September 25, 2007

George King. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. 1936. 67 mins.

One of the earlier cenematic Sweeney Todd depictions. King's Todd is portrayed as a unsympathetic greedy, lecherous, murderous psychopath from the very opening scene. There is no revenge backdrop to humanize Todd, nor is there any real development as to why Ms. Lovett (the cannibal pieshop lady) pines for and acts as accomplice to Todd's senseless murders. There is however the magic barber's chair. Tod Slaughter (Sweeney Todd) has all the era subtlety of a bad vaudevillian making a slow transition to the talkies.