Attending the Tale of

This chapter examines Tim Burton’sSweeney Todd, a film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s award-winning musical thriller. In direct opposition to Sondheim’s opinion that this is the best, mostfilmicfilm version of a stage musical ever made it argues that Burton’s powerful deployment of the visual possibilities of cinemaalters the grand guignol of the stage musical with its direct address to the audience, to create a more attractive and conventional view of the two psychologically introspective protagonists who fail to evoke the grotesque and demonic force of their more convincingly melodramatic stage counterparts. By analysing Burton’s exploitation of the screen presence of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, the chapteridentifies the contradictions resulting from the director’s attempt to position the film within the genre of such classic screen thrillers asPsycho.