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

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Spoiler Points for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) [R] 117 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $14.25
DVD Release Date: 1 April 2008 (click date to purchase or pre-order)
Film's Official WebsiteFilm's Trailer
Click to read the non-spoiler review

Click to see photos from the Premiere of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Spoiler Points:
• Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) and Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower) sail the Thames into London. Anthony, it seems, spotted his unworthy sea vessel he used to escape his imprisonment in Australia and rescued him to come aboard. The two sing in conflict about the meaning of the city to them.
• Sweeney Todd hurries, with near nauseating digital camera work, to his old 'haunts', his barber shop and home above a meat pie store on Fleet Street.
• Mrs. Lovett (Helen Bonham Cater), his former land lady informs him that after he was sent away to prison on false charges, his wife took arsenic rather than settle down with Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), and the Judge has since adopted their daughter Johanna as his ward. She then reveals she's kept his shaving knives hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the flat just in case he ever returned. The sight of them catalyzes his fancy, and he realizes his 'old friends' will now become the murder weapons of his revenge.
• Anthony, wandering the streets of the upper crust, happens upon the mansion of the Judge and is beguiled by the singing of Johanna (Jayne Wisener). He vows to free her, and goes to beg the aid of Sweeney Todd not knowing that Johanna is his daughter.
• Todd and Lovett set his plan to kill the judge in motion by ensnaring London's most infamous barber, Signor Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), into a shaving competition to attract the attention of the judge's henchman, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall) whom indicates upon Sweeney's win of the 'shave off' he'll be around within the week himself.
• First to come around, however, is Pirelli. Turns out that he recognizes the shaving blades during the contest as those of his former mentor and he wants half his profits not to turn the prison escapee into the authorities. So, Sweeney Todd has no choice but to kill him and the beautiful sensations of the carnage heightens his desires to have his revenge at last.
• Once dead in the trunk, Mrs. Lovett wishes Pirelli's dead 'meat' didn't have to go to waste and hatches a plan to use him in her pies. This 'delicious' notion expands to envelope many others who would go unnoticed if missing. Sweeney Todd emerges a serial killer, killing and dumping his countless victims down a shaft he's built beneath his new and improved barber's chair of horrors. The shaft delivers them to a meat grinder and oven where Mrs. Lovett prepares the hottest selling pies in all the city to be served up by Lovett and her new apprentice, Pirelli's former ward, Toby (Ed Sanders).
• Todd goes on a killing spree, but manages to miss killing both Judge Turpin and his henchman Beadle Bamford .
• Just as he's about to slit the Judge's throat, in pops Anthony Hope revealing his intentions to take Johanna away using a key she tossed him from her window. This revelation stuns the Judge causing him to leave before getting killed. He goes home and initiates plans to send her to an insane asylum for protection and punishment.
• Anthony finds the location of Johanna and begs Sweeney Todd to help him get her out of the asylum. Sweeney sets him up as a credentialed, wig-maker's assistant so that he can gain access under the auspices of getting real human hair for the business. Todd then writes a letter to the Judge indicating that he's learned that Johanna has gotten the lesson and is now prepared to marry him. The two shall be rejoined at the Barber Shop on Fleet Street.
• Upon returning from the errand, Young Toby, highly suspicious of Sweeney Todd, promises in song to protect his new 'mum' Mrs. Lovett. She returns the favor by locking him in the basement with the pie oven and meat grinder. While eating a pie, he finds a partial human thumb, and then investigates and discovers that the meat in the grinder is human body parts.
• An old, homeless, mentally challenged woman (Laura Michelle Kelly) believes something suspicious is going on in the pie shop. She has observes strange smoke and foul odors emanating from the chimney late at night for weeks. Her complaints about the smell, reach the judge who orders Bamford to investigate. Realizing their plans will be compromised, upon Bamford's arrival, Todd beguiles him into accepting a shave and fashion tips prior to his investigations. Once in the chair, it's over for him. He plummets below crushing like so many before him on the stone floor, this time right before Toby's eyes.
• Lovett informs Todd she's had to lock Toby in the basement due to his suspicions, so the two go down to find and dispatch him. He's nowhere to be found seemingly to have escaped in the maze of underground sewer channels.
• When Bamford fails to return from the upper shop, the observant old woman goes up to investigate. Sweeney Todd returns to find her inside. She mutters things about loving him in the past just before he slits her throat sending her down the chute.
• Anthony rescues Johanna and takes her back to the barber shop for safekeeping. She is disguised as a lad, and he then leaves to go and fetch a carriage to take them away and end her nightmares. She hides in the trunk when she hears people coming up the stairs.
• Turpin arrives overjoyed and accepts a shave. Todd does not know that Johanna is in the trunk. After a brief preparation, Todd reveals his identity to Turpin and then stabs him in the throat extending the murder before slitting his throat and sending him down the chute. He turns and notices an observer in the trunk. As he's about to kill the lad, not recognizing her to be his daughter and her not knowing him to be her father, a scream from the basement by Mrs. Lovett, forces him to threaten the lad never to recall these events. He runs to the basement. Turpin was not entirely dead which caused Lovett's scream and unknowingly saved Johanna's life.

The Ending:
• The light of the fires of the pie oven illuminate the face of the dead woman on the floor in such a way that Todd recognizes her despite her haggard appearance and the years of wear. He recalls her last words and realizes that she was not just a crazy old woman she was his Lucy. So angered by the Lovett's deception, he tosses her into the pie oven and watches her body burn to a crisp through the little window in the door. He then goes to his long-lost wife he's only just murdered, and holds her broken body in shame and rage.
• Toby emerges from his hiding place beneath a grate, swipes Todd's shaving blade, and slits his throat. The blood pours from his gullet soaking his dead wife.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This movie was EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean in all Johnny depp's work this is like the best he ever did I mean I got Sweenet Todd's songs on my myspace and I got the movie and everything I mean when I watched the movie and I heard Johhnny sing for the first time I almost fell to the florr he has a voice of a angel I am serious I can't get his voice out of my head and it going to stay that way. I LOVE SWEENEY TODD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!