Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936 film)

Plot

Sweeney Todd (Tod Slaughter) is a barber with a shop near the docks of London.

Using his charm and tonsorial skills, Todd lures wealthy, respectable customers into his barber-shop at Fleet Street, where he settles them into a mechanical barber's chair which dumps them head-first down into the basement, ready to have their throats cut with a straight-edge, razor-sharp blade—if the fall does not kill them first.

Mrs. Lovatt (Stella Rho), a lady who makes meat-pies next-door, disposes of the bodies for a share of the stolen money.

Sweeney Todd has his eye on marrying the daughter (Eve Lister) of a local aristocrat, but her father (D. J. Williams) refuses him. When her lover, Mark (Bruce Seton), returns from an ocean voyage, Todd tries to get him out of the way.

The fall, however, does not kill Mark, and Mrs. Lovatt hides him, allowing him to escape. When he recovers, he returns in disguise to expose the barber.

Realizing that he has been exposed, Todd sets fire to his shop and is ironically killed by his own hand, setting his trap floor into motion at the end of the film.

Cast