Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1939)

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Lacking the motivation that made the musical Sweeney Todd more understandable (if equally as reprehensible), Tod Slaughter's Sweeney is a barber of impeccable reputation who seems to slit throats just in order to rob his victims. Of course, he's also a dyslexic Sweeney, flipping the switch to have his barber chair turn upside down, knocking his victims out, and then slicing and dicing so meat pie shop owner Stella Rho can grind em' up. Most of the musical's characters are there, but the villainous Judge Turpin has been changed into a local aristocrat without the lecherous motivations that made that character's dispatchment the most anticipated murder in the musical. The rivalry is between Sweeney and the character of Mark, a sailor in love with Johanna, the governor's daughter. Mark, of course, became the character of Anthony in the musical, a friend of Sweeney's, but here, Slaughter's intentions are to knock him off so he can get Johanna (his daughter in the musical) for himself.The character of the Beedle, so slimy in the musical, has simply been changed into an imperious authoritative character, almost the twin of "Oliver Twist's" Mr. Bumble. The art direction of the connected shops is fascinating, watching Mrs. Lovett leave her pie shop (after giving poor Tobias a huge pie for a penny) and go into the catacombs to get into Sweeney's barber shop. There's no love lost between the two, as evidenced by his cheating her out of half the take of one of his victims, so most of the classic conflict is gone. Even at just over an hour, this "Sweeney" is rather boring, even when comparing to Slaughter's other histrionic melodramas and not taking into account the musical which help make this tale even more of a legend 40 plus years later.

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.

This movie is a blast to watch. It has the perfect blend of horror and comedy and is actually pretty darn hilarious at times. I have now seen 3 adaptations of the Sweeney Todd story; Tim Burton's version, the 1982 version and of course, this one. I still have to say that Burton's version is the best but this one is definitely great and should not be overlooked one little bit.Tod Slaughter is awesome as Sweeney. I can definitely see where the hype for him comes from after seeing this film. The story is slightly different from the musical but I guess it's more true to the original story. It's definitely a simple and cheaply made film but it wins in my book with a great cast and a wonderful story.You'll like this movie if you're a fan of the other Sweeney Todd films. Check it out.

Sweeny Todd, for being as bizarre and crazy as it is, is very, very well made for the time, and for what I can only guess to be a somewhat limited budget. For that alone, George King deserves some sort of high recognition. The film is captivating and flies by as the viewer watches the tale of Sweeny, the homicidal barber. The movie has great comedic elements that show that the creators are not afraid to laugh at their own production a little bit. The aptly named Tod Slaughter does an amazing role as Sweeny Todd and has a creepy laugh that calls back to many an old silver screen sociopath. For a film that I got in a two-movie pack for fifty cents, I think I've certainly gotten a gem. Now, I best not take this gem to the local barber