Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
(2007)

Country: UK, USA

Genre: Horror, Musical

Synopsis

As English barber Sweeney Todd murders his customers with his shaving razor, Mrs. Lovett processes the corpses into meat pies. When Mrs. Lovett takes in Toby (Ed Sanders), the boy becomes deeply attached to Mrs. Lovett, thinking of her as a surrogate mother. When he discovers that Todd has been killing customers, however, he goes into hiding in London's sewers...

Notes

• An adaptation of the 1979 stage musical of the same name (with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim), which was in turn based on the 1973 play "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" by Christopher Bond.
• The fictional story of the demon barber of Fleet Street ultimately has its origin in a Victorian 'penny dreadful' called "The String of Pearls: A Romance", which was published in a weekly magazine during the winter of 1846-47 (the 'penny dreadfuls' were a genre of sensationalist, lurid literature, involving crime or the supernatural, aimed at young working class males). Set in 1785, the story of the psychopathic barber proved instantly popular - it was turned into a play before the ending of the story had even been revealed in print. An expanded edition appeared in 1850, an American version in 1852, and a new play in 1865. By the 1870s, Sweeney Todd was a familiar character to Victorians, and led to the figure becoming an urban legend.