleable and few legal restrictions were in place.

Indeed, in the 1840s and 1850s, many Londoners feared – with good reason – that their sausages and pies were being filled with cheap horsemeat (normally hawked round the streets as cat food); it didn’t require much imagination to take that scam one stage further. Tim Burton on set" width="210" height="140" /> Tim Burton on set in a recreated Victorian London In fairness, Lloyd’s artful co-opting of history has probably served Sweeney Todd quite well, leaving it usefully open to different interpretations. A 1926 silent movie (now lost) reportedly played it for laughs. The 1936 film (‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’) features the great Tod Slaughter, wringing his hands and cackling ‘I’ll polish him off’, although bizarrely, the victims’ final destination is never explicitly mentioned: perhaps the filmmakers feared that Mrs Lovett’s pies would give the censors indigestion. A musical version first appeared in London in 1959, a ballet in 1960.

And the London Dungeon wasn’t the first to provide a ‘Sweeney Todd Experience’; in the 1920s a wine merchant in Johnson’s Court, off Fleet Street, purported to be the site of Todd’s shop. Not content with infamy by association, the shop proudly displayed the ‘original’ barber’s chair, complete with mechanism for dropping customers into the basement. Sondheim’s musical is, in fact, based on Christopher Bond’s 1973 play, which introduced a psychological background to Todd’s crimes (he was the victim of a ruthless judge who raped his young wife and transported him to Australia). With Burton’s movie likely to garner worldwide attention, this may now become the accepted story; it is certainly already better known than the Victorian original. But, whatever the details, it seems likely that Sweeney Todd and his gruesome dinners will be with us for many years to come. LM Jackson is a novelist and the creator of ‘The Dictionary of Victorian London’ ( His latest book, ‘A Most Dangerous Woman’ (Arrow) is available in paperback from February 7. Sweeny Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street film review | Cine Outsider Freely flows the blood of those who moralise!

A cinema review of SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET by Camus "You know, the thing about the stage is you can virtually do everything on the stage that you can do in the movies; it just depends on the audience's imagination." Composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim When I saw how acclaimed Broadway director Hal Prince staged the Act II number 'Johanna' (alas on video as I was not there in person in the stalls mouth open, staring agog) it was the first time I was aware that theatre could do something film could not. Blasphemer! Theatre is, in part, interactive. That's a given. Although you and your eye are directed to look at certain parts of the action, it is your imagination that stitches said action together and makes meaning in the most absurd juxtapositions. Look at the level of processing your brain spins through just to make artistic and logical sense of what you're seeing – usually something several thousand steps away from anyone's idea of reality. In fact, on stage, the more real something appears, the more unreal contextually it is perceived. Not so in cinema.

On a raised dais, demon barber, Sweeney Todd, madder than a hornet with toothache, relentlessly slices his patrons' throats while singing his acceptance of the loss of his daughter, Johanna. On the lower left of the stage is the sailor, Anthony, also singing but out of love for Sweeney's daughter, as he desperately searches for her. Johanna herself is locked in an asylum singing on the right hand side of the stage beneath her barking father (real name Benjamin Barker, naturally). The song – essentially a quartet, the fourth singer being the mysterious beggar woman - is a masterpiece. Forget the overlapping harmony, the multilayered meaning upon meaning, the sheer brilliance of its dark daring and wit. It showcases something Sondheim has never been accused of that often – eliciting feeling, this time an almost painful emotion of desolate loss and towering obsession. This song presages the dark inevitability of how revenge must end. It almost does too much, certainly for only five viewings and god knows how many run-throughs of the soundtrack. Well, the same theatrical staging knocked out a certain Mr.

Timothy Burton and ten years ago he approached Sondheim for the rights to shoot what has to be said was, theatrically speaking, a failed masterpiece. At Sweeney's opening performance in 1979, half the audience left at the interval. Wimps! Burton wasn't able to secure financing back then and the project went back to limo. It's the oddest mix of elements – a Broadway musical about a serial killer who slices up his clientele so they can be baked in pies and consumed on the premises. Deep breath. OK. Sondheim, a self-confessed anglophile and never one to shirk the unpalatable, intended Sweeney to be a love letter to London. Lines like "There's a hole in the world, like a great black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit and the vermin of the world inhabit it and it goes by the name of London..." may have been misconstrued. Burton has come along and cloaked Sweeney with his authorial stamp, one that nestles in comfortably with Sondheim's exquisite gothic horror musical, four words that fought tooth and nail not to be placed side by side let alone in their very own sentence.

The plot, in short, is relatively straightforward. London at the end of the 19th century; Barber Benjamin Barker was a happy family man until the venal Judge Turpin took a fancy to his wife and banged him up on a trumped up charge and had him shipped, unjustly, to Australia. The Judge sexually abuses Lucy, Barker's wife, sending her, well, barking. The Judge subsequently adopts the Barkers' daughter Johanna. Barker escapes, gets back to London and takes on the identity of Sweeney Todd vowing revenge on those that ripped his life from him. In love with Sweeney, is Mrs. Lovett, the overtaxed and under-blessed with reality pie maker and it's above her premises where Sweeney sets up shop. With the Judge under his blade, Sweeney fails to strike, goes, well, barking and in turn provides Mrs. Lovett with a line of fresh (human) meat for her pies... Let's just say there are no happy endings but then this cannot possibly be a surprise... And the blood! To say Tim Burton's sensibilities are matched with the material is so far beyond stating the obvious, I won't even make that point. Damn.

Burton's London is a grimy, blue-grey, dank world full of shadows and gunmetal grey skies. These are not so much mean streets as has-been streets as England prepares to pare the industrial age into something a little more sophisticated. The rolling cogs of machinery are in place as if the spirit of David Lynch's production designer on The Elephant Man is whispering in Burton's ear. It looks gorgeous in that way that movies designed to look dirty and cold can look gorgeous. We're not talking fruit bowl colour gorgeous here. But the milieu is perfect as a hyper-bitter, calculating reality. When the fantasy kicks in, courtesy of Sweeney's obsessive ranting, it's locked in the same world. He's so focussed and oblivious to all but revenge that he cannot imagine a world outside his own warped reality. But from Mrs. Lovett's point of view, we burst out of the movie into a splendid multicoloured version of her own twisted dreams. Sweeney sits there on the beach darkly impassive with the correct clothing (hooped swimming costume, well, it's Burton) looking like a wasp-sting wrapped in canvas. Mrs. Lovett reminds Sweeney to "Bring along your chopper!" As you do.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (to give it its full title) was recently and deservedly Oscar nominated for art direction and costume. There's also a nod to Johnny Depp as best actor. Chances are that award is already ear marked for Daniel Day Lewis. How can actors in a musical compete at an awards ceremony? Depp's brooding and maniacal Sweeney is convincingly delivered and I suspect that the Academy wanted to reward this daring actor for saving Hollywood's ass on a number of occasions. Just check out the choices he's made in the last ten years and try to regard them before they were huge hits and imagine what guts it took to commit to those roles). Yes, Captain Jack Sparrow is enormous as one of Disney's biggest character hits but... Before Capt. Jack, the last pirate movie produced lost so much money that anyone betting on a mascara'ed, asexual, foul breathed, golden toothed, ear-ring wearing fop would have been regarded as beyond mad. Depp makes all these risks seem like sure fire, economically solid, slam dunks. Not so. OK, the Pirates sequels, sure.

Depp recorded "My Friends", Sweeney's love song to his silver handled razors, to convince himself and others that he could pull off the singing. His London accent is sometimes over-egged just slightly but as Sweeney is hardly a Ken Loach character aching for reality, this didn't deter. As for his vocal performance, it's good. It's not Len Cariou (the original stage Sweeney) and hasn't that power and steely emphasis but Depp plays to his strengths and he makes Sweeney, vocally, more calculating, more inward living. It's a performance of some subtlety (if this crazy coiffeur can have levels). Matching him note for note is Helena Bonham-Carter in a role that she lobbied hard for. Now according to whom you believe in the media (careful), Bonham-Carter had to audition for Sondheim (as she tells the story) and it took three months for her to secure the role of Mrs. Lovett. Let's take a look from the other side. Sondheim, in my book, the only artistic giant in the American theatrical musical scene, is not stupid.

He stands to gain in all sorts of ways if Sweeney gets made (Depp, Burton's cinematic alter ego, is already in place). So what to do when the director's wife is auditioning for Mrs. Lovett? Make her sweat, sure, but was he going to ever turn her down? I'm going to take Bonham-Carter's word for it because I admire her and although like Depp, her vocals don't have the punch of her theatrical counterpart, Angela Lansbury, she's sly and funny enough to pull off the deranged dreamer. The chemistry between the brooding barber and his fantasist lady friend is securely in place and this gives the movie its albeit twisted soul. Yes, it's nasty (the blood letting is uncompromised and the sickening thuds of the heads crashing on concrete elicit a few measured groans from the audience) but rightly so. As the awful events trundle horrifically to their conclusion, you get a sense that we may have seen one throat cut too many or one head too many smash into the cellar floor but that's the material that worked so well (if not popularly) on stage.

Burton largely keeps the plot identical to the stage show but movies are literal beasts at the worst of times (the advantage/problem with photo-realistic presentations) and at times it's literally over-kill. Many reviews have proclaimed Burton's movie as a mini-masterpiece and each seems to be uniquely concerned over how well it may do at the box office. At the time of writing, Depp's star power has pulled in enough to cover production costs and it's European run has just started so that's good news. But no production company pours $50 million into a musical horror movie without some guarantees. Depp is certainly one. But whether it goes on to haemorrhage cash (unlikely) or take its place as a genuine artistic triumph, what does it matter? Is it too much to ask or even hope for both? I'll leave the last word to the only lost musical number I really missed – the chorus delivered "Ballad of Sweeney Todd": Swing your razor wide, Sweeney, Hold it to the skies! Freely flows the blood of those who moralise!

Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street USA / UK 2007 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) | Share: Rated: R – 116 min – Drama | Horror | Musical – 21 December 2007 (USA) The infamous story of Benjamin Barker, a.k.a Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop down in London which is the basis for a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett. Based on the hit Broadway musical. Director: Tim Burton Writers: John Logan (screenplay), Hugh Wheeler (musical) Stars: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a skilled barber, is falsely charged and sentenced to a life of hard labor in Australia by the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who lusts after Barker’s wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly). Now under the assumed name “Sweeney Todd”, Barker returns to London with sailor Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower). At his old Fleet Street lodgings above Mrs.

Nellie Lovett’s (Helena Bonham Carter) pie shop, he discovers that Lucy, having been raped by Turpin, has poisoned herself, and his teenage daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) is now Turpin’s ward, and like her mother before her, is the object of his unwanted affections. Nellie has kept Todd’s silver barber knives hidden in the Barkers’ old room, which is supposedly haunted. Todd vows revenge, reopening his barber shop in the upstairs flat. While roaming London, Anthony spots Johanna and falls in love with her, but is ejected from the Judge’s house by Turpin and his associate, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall). Far from being discouraged, the sailor becomes determined that the pair will elope. Meanwhile, Todd, during a visit to the marketplace, denounces a fraudulent hair tonic by faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), and later humiliates him in a public shaving contest.

Pirelli and his boy assistant Toby (Ed Sanders) visit Todd’s barbershop; Lovett keeps Toby occupied downstairs, while in the parlor Pirelli reveals himself to be Todd’s former assistant and attempts to blackmail him into paying him half of Todd’s earnings or he will reveal Todd’s real identity. Instead of giving Pirelli a pay off Todd murders him to protect the secret of his true identity. Turpin, intending to propose to Johanna, pays a visit to Todd’s parlor to groom himself into Johanna’s ideal suitor. Recognizing his tormentor, Todd relaxes the judge while preparing to slit his throat. Before he can do so, they are interrupted by Anthony, who, unaware of Turpin’s presence, bursts in and reveals his plan to elope with Johanna. Turpin leaves enraged, vowing to never return. His plan thwarted, Todd has an epiphany, and decides to vent his murderous rage upon his customers while waiting for another chance to kill Turpin. He is indiscriminate about his victims he believes that he is punishing the corrupt aristocracy for their exploitation of those below them and, at the same time, saving the lower classes from their misery.

Lovett becomes his willing accomplice, suggesting they dispose of the bodies by baking them into pies to improve her business. Todd enthusiastically agrees, and rigs his barber’s chair with a pedal-operated mechanism, which deposits his victims through a trap door into Lovett’s bakehouse. As the weeks pass, Todd’s murders accumulate (although he is shown sparing a man who brings his wife and daughter). Meanwhile, Anthony begins to search for Johanna, who was sent by Turpin to Fogg’s insane asylum as punishment for her refusal to marry him. The barbering and pie-making business prospers financially, and Lovett takes in young Toby. Anthony finally discovers Johanna’s whereabouts and, following Todd’s plan, poses as a wig-maker’s apprentice, allowing him access to the asylum to put a rescue plan into action. As Anthony is given a short tour of the asylum, he becomes aware that his guide has been using the female inmates for his own profit; after freeing Johanna, he chooses to lock the guide in with the inmates, who fall upon him with murderous intent. Todd’s motive for assisting is to lure Turpin back to the barber shop, and he sends Toby to the courthouse to let the judge know where he will find Johanna.

Toby has become wary of Todd, and when he returns he tells Lovett of his distrust, unaware of her complicity in his crimes. He promises to protect Mrs. Lovett, whom he has come to love as a surrogate mother. Beadle Bamford arrives at the barber shop and is murdered by Todd, and Lovett informs Todd of Toby’s suspicions. The pair search for Toby, whom Lovett has locked in the basement bakehouse to keep him out of the way. He is nowhere to be found, having hidden in the sewers after seeing the Beadle’s body drop into the room from the trapdoor above, as well as finding fingers in a pie, clothing and body parts in a fireplace. Meanwhile, Anthony brings a disguised Johanna to the shop, where she hides herself in a trunk in a corner of the room. An insane beggar woman who has been pestering Todd, Lovett and Anthony throughout the film now makes her way into the shop. As Todd enters, she claims that she recognizes him. Just then, Turpin’s voice is heard. Todd quickly slits the beggar woman’s throat and deposits her body through the trap door.

As Turpin enters, Todd lies to him that Johanna had repented, and offers a free shave. Todd then reveals his true identity and stabs Turpin in the neck numerous times before finally slitting his throat and dropping him through the trap door. As Johanna peeks out of the trunk, Todd spots her and prepares to slit her throat as well, not recognizing her as his daughter. A scream from Lovett diverts him to the basement, where she tells him that Turpin had still been alive and tried to grab at her dress before bleeding to death. Viewing the corpses in the light of the bakehouse fire, Todd discovers that the beggar woman was his wife, Lucy, whom he had believed to be dead based on Lovett’s account of the poisoning. Todd realizes that Lovett knew Lucy was alive. Lovett points out that she never said Lucy died; and, after attempting to convince Sweeney that she misled him for his own good, she confesses she lied because she loves him and would be a better wife than Lucy ever was. Todd forgives her, waltzing maniacally with her around the bakehouse before hurling her into the open oven.

He watches her burn as he shuts the oven door and locks it. He returns to Lucy and cradles her dead body as Toby emerges from the sewer, picks up the discarded razor, sneaks up behind the barber, and slits Todd’s throat (Todd appears to hear him, but he simply raises his neck, and allows Toby to kill him.) The film ends with Todd bleeding over his dead wife as Toby walks away.

Question: What is the name of the female pie-maker in the 2007 film ‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’?
Answer: Mrs Lovett