KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Leofwine_draca Tod Slaughter struts his stuff in this follow-up to MURDER IN THE RED BARN, and I'm pleased to say it's far better than his first movie. In that one, Slaughter was pretending to be a good guy for much of the film, only to be revealed as a villain halfway through. Here, as the well known murderer Sweeney Todd, he's devious and utterly slimy from the very beginning. Slaughter's performance is way over the top and he appears to be having a ball playing the role, one that he really was born to play. Whether he's cackling in the cellar, making plenty of ominous references to "polishing off" his customers, or generally being unpleasant to his young apprentice boy, Slaughter makes the film his own and he lights up the screen every time he appears. Never have I seen an actor put his all into a role like this before and the end result is almost tiring.As for the rest of the film, it's pretty decent although Slaughter is the pivotal element and everything else seems secondary. The supporting cast are adequate rather than being memorable, and there's witty dialogue to enjoy throughout. Even better, the filmmakers include a comic prologue and epilogue and aren't afraid to highlight the inherent black comedy of the story. The story is fast paced and there's plenty of incident packed into the seventy minute running time. Sets are still cheap but there's an almost Dickensian feel to the London period. Even better, things go way off kilter with a ten-minute interlude in the African jungle, as English colonial types battle vicious jungle natives who are pretty handy with spears and arrows. Obviously included just to pad out the running time, this is one of the most dated – and entertaining – parts of the movie.Todd's killer chair is always a hoot to see and something I personally found to be absolutely hilarious; I'll never get tired of watching the unsuspecting customers get flipped into the cellar. Censorship of the period saw any reference to cannibalism being deleted but those who know the full story of Mrs. Lovett – that she turned the victims' bodies into her meat pies – will enjoy many sly references to the "penny pies" and watching some of the dumber characters munching on them with relish. Rounding off with a fiery crescendo in which Todd gets his just desserts – it really is a great end to the film – this movie is a resounding success and one to be really relished – just like a crunchy meat pie.

funkyfry This 1930s version of "Sweeney Todd" features enough grim humor to keep a modern audience involved, but there's little nuance or shading in this tale of horror. Todd in this version is an entirely villainous character; his behavior which has been of more psychological interest in recent versions based mostly on Sondheim's musical is treated in this film as a purely criminal case.As I am myself mostly familiar with this later version, some elements in this one seemed arbitrary or contrived, and furthermore lacking in the irony the follows a late 20th century treatment of this kind of heavy melodrama. Melodrama, for those accustomed to only its casual and rather useless modern adjectival usage, is the classic form of storytelling where 2 perfect lovers are kept apart by some kind of circumstance or villainy that must be overcome, usually (in the formula) by means of a sacrifice on the part of a concerned 3rd party. In the case of this story, the lovers are Johanna (Eve Lister) and Mark (Bruce Seton); the obstacle to their union is the disapproval of her father (D.J. Williams) because Mark is a working man. To gain his fortune, Mark gains passage on the disapproving would-be father in law's boat. This would seem a recipe for disaster, but in this rather optimistic version of the story everyone on the ship loves Mark like a brother.Now comes the really insanely contrived part; when passing around the Cape of Good Hope, Mark's ship is hailed by the servant of a colonist whose home is being attacked by angry natives. Of course being a bunch of heroic merchant seamen, all the guys on the ship want to volunteer to fight the savage natives. These natives are really something to see, right out of a Monogram Jungle Jim movie. Their vocabulary seems to consist entirely of the phrase "la la la la la!", and they are horrible shots with the bow and arrow except when they need to shoot the captain and the colonist so that Mark can inherit a bag of pearls that will win his fortune and enable him to marry Johanna.Given how simple the plot is -- Todd and Mrs. Lovatt (Stella Rho, giving the film's only reasonably subtle performance) kill people and take their money -- it's disappointing how contrived some of these elements are, and how confusing the story gets. I still don't understand why Mark and his bumbling comic relief friend snuck into Todd's house, why Mark sent a note to Johanna, and why he was surprised when Johanna responded to his note by impersonating a servant boy and sneaking into Todd's barber shop. Mark and his friends are eating and drinking (his buddy speculates on what Todd and Lovatt do with the bodies while he munches on a yummy meat pie, one of the film's only hints to that aspect of the story) when they're supposed to be stopping Todd from fleeing. It all seems weird and forced.But then, this whole film really should rise and fall on Tod Slaughter's performance as Sweeney Todd. And I think perhaps a volume could be written on that alone. Slaughter is the very definition of late 19th Century stage acting. His gestures and mannerisms are deliberate and flashy, and even when he pauses for a moment of characterization (like the wonderful pause after dragging his first victim when he absent-mindedly runs his razor across his own face) there's a conscious aspect to the workings of the performance. This is a performance not unlike the one that I imagine made John Balderston famous for "Frankenstein" in the 1920s. And it's a good case study in the old "Grand Guignol" style of acting. Slaughter seems to relish the villainy -- he doesn't make you squirm in discomfort, but rather makes the whole thing a lark. I imagine this guy played Macbeth more than once. As far as the tradition of "horror acting", he is closer to Lugosi and far from Karloff. However the performance becomes irritating because of his screen time. There's only so many times we can hear him laugh villainously before it becomes annoying.What is this film, on the whole? It's a movie that young men in 1936 would have taken their girlfriends to see, so that they could laugh when the ladies complained about it afterwards. It's deliberately shocking and provocative entertainment that is no longer shocking. Once you get past a humorous framing device involving a "modern day" barber (sort of a sub-Langian device), there isn't much actual entertainment here sadly. The direction is uninspired and the storytelling is only as subtle as the censors forced them to be. Slaughter's performance is overly flashy and none of the other characters register. However there are those moments of macabre humor that lift the thing slightly above the banal.

Scars_Remain This movie is a blast to watch. It has the perfect blend of horror and comedy and is actually pretty darn hilarious at times. I have now seen 3 adaptations of the Sweeney Todd story; Tim Burton's version, the 1982 version and of course, this one. I still have to say that Burton's version is the best but this one is definitely great and should not be overlooked one little bit.Tod Slaughter is awesome as Sweeney. I can definitely see where the hype for him comes from after seeing this film. The story is slightly different from the musical but I guess it's more true to the original story. It's definitely a simple and cheaply made film but it wins in my book with a great cast and a wonderful story.You'll like this movie if you're a fan of the other Sweeney Todd films. Check it out.

rixrex A nice gem from England done in a very Dickensian style, with Tod Slaughter performing in such a way as to rest all doubts about his great ability to make a cardboard villain into a full-blooded character that we both despise and delight in at the same moment. There can be no false assumption that this is not the work of a group of talented stage performers, which is how the infamous Mr Slaughter made his living in travels about the country, performing in plays of the macabre. He would seem to be a person who'd scare you upon first introduction without really trying. Unfortunate that he never performed in a Hitchcock film, for that would have been a grand collaboration.