Hollywood has always had a fascination with the act of revenge and the fallout that it leaves in its wake. My fella enjoys the old movie classics, and when he got a chance to visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site, he was really excited! Much like the old classics, this revenge-themed dark musical shows the aftermath of revenge and it's effects on everyone involved.
A perfect example of the "revenge movie" is the Universal Horror classic The Black Cat (1934). Bela Lugosi plays Vitus Werdegast a man who is returning home to his native country of Hungary after eighteen years, having spent many of them in a Russian prison camp thanks to the treachery of his one time friend, Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar Poelzig during the Great War. Werdegast is also seeking the whereabouts of his wife and daughter, who Poelzig had taken with him when he betrayed the fort they were station at to the enemy and escaped. After learning that his wife had died almost immediately after his imprisonment, Werdegast is ready to exact his revenge but holds off in the hope that he may yet be reunited with his daughter. Things come to a head when he discovers his grown daughter’s body; Poelzig killed her to keep from losing her to her father. Berserk, Werdegast straps Poelzig to a rack and skins him alive before blowing up the man’s castle, built on the ruins of the fort he had originally betrayed, and ending both of their lives.
Powerful stuff, that still has impact on the audience of today. Similar in many respects to the similarly themed Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Johnny Depp plays Benjamin Barker, a man falsely imprisoned by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), so that the man can steal his wife and child. Escaping after fifteen years he returns to his old barber shop, taking the name of Sweeney Todd. He eventually learns that his wife killed herself after Turpin forced himself on her - and Turpin now plans the same fate for Barker’s maturing daughter. When Sweeney Todd's true identity is discovered by another barber, Todd kills him but doesn’t know how to dispose of the body. The downstairs pie shop owner Nellie Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who is in financial trouble, suggests making meat pies with the body. The result is a perfect murder by Todd and sudden success for Lovett as the pies sell out. While she dreams of getting enough money from this to retire to a life with Todd, he only has thoughts of revenge as people keep visiting his shop and then disappearing...
For more information on this grisly upcoming movie, be sure and visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace. But I'd caution you against eating the pies...
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