Tim Burton’s glorious penny dreadful, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is a wonderful adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s musical. The black magic begins when Johnny Depp’s white-faced Sweeney steals up the Thames in the dead of night. As the boat slips under a spooky London Bridge it becomes quite clear that Burton was born to film this strange and spooky chamber piece.

The film unfolds like a Grimm tale. Depp’s bitter Sweeney returns to London after 15 years of hurt. The eyes are dead. His voice is a deliberate scrape. His painful life story emerges in hollow songs with haunting, off-key melodies. He wears his grievances like armour. His plan to murder the man who condemned him to a penal colony so that he could rape Sweeney’s wife hinges around the dismal attic above Mrs Lovett’s ailing pie shop.

The atmosphere is vintage Hammer Horror. The gleaming shots of cobbled streets are drained of colour. The chemistry between Depp and Helena Bonham Carter’s genial cockney Mrs Lovett is terrific. Bonham Carter hasn’t thrummed like this for years. Mrs Lovett’s unreciprocated passion for Sweeney is the heart of the film. Her idea of stuffing Sweeney’s clients into pies seems wonderfully sensible.

The pace is a surprise. Burton has pruned Sondheim’s arias to fit the tempo of a thriller – brilliant editing – and the villains are far less stocky. Sacha Baron Cohen delivers a priceless cameo as a jealous unisex rival with plans to blackmail Sweeney. Alan Rickman is a sinister pleasure as Judge Turpin. And Timothy Spall is equally effective as his ultra-violent enforcer, Beadle Bamford. Several patches of fantasy don’t work, but these are few and far between.

Burton has never been one to spare the gore. The sound of skulls cracking open when Sweeney tosses his victims headfirst into the basement is not for the fainthearted. How it performs at the box office will be fascinating.

18, 121mins

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