Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13317 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-05-12
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 140 minutes

Synopsis
Angela Lansbury and George Hearns star in this updated version of the classic macabre musical. Benjamin Barker (Heard) returns from prison and assumes the name of Sweeney Todd. But when he finds out that a judge is tormenting his wife and daughter, Sweeney decides it's time to cut more than just the judge's hair. Lansbury is Mrs Nellie Lovett, the downstairs neighbour who concocts a scheme that will give both of them what they want. Featuring music by Stephen Sondheim.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Performances
What a superb film. Anyone who appreciates Stephen Sondheim will enjoy this excellent performance. Hearn is the finest Sweeney ever and Angela Lansbury is brilliant as Mrs Lovett. There is not a weak link in the cast. I would recommend this to anyone.

Just Wonderful
Thank goodness this recording of the stage show is now available with its magnificent central performances from Angela Lansbury and George Hearn.

The show's triumphant mix of gruesome comedy, melodramatic lovers' subplot and final tragic depiction of what revenge does to a human soul is brilliantly acted and excellently sung.

This is the only version you'll ever need.

Lansbury and Hearn make Sweeney Todd Sing...!
This DVD is of the 1982 film of the theatrical production of Sweeney Todd shows the vision of Stephen Sondheim in make a "horror" musical about a legendary sensational character from English literature.

Hearns' performance as Todd is well-acted, but two-dimensional in feel. He is either 'on' as the demon barber or merely standing about like scenery. Lansbury, in 1982, at 57, gives a great performance which often overshadows Hearn's. She is engergetic and loud, as I gather she would think a cockney Mrs Lovett would act. Yet, there's something somewhat "off" in her performance, as if she were playing a precocious teenager rather than a mature, but addled widowed woman left alone and penniless in the world.

The Alms woman provides Cassandra-like pronouncements throughout the show, which keeps the sense of foreboding alive. The side story of the two lovers, Johanna and Anthony, while integral to the overall plot, often gets cumbersome and overly melodramatic as it threatens to engulf itself in convoluted plot and scene changes. The villains of the piece, the Judge and his Beadle, are played with relish by the actors, but again merely as two-dimensional characters.

The character of Toby seems to provide some complex acting within the plot, and his song to Lovett, "Nothing's Going to Harm You Now," defines this character far more as a real human being than all other characters combined.

Don't buy this DVD if you want the Depp version - this is a stage version of the show, which means the intense close-ups of movie film just do not exist, which means the expression of feeling must be overacted and, as I suspect, what Sondheim specifically wanted of his characters at the time.

So, enjoy this version of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd for what it is - a first attempt by a director/writer to produce a play in the "penny-dreadful" style, which later he modified to a dark a brooding commentary on what life can do to create a monster, as seen in the Burton/Depp version (2007).