The Daily Stream becomes the Daily Scream for spooky season!
Who better to adapt gory Stephen Sondheim than director Tim Burton and his frequent alter-ego star, Johnny Depp? Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, their 2007 collaboration, is perhaps their very best, all operatic gruesomeness and cobblestones-and-fog moodiness. This is a rare perfect film, a great movie musical and great horror. Depp, singing in a raspy whisper, is a mass of balled-up anguish as he bites out Sondheim’s bitter lyrics about the cesspit that is Victorian London and the relentless weight of grief that haunts him. Helena Bonham Carter devours Sondheim’s nastiness and regurgitates a cheerfully wicked character who is as distressing, in some ways, as she is evil. It’s all hilariously sick and twisted and deadpan droll. This is how you adapt a big, bold opera to the intimate nature of film. (Read my 2007 review. I, erm, might be somewhat less personally effusive about Depp nowadays.)
US: stream on Showtime and Paramount+ with Showtime (via Prime and Apple TV); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
