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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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I think if any actor is going to carry a film single-handedly, then there’s probably not a better man for the job than Will Smith. “I Am Legend” seems like an appropriate title for what he is supposed to do, which in essence is to bring to life the quintessential story of one man against the world.
At least, that’s the task for the story’s hero in Richard Matheson’s timeless science fiction novel of the same title, written in 1954 and adapted several times already into films, from Vincent Price’s turn in “The Last Man on Earth” to Charlton Heston’s “The Omega Man.”
Matheson envisioned a post-apocalyptic world in which one man is surviving cut off and alone in a modern urban environment, where life is harsh because of the physical, emotional and spiritual lengths to which he must go in order to keep living, in the face of constant threat from horrible vampire predator creatures.
In the near future, Will Smith’s Robert Neville is a military virologist based in Manhattan. The end of civilization arrives in the form of the cure for cancer, but the virus used to combat this deadly disease mutates into a plague that wipes out mankind. Neville is spearheading the government’s attempt to find a vaccine to fight the pandemic. But in spite of their efforts, the virus went airborne and New York City is subsequently locked down with only the uninfected allowed to evacuate.
Committed to his work, Neville remains behind in the city as he continues his mission. Fortunately, he has an immune system that protects him from this deadly virus. Unfortunately, he’s completely alone as a human being in the deserted streets of Manhattan, except for the companionship of his beloved dog, Sam. Regrettably, some of the remaining citizens who didn’t succumb to the virus have instead had their ravaged metabolism transform them into creatures that dwell in the darkness of the city’s vast underground, emerging only at night to forage for new victims.
By day, Neville and Sam race around the deserted streets in a Shelby Mustang or a fortified SUV, mainly in search of life forms, canned goods and other supplies. Usually, there’s a stop at the local video store to pick up and return DVDs.
The imagery of an abandoned New York City is visually stunning. The streets are filled with weeds and forsaken vehicles. The desolate city is very realistic, including billboards for known Broadway shows. Being very familiar with Manhattan, I can tell you they have captured Times Square and other areas with perfect detail. It’s all very eerie and weird, but visually impressive.
By night, Neville retreats to his townhouse in Washington Square, which is heavily fortified to keep out the bad people. It’s a routine that is becoming an ordeal, especially after three years of isolation. For Neville, it’s all he can do to keep his sanity, which explains a daily regimen of exercise and broadcasting radio messages in search of fellow survivors. He also plays a dangerous game of trying to trap zombie creatures in order to perform his medical experiments to reserve the effects of the virus.
In the final chapter of his ongoing nightmare (he has dream and flashbacks to the family he lost), Neville finally connects with a young woman (Alice Braga) and a child, both of whom somehow follow his radio messages all the way from Maryland. Suddenly, there’s hope that remnants of civilization are out there somewhere beyond the city limits.
On the other hand, the zombies become even more aggressive and destructive, launching a full-scale assault on Neville’s abode. Very soon, the scene is uglier than New York was during the dreadful 1970s, when crime waves were relentless and the city was in the grip of despair.
“I Am Legend” is visually stunning for its stark vision of a blighted metropolis. It’s suitably spooky and eerie for the way in which it isolates Will Smith’s character in the classic urban jungle, creating chilling scenes for his showdowns with the vampire/zombie creatures.
The satisfaction of the film’s ending may be debatable, but Will Smith performs his extended solo turn with a nice measure of depth, compassion, fear and anger.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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