Re: Halloween Horror Marathon 2023
Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2023 8:30 pm
-Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2007): 10/10
Gushingly gory adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's stage musical about Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a "naive" barber torn away from his loving wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly) and infant daughter Joanna and incarcerated on a false charge due the machinations of the sinister Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, at his snide, doleful best). Fifteen years later Barker emerges from prison as the newly re-christened "Sweeney Todd", who travels back to Fleet Street in London aching for a little vengeance. Soon, with the assistance of dotty and besotted baker Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), Todd has set up a successful barbering business, keeping his busy silver razors dripping with the grue of his customers as Mrs. Lovett processes their mortal remains into savory meat pies and Todd waits -- with increasing impatience -- to get Turpin into his barber's chair and take more than a little off the top.
Director Tim Burton is the ideal person to realize Sondheim's dark and mordantly funny vision on the big screen, and his trademark, gorgeously gloomy visuals (Dante Ferretti took home a Best Production Design Oscar) are finally given their full due on a great new 4K UHD disc release (shamefully bundled into an expensive boxed set of completely unrelated Paramount horror movies). Depp and Carter acclimate themselves adroitly to the demands of Sondheim's breathless, tongue-twisting verses (they're not beautiful singers, but they don't embarrass themselves to Mama Mia levels, either), and Burton fills the movie with firehose arterial sprays that will certainly turn squeamish viewers as green as Mrs. Lovett's crusty pies but will delight the Fangoria crowd. Bloody beautiful.
Gushingly gory adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's stage musical about Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a "naive" barber torn away from his loving wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly) and infant daughter Joanna and incarcerated on a false charge due the machinations of the sinister Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, at his snide, doleful best). Fifteen years later Barker emerges from prison as the newly re-christened "Sweeney Todd", who travels back to Fleet Street in London aching for a little vengeance. Soon, with the assistance of dotty and besotted baker Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), Todd has set up a successful barbering business, keeping his busy silver razors dripping with the grue of his customers as Mrs. Lovett processes their mortal remains into savory meat pies and Todd waits -- with increasing impatience -- to get Turpin into his barber's chair and take more than a little off the top.
Director Tim Burton is the ideal person to realize Sondheim's dark and mordantly funny vision on the big screen, and his trademark, gorgeously gloomy visuals (Dante Ferretti took home a Best Production Design Oscar) are finally given their full due on a great new 4K UHD disc release (shamefully bundled into an expensive boxed set of completely unrelated Paramount horror movies). Depp and Carter acclimate themselves adroitly to the demands of Sondheim's breathless, tongue-twisting verses (they're not beautiful singers, but they don't embarrass themselves to Mama Mia levels, either), and Burton fills the movie with firehose arterial sprays that will certainly turn squeamish viewers as green as Mrs. Lovett's crusty pies but will delight the Fangoria crowd. Bloody beautiful.