Wow! Such a good movie.

How sad is this?

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

I suppose most of us know something of the story of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. I believe he shows up in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" as Swiney Todt. But I'm not sure that most of the youngsters of today, share less of our common data base, so I'd better spell it out. Sweeney Todd back in the mid-19th century was a barber who slaughtered some of his customers and gave them to the woman next door who chopped the cadavers into mincemeat and baked them into pies, sold at a penny apiece.If Charles Dickens has had more of a taste for the macabre instead of just the Micawber, he might have written this. It has all the elements of early Victorian drama. There's the penniless boy from the poor house, apprenticed unwillingly to the most loathsome master any young lad ever had with the exception of a malignant boatswain's mate I once had the misfortune to serve under. Well, never mind that. There are greedy entrepreneurs, shady business dealings, blackmail, conflict with social classes, a horde of riches and the constant threat of abject poverty. Tell me that's not Dickensian.Todd has a strange relationship with the bakery woman next door. He slips her the meat, the cadavers, through a secret passageway in the basement. They always seem at odd with each other, mostly over splitting up the profits, but then she's jealous as well because Todd is courting the daughter of a rich man that he's somehow got in his thrall.To be brief, one of his intended customers escapes at the last minute and returns later to the barber shop where Sweeney Todd is poetically disposed of. There's no throat cutting and no blood.Other commenters have shown a familiarity with the narrative's history and the people involved in the production, but I know nothing about either. As a thriller or melodrama, it's kneecapped by its production values. It looks almost like a staged play. The acting of the central figure, Todd Slaughter, is so outrageous this if it were meant as a joke it almost succeeds. He looks and sounds a little like Stanley Holloway gone bad. He fawns over his victims before dumping them unceremoniously into the cellar. When he's not being overly deferential, he cackles like a cartoon maniac and rubs his palms together. He wigs out merely in contemplation of his evil deeds.There are some attempts at humor, mostly grisly. A handful of men stand around at the end, wondering what Todd did with his victims, while one of them munches on a mincemeat pie. And Todd advises his customers that he's going to do a nice job of "polishing them off." There is an "African scene" in which the natives -- genuine blacks -- have been directed to jabber in their "native language" by chanting "la la la la la" out of sync with each other. I could probably pull the movie's entire budget from my wallet if I could afford a wallet.

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.

When it comes to legendary the tale of Sweeney Todd, I seem to follow a backwards order. My first real acquaintance (I heard of and knew the story before, though) only came with the release of Tim Burton's Gothic masterpiece starring Johnny Depp in the titular role. Subsequently I saw a couple of inferior and dull made-for-TV productions from decades in a descending order (a 2000's version, a 90's one starring Ben Kingsley and an 80's one) before now - and finally – reaching the vintage old 30's Tod Slaughter version that I heard and read so much about. Although it's practically impossible to make a comparison, I like this film almost as much as the aforementioned Burton movie. Both movies depict an equally depressive and ominous portrayal of 19th Century London; they both contain a few surprisingly shocking moments and they both star incredibly charismatic acting monuments in the lead role. Tod Slaughter totally and single-handedly makes this a genuine horror classic with his sinister appearance and, especially, his nastily grim laugh. The scripts of the two films, however, are very different. In the newest version, Sweeney Todd is illustrated as a traumatized and mentally tormented romanticist out for vengeance against the evil townsmen who destroyed his family happiness. In this version, adapted from a stage play, Sweeney Todd is a pure and relentlessly malicious criminal who kills and mutilates for his own benefit and personal entertainment. The creepy Fleet Street barber lures rich and lonely travelers into his barber's chair and makes sure they never leave again. His ally, the baker woman Mrs. Lovatt, helps Todd getting rid of the bodies by processing them into her famous and acclaimed London meat pies. Todd has set his mind on marrying a wealthy harbor fleet manager's daughter, but then he'll have to "polish off" her fiancée first. Obviously adapted from a stage play, with limited and one-dimensional set pieces, "Sweeney Todd" is nevertheless a fast paced and occasionally very uncanny 30's chiller. Tod Slaughter is a true delight to observe and embodies every aspect of the horror icon. He petrifies little children, steals, betrays, double-crosses, kills and laughs throughout the whole process.

Now, before I begin my review, I just want to say that I refuse to compare this to the 2007 version. They are completely different animals. In fact, most versions of the Sweeney Todd story aren't musicals. That being said, I saw this the other day and quite enjoyed it. I was expecting throat slitting considering the subject matter, but was surprised to see that Sweeney merely uses a trap door/chair combination. Now, the story itself is quite simple: Sweeney Todd is a barber who murders his customers for their money, and the woman who works next door to him, Mrs. Lovett, bakes the bodies into meat pies. Sweeney's just got a new apprentice, an orphan by the name of Tobais, who starts to wonder why every time Sweeney has a customer, he asks him to go downstairs for a meat pie. On top of this, Mrs. Lovett starts to realize that Sweeney's been taking all of their victims money before she arrives, leaving her without her deserved profit.While an enjoyable and sinister movie, this film suffered from one huge problem: Horrific sound quality. There was a horrible static every time someone spoke, making some of the plot and dialog hard to understand. As such, I couldn't really keep up with the subplot about Johanna and Antony. I probably would've rated this higher if not for this flaw. Overall, this is worth a rent, or a buy if you can find it for under $10.