Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street



AKA: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The time and place is London, 1836, and Sweeney Todd, a seemingly unassuming barber with a small shop, spends his day hanging out near the docks trying to drum up customers, mostly sailors and passengers looking for a shave and a haircut after a long, arduous voyage. But what his customers don’t know is that not all of Todd’s customers make it out of his shop alive. An unlucky few, most of whom are wealthy with no family connections, end up on the wrong side of Todd’s razor or a sneaky trap door, with their bodies unceremoniously dumped in the cellar to be taken care of by Mrs. Lovatt, who uses their corpses for the meat pies in her bakery next door.


Fun fact: the movie never explicitly mentions what happens to the bodies. Just shows you people eating pies.

But Todd is hoping to move up in the world, and he thinks he can do it by blackmailing the local Governor into letting him marry his daughter, Johanna. Only thing is, Johanna has her heart set on Mark, a local sailor, something Todd isn’t too thrilled about. Especially when Mark returns home with a small fortune that he hopes will finally gain the blessing of Johanna’s father. But when Todd tries to knock off the competition things go awry, and Mark sets out to expose the madman once and for all.


Plan looks like it’s going great so far…

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (only occasionally pre-titled on the posters with Sweeney Todd, but not always) is a British horror/crime film from 1936, and is based on the 1847 play The String of Pearls (or The Fiend of Fleet Street), which was itself based on the original 18-part penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls: A Romance from 90 years earlier. Shockingly, despite its early date, this movie is actually the 3rd version of the popular ‘Demon Barber’ tale put to film. The first was a brief, 15-minute short from 1926 simply titled Sweeney Todd, that has since been lost to history. And the second movie, also simply titled Sweeney Todd, is a silent film from 1928 that ends with the entire film being nothing more than a very gruesome dream. So THIS film from 1936 actually ends up being the first movie to most accurately follow the events of the original play up to this point. Though, for those curious, none of the films accurately follow the events of the original 18-part tale from 1846-47, or the subsequent 732 page long (dear gods…) ‘expanded’ version that was printed between 1852 and 1853. A fact that I’m sure still probably perturbs literary purists to this day.


It does keep the romance alive between these two though, so there’s that.

But to be honest this version is… Well, even though it’s more accurate to the original play, it’s probably still not the best version of the story. Nor is it even probably the best version of the play. On the plus side, the film does feature the original portrayal of Todd as a greedy cutthroat who is just killing people for financial gain. So instead of some angry asshole out for revenge because some ass-hat judge falsely imprisoned him because he had eyes for Todd’s wife (and then his kid) like the more recent adaptations portray, it shows him as the looney-toons he was conceived to be.



And really, that portrayal is part of the film’s problem. Because Todd actually feels a little too evil here, if that makes any sense. Veteran actor Tod Slaughter does a superb job of really highlighting Todd’s wickedness and hamming it up, and compared to everyone else’s rather subdued performances, Slaughter is clearly the highlight of the film. But most of what he does makes him stand out too much. Because remember, this is supposed to be a guy that people can trust, who (supposedly) has a reputable business. Someone who’s entire evil business model is based on getting enough people off the street to think he’s enough of a respectable gentleman that they have no problem telling him that they’ve got a wad of cash in their pocket and no family to come looking for them should they suddenly go missing. But the way Slaughter acts, you can tell that there’s something seriously wrong with this guy. And not in some dark, ominous way, either. Nah, you can tell he’s got more than a couple of screws loose, and not in a good way. So it’s rather baffling to me that all these people would go missing and he wouldn’t be the first one suspected, with all his neighbors pointing at his shop and going “Have you checked that guy out? He’s a damn kook.”


You can practically hear the evil laugh in every frame.

But that’s not the film’s only issue. Along with most of the characters being pretty dull, there’s also a bit too much padding. Some scenes drag on longer than they need to, including a whole extended sequence illustrating how Mark suddenly gained his newfound wealth at sea, that feels wildly out of place when compared to the rest of the movie and could have probably been just as easily explained with a couple of lines.


Todd’s important an all, but here’s a brief interlude where some ‘natives’ attack a guy for reasons we’re not privy to (though knowing full well how the British treated said natives I think it’s safe to say that he probably deserved it).

And the whole movie itself is book-ended by a barber in modern London (1930s) regaling the tale of the “great” barber, Sweeney Todd, to a client he’s about to shave (and who subsequently runs off at the end of the film, because who TF wants to be shaved by a guy who excitedly tells you that story.) But, hey, on the bright side the film is still fairly short (only a little over an hour long) and it doesn’t involve Johnny Depp singing (hell, it doesn’t involve any singing), likely immediately making it one of the preferred versions of the tale for some folks.


Sorry Broadway fans.

Complaints aside though, this is still a pretty entertaining version of the story. It very much sticks to its roots and feels a bit more like a classic ‘theatre’ production than it does a modern film. And while I wish the film had done more visually to add to the atmosphere, and though there are some instances where the movie seems to be distracted with itself, despite its flaws the film still manages to retain a macabre tone. And the lead’s kooky performance remains a highlight, despite the fact that he mostly comes off as a cheesy cartoon villain rather than a devious criminal mastermind. So in the end, I still liked it, even though I think it could have benefited from some edits. So if you’re curious about the story of Sweeney Todd and want something quick to watch that doesn’t involve any singing, then this is a decent option for you. But if you want a version with a better story, then the song-less 1973 play (or the 1979 version with the singing, if you prefer) probably still wins out in that department.

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is also available on DVD.

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