Depp's 'Sweeney Todd' will do you in

Blood spurts and flows while Johnny Depp sings in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." And that's how it should be for what is unquestionably the greatest slasher film musical ever made.

True, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with any other movies that fit that odd sub-genre. But leave it up to the quirky and dark genius of director Tim Burton to be the perfect conduit in transforming composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim's 1979 Broadway musical masterpiece into a powerful, unsettling big-screen bloodletting.

Set amid the blackened industrial grime of Victorian London, "Sweeney Todd" tells the tale of a morose, murderous barber (Depp) out for revenge against lecherous Judge Turpin (a delectably sinister Alan Rickman) and his henchman Beadle Bamford (a haughty Timothy Spall). Wrongfully imprisoned 15 years ago, Todd returns to avenge the destruction of his fledgling family and the society he deems culpable for letting that happen.

After dispatching a blackmailing rival barber (Sacha Baron Cohen of "Borat" fame in a great cameo), Todd teams up with his former landlady, an amorous and down-on-her-luck pie shop owner named Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), for a macabre mix of killing and capitalism: His throat-slit victims become the tasty fillings for her meat pies.

Burton and screenwriter John Logan adeptly slice and dice nearly an hour out of Sondheim's operatic melodrama to make "Sweeney Todd" into a high-brow horror flick with an emotional and tragic grandeur at its core. The whole film teems with marvelously monochromatic visuals pierced only by red streams of blood (plus a few gorgeously idealized flashback and fantasy sequences).

With his dour demeanor and shock of white hair, Depp makes for a frightening madman -- one you actually come to root for. In terms of his singing, Depp acquits himself masterfully with a quiet, seething intensity that works wonderfully on film.

Carter's whispery Mrs. Lovett doesn't quite dispel the controversy behind her casting (she's Burton's long-time girlfriend and mother of two of his children). Die-hard fans of the musical might have liked more of a madcap take on the role like Angela Lansbury's Tony Award-winning performance preserved on CD and DVD. Carter instead offers more restraint and quiet brooding from her unrequited pursuit of Todd's affections and the dilemma she faces when her orphan kid assistant, Toby (a very fine Edward Sanders), starts to discover what's in the pies.

Burton also skimps on the subplot involving young lovers Anthony (a very pubescent-looking Jamie Campbell Bower) and Joanna (Jayne Wisener as Todd's long-separated daughter). Their musical numbers are lovely, but barely register.

But these are minor quibbles since it's not every day that Hollywood serves up a horror-film musical with such style, emotion and panache. For once, singing and slashing go together in perfect (if tragic) harmony?

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

3½ stars out of four

Opens tonight

Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd

Helena

Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett

Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin

Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford

Sacha Baron Cohen as Adolfo Pirelli

Edward Sanders as Toby Ragg

Written by John Logan based upon Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's musical based upon a play by Christopher Bond. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and John Logan. Directed by Tim Burton. A Dreamworks Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures release. Rated R (graphic bloody violence). Running time: 117 minutes.