Review of "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street" (DVD)

This Victorian thriller, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, sounded great to me at first blush. The winner of eight Tony Awards, this quirky horror musical has a lot of elements that compel: murder based on a true story, cannibalism, and crafty lyrics with a wicked sense of the comically macabre.

This offering from legendary composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, tells the tale of Sweeney Todd (George Hearn), a wronged barber whose overriding desire for revenge drives him to slash the throats of his unsuspecting customers, who get a much closer shave than they wanted. Angela "Murder, She Wrote" Lansbury plays Mrs. Nellie Lovett, a baker and street vendor who finds a practical business use for Todd's victims. They both make a killing, quite literally.

When I heard about Sweeney Todd, I was thinking about something along the lines of Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Charles Dickens meets Jack The Ripper. I thought wrong. There is no doubt the lyrics are amazingly sharp and the actors are devilishly good, but this DVD is not really a movie; it's a statically filmed version of the 1982 stage play and every single line is delivered in trilling song. This gets really old, really fast.

While I didn't care for the approach here, I would like to see a real movie made of this play, something along the lines of a Baz Luhrmann film. Mrs. Lovett is really quite funny as she sings about "The Worst Pies in London," and Todd is haunting as he sings "My Friends" to his razors ("These are my friends, see how they glisten!"). In the end, an invitation and a moral comes from the grave:  "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a dark and a vengeful God. To seek revenge may lead to Hell, but everyone does it, and seldom as well as Sweeney, as Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street!"

I can recommend this new DVD of a 1982 Sweeney Todd performance, as long as you know what to expect. But if you're like me and you don't like seeing stage plays staled on video, then go sharpen your razors, cut yourself a piece of mincemeat pie, and watch American Idol (scary!) instead.

Review by Staci Layne Wilson for Horror.com