Product Description

Tod Slaughter stars as a Fleet Street barber who amasses a tidy fortune by cutting sailors throats and disposing of their bodies in...homemade meat pies. All goes well until he falls in love with a young woman and excites the jealousy of his elderly female accomplice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63781 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-10-23
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 70 minutes

Synopsis
Tod Slaughter stars as a Fleet Street Barber who accumulates a pretty fortune by cutting sailors' throats just to use their bodies for his home-made meat pies. All goes well until he falls in love with a young woman and makes his elderly female accomplice jealous.

Review
This film contains a quintessential eye-rolling performance by Britain s master of grand-guignol (Maltin). ***Quinlan s *** --Radio Times

Customer Reviews

Ham sliced thick
Karloff as the Monster, Lee and Lugosi as the Count, Lon Chaney jr as the Wolfman, Cushing as the Baron and Tod as Fleet Street's most notorious barber! Certain horror stars are destined to be associated with certain roles and Mr slaughter would forever be identified with Sweeney Todd. Provincial theatregoers and the outlying suburbs of London could be guaranteed a welter of blood - or beetroot juice - whenever Tod came to town for a 2-week residency. By the 30's, he was established as a star turn, having British B films built around him - his old-school melodramas being mostly rewritten from their stage versions to prominently feature him - see Jeffrey Richards excellent article on Slaughter in the book THE UNKNOWN 30'S.

Despite the distancing device of a prologue and epilogue in a modern barbers, the film holds up extremely well. The sailor's battle with the natives at Trader Patterson's shows the grasp of the film's budget exceeding its reach. But all the staples of Victorian melodrama are present - the villain, the hero and heroine, the older man (usually a disapproving Father of the heroine) and a comic couple. Modern day audiences may feel decidedly queasy about the film's maltreatment of Tobias Wragg. Threatened and intimidated by Todd, cheerfully guzzling down god-knows-what in Mrs Lovatt's pies and forced to wear the heroine's clothes - he must have grown into an adult certifiable for treatment. The ending is contrived with Johanna rushing - unconvincingly disguised as a boy - to Sweeney's barbershop and being left to perish in the flames as the villain covers his tracks. Even more unlikely is the way Sweeney stays to watch his emporium go up in flames instead of fleeing with his riches, then rushing in for an ill-advised fight with Jack Ingestre (who adopts a convincing Yorkshire accent for his farmer disguise). The tipping chair was adopted to prevent us actually seeing any throat slitting but it results in a suitably ironic finale as the unconscious Todd is despatched to the inferno below. There is now an official Tod Slaughter website so log on and lend your support to the greatest villain British acting ever produced

Melodrama, ripe and mellow for polishing off......
Much has been said about Tod Slaughter and of his films... I will not elaborate on the quality of the production, for if you appreciate melodrama red, raw, and ripe you will want this movie in your collection. However! These films are available in quite a few editions at a range of prices..... I can heartily recommend this recent "British Collection" edition for the care taken in giving us such an excellent print despite the age of the original. Definitely worth springing a little extra for!