SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (Rated R)

A Broadway musical is adapted for the big screen, and you’re probably thinking it could be something fitting for the holidays, maybe happy and uplifting, like “The Sound of Music.”

Well, brace yourself for the antithesis of Christmas cheer, because the 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” was a descent into the macabre world of a serial killer who used his tonsorial skills to slit throats of his unsuspecting customers.

Sondheim’s musical, a bloody tale of serial murder, madness and cannibalism, was definitely out of the mainstream for the Broadway stage, but it gathered a slew of awards and critical acclaim.

Taking the challenge of realizing this unique musical into a full-blown movie falls to director Tim Burton, who by all accounts has a deft hand at creating highly imaginative fantasy worlds. His take on the dark world of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is as if he were bringing his animated “Corpse Bride” to life.

Indeed, the stars of this film look very much like reanimated characters from “Corpse Bride.” Johnny Depp, starring in the titular role, and Helena Bonham Carter, as his accomplice Mrs. Lovett, are dressed in black with dark circles around their eyes, resembling Goth partygoers getting ready for a Halloween bash.

The tale of macabre begins when Depp’s Sweeney Todd is arriving back in London after escaping from 15 years of false imprisonment in Australia. His real name is Benjamin Barker, but he has adopted the alias of Todd so that he can seek revenge against the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) and his nefarious henchman Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall), who shipped him off to the other side of the world on a trumped-up charge in order to steal his pretty wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), and his baby daughter.

Under his new identity, Sweeney sets himself up in his old barbershop above the pie-making premises of Mrs. Nellie Lovett, who tells him that his wife poisoned herself after Judge Turpin took advantage of her. Sweeney also learns that Turpin has his now teenaged daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener), as his ward, where she is imprisoned in his house.

Oddly enough, Johanna is one day noticed by Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), a young sailor who rescued Sweeney from the sea and brought the barber back to London. Hopelessly in love, Anthony vows to rescue Johanna and marry her, but the sleazy judge has his own amorous intentions for the girl.

Sweeney’s murder spree begins when a rival barber, Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), a flamboyant Italian hiding his own secrets, threatens to expose Sweeney’s real identity. After cutting Pirelli’s throat, Sweeney doesn’t know what to do with the body, until Mrs. Lovett hits upon the solution of using human remains to fill her meat pies. While Sweeney’s homicidal rage centers on the evil Judge Turpin, he becomes obsessed with taking the life of every customer, after putting a trap door in his barber shop so that the bodies are dumped into a cellar where Mrs. Lovett operates her meat grinder.

Strangely enough, Mrs. Lovett’s pies become the talk of London, and as business booms, she fantasizes about respectability and a life at the seaside with Sweeney as her husband and her young charge, Pirelli’s former assistant Toby (Edward Sanders), alongside as her adopted son.

These dream sequences are about the only time this dark movie shows brightness and color. For the most part, “Sweeney Todd” is filmed in dark hues, where the only bright color is the gushing red blood from the throat of each hapless victim.

Interestingly, this being a Stephen Sondheim musical, “Sweeney Todd” has limited dialogue, as most of the story is advanced and conveyed by songs, and surprisingly, Depp and Bonham Carter, neither known for doing vocals, manage quite well to handle their singing roles. Of course, it is the Sondheim music that celebrates the macabre, and the lyrics are sufficiently bold, brash and twisted.

In its own scathing way, “Sweeney Todd” is a bloody good musical, though hardly designed for all tastes.

DVD RELEASE UPDATE

If we are going to keep up with bad taste during the holidays, the “American Pie” franchise is delivering its next installment in raunchy humor, direct to video in “American Pie Presents Beta House.”

The same members of the Stifler clan who appeared in “The Naked Mile” return for more outrageous hijinks in the collegiate scene, where the parties are in full swing along fraternity row.

Hilarity ensues at the infamous Beta Delta Xi house, where everyone gets swept up in the pranks and unpredictable sexual situations.

There’s enough tasteless bathroom humor and raunchy sex gags to rival what the creators of “South Park” would offer if they were doing a similar film.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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