Skip to content
DVD: 
- Cert:
- Cat.no: DY21175
- Running time: 111 minutes
- Year: 2007
- Pressing: 2008
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 24 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English for the hearing impaired, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £23.99 (DVD); £27.99 (Blu-Ray)
- Extras: Audio Descriptive Track, 8 Featurettes, Photo Gallery
- Vote and comment on this film:
Director:
- Tim Burton
(Alice in Wonderland, Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Frankenweenie, Mars Attacks, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Planet of the Apes, Sleepy Hollow)
Producers:
- John Logan, Laurie MacDonald and Richard D Zanuck
Lyrics:
- Stephen Sondheim
Music:
- Brian Reitzell
Cast :
- Sweeney Todd: Johnny Depp
Mrs Lovett: Helena Bonham Carter
Judge Turpin: Alan Rickman
Beadle: Timothy Spall
Signor Pirelli: Sacha Baron Cohen
Anthony: Jamie Campbell Bower
Beggar Woman: Laura Michelle Kelly
Johanna: Jayne Wisener
Toby: Ed Sanders
Man in Street: Anthony Head (uncredited)
Sweeney Todd is Tim Burton’s latest collaboration with Johnny Depp and is based on the musical by Stephen Sondheim.
Todd comes to London in 1785 after 15 years away in prison, to search for his wife and daughter who were taken out of his lifeby Judge Turpin, with revenge on his mind. Before too long he meets up with pie maker Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter)who, in her opening ditty, reveals that her pies are crusty, mouldy and would make Gordon Ramsay vomit, while nearby Mrs Mooneygets round this problem by nabbing cats off the street and putting them into the pies that she sells in the street.
Meanwhile, Anthony (James Campbell Bower) wants to save the young Johanna (Jayne Wisener), a girl in her lateteens who has been sort-of held captured in the house of the Judge, such that she’s not allowed out of the house butshe’s got a very plush bedroom. Turpin is the ‘Mr Evil’ of the piece and, as such, is fittingly played by the excellentAlan Rickman. Todd wants to exorcise Turpin from the face of the city and he knows just how to do it, but what wasthe fate of his family and where does Johanna fit into all this for him?
(Just a quick heads-up at this point as the next paragraph has some potential plot spoilers – although these will be ofno surprise to anyone who knows the basic story – so go to the next one that begins ‘Like any musical…’)
I thought this might be different than the average Burton/Depp collaboration, and it is as I’ve never seen him do amusical before, but while it’s gory in a few places it’s not as consistent nor as often as I understood it to be.Depp and Carter work together – him with the blade and a contraption set up that quickly aids the disposal of newclients, and her with the pies and her fresh supply of meat. Timothy Spall is fine as Turpin’s underling, Beadle,while ‘Ali G/Borat’-creator Sacha Baron Cohen takes the role of Signor Pirelli, a rival barber who used to work forTodd and now wants to blackmail him in return for not revealing his true identity.
Like any musical, several of the songs go on too long or become repetitive. However, when it is good, the look of it isfantastic. The gory effects are, if you’ll pardon the pun, bloody well done. You just can’t see the join of where the bloodwould be coming from, assuming Depp didn’t slash them all himself and I’m sure we would’ve heard about that were that thecase!
I would’ve given this film 6/10 as it does rather go on a bit, but bumped that up to 7/10 as there’s a surprise or twothat I never saw coming – mainly because I never try to second guess films, I just let them tell me the story.
If Tim Burton knows how to do one thing brilliantly it’s the visuals, and he doesn’t disappoint here. The print is crispand clear for the 16:9 image (that’s definitely the ratio as opposed to 1.85:1, this being easy to tell on a TV that has nooverscan – in this case a Panasonic Viera ) and it really portrays the grimness of itsVictorian-era premise, making it look even less welcome than an episode of Eastenders and as if everyone’s got somesort of terminal disease, such is their pasty looks.
There’s no DTS soundmix available on this DVD, but the Dolby Digital one, mostly based around music reaching to many acrescendo, really blows you away and I can’t fault it at all.
Aside from the audio descriptive narration running alongside the main feature, the bulk of the extras come on a separate disc andconsist of 8 featurettes and a photo gallery, but oddly there’s no trailer. What is here is presented in 16:9 anamorphic withsubtitles available in several languages.
- Burton + Depp + Carter = Todd (26:00): The director and the two leads are obviously the most important people involved, but there’s plenty of comments from otherkey cast and crew members including an old friend of Depp’s, Bruce Witkin, who helped him with his vocals when it came tothe training. The singing comes up for all the other cast on show in this segment as well.
- Sweeney Todd: The Real History of The Demon Barber (20:06): Well, amongst some clips and a lot of chat from Tim Burton and many others including a guy from the Oxford English Dictionarywho looks like he’s been stung with an electric cattle prod, we hear about the legend that is the man, but as it was so longago no-one’s alive to tell the tale of whether he did those nasty deeds any more. Then again, there weren’t many left aliveat the time, either.
- Musical Mayhem: Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (12:00): The composer speaks, mostly, and gives some further background to the character.
- Sweeney’s London (16:10): According to London was a dirty place to live, full of alcoholics and where cholera, TB and other nasty diseases were rife.So, at least the latter of those three problems has been eradicated today.
- Grand Guignol: A Theatrical Tradition (19:13): As has been pointed out this film spawns from musical theatre. The Grand Guignol Theatre opened in Paris in 1897 as anexperiment in naturalist drama, which seems to translate as where a lot of really weird shit goes on. Comparisons are madewith the film in this segment.
- Designs for a Demon Barber (8:52): This piece is about Costume and Set Design
- A Bloody Business (8:49): Ah, I do like this one. This is how they do the blood-spurting effects, as told by Neal Scanlan, in charge of the specialmake-up effects and prosthetics. It’s a work of genius how they pull it off when it’s described in full. He confirms thatthere are 8 pints of blood in the human body and how AT LEAST that many is used in the average effect!
- Razor’s Refrain (8:36): Still shots zoomed in or out, set to musical piece from the film. It’s like getting all the musical pieces in one segment.
- Photo Gallery:Does exactly what it says on the tin, with 52 pics.
So, a fantastic set of extras for an avid fan to take great enjoyment from, running over almost exactly two hours – so longerthan the film itself, and even worth a look if you’re not Burton’s biggest fan.
The film contains 24 chapters, which is fine for this length of film, there are five languages for subtitles and the openingmenu features a spooky soundtrack and some subtle animation all in keeping with the film’s content. One problem with theScene Selection screen though. It lists the chapters as “1-2”, “3-4”, etc, so, basically, you can only select odd-numberedchapters! Come on, Warner, you were pulling a similar trick way back in 1998 with DVDs likeDisclosure!Haven’t you grasped how this works after 10 years?
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.