The story of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street first appeared in the 1830s in England and was soon adapted for the London stage. When Stephen Sondheim saw a version of the play in London in the mid 1970s, he asked Hugh Wheeler to collaborate with him on a musical adaptation. When the new Sweeney Todd opened on Broadway in 1979, it became an instant hit and later walked away with that year’s Tony award.
Although successful on Broadway, the film adaptation for the play turned musical has languished in development for decades. Alan Parker (Evita) was said to be interested in the '80s. Burton himself took a stab at it in the early '90s, but he says it came to nothing because there wasn't a script in place. Sam Mendes worked on a version for several years with Gladiator scribe John Logan before making 2005's Jarhead instead. Then, in the summer of 2006, Burton suddenly had an opening in his schedule after his Jim Carrey movie, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, fell apart. He pounced on Sweeney, and quickly persuaded Depp to join him.
Is there a large overlap between fans of Stephen Sondheim and horror movie aficionados? Paramount Pictures must be banking on it, because director Tim Burton's R-rated feature-film adaptation of the Broadway musical Sweeny Todd, one of the season's highest-profile offerings and an Oscar aspirant, includes moments that are bloodier than anything ever seen in the show's various Broadway and West End stagings.
Burton, who is still working on his final cut, brought 17 minutes of footage to New York on Wednesday evening for a sneak preview hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where the film's realistic depictions of throat-slashing murders sent a few audience members cowering in revulsion at the onscreen splatter. The event, which showed off three scenes, marked the first time any of the film had been unspooled for a North American audience. The film goes into limited release on Dec. 21.
Set in 19th-century London, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street stars Johnny Depp in the title role of the vengeful barber who, after serving 15 years in Australia on a wrongful conviction, returns to London to find his wife dead and his daughter the ward of the judge who sent him away. When a killing spree results in more corpses than he can easily hide, his love-struck landlady Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) grinds up his victims for use in the meat pies she sells at her downstairs shop.
The film also stars Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin and Sacha Baron Cohen as the competing barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli.
During one scene shown on Wednesday evening, Sweeney Todd slashes the throats of four customers while singing an ode to his lost daughter, Johanna. After killing the men, Todd sends their suddenly lifeless bodies sliding like sacks of wet cement down a chute to the basement, where they land with a horrifying head-first thud on the stone floor.
Burton felt Sweeney should be deliberately grotesque; a Mario Bava gorefest with ballads. "It just goes with the story," he says of the geysers of plasma. "I'd seen different Sweeney Todd productions on stage, and when they skimped on the blood, the production lost something. Everything is so internal with Sweeney that [the blood] is like his emotional release. It's more about catharsis than it is a literal thing." Shot in a muted palette of smudged Victorian browns and blacks, blood red is the most vibrant colour. (via)
For further reading: Johnny Depp: Cutting Loose in ''Sweeney Todd''; a Q&A by EW.
If you enjoy a bloody musical every so often, may I suggest:
Eating Raoul
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Blood Brothers
Bat Boy
Evil Dead
Cannibal!
Carrie
Little Shop of Horrors
The Rocky Horror Show
Jekyll and Hyde
Lestat
Dance of the Vampires | tanz der vampire
* Feel free to comment if you have a musical to add to the list!
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