BOOK REVIEW: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007 Oxford University Press)

Review by Scott Lefebvre

     I received an e-mail from Rob at Icons of Fright asking if I’d be interested in reviewing Sweeney Todd.   I couldn’t figure out why anyone was reaching out to have a book reviewed that has been around since the early 1800s.   But I’m always game.   If you’ve got a book you want reviewed I’ll be pleased to give it some time and if I can think of anything nice to say I’ll be pleased to provide a review.   So I replied to the e-mail, telling him to have the book sent over to me.

     I received the book about a week later with a nice little letter from the publisher.

     When I saw the cover of the book, I realized the reason for the renewed interest in Sweeney Todd.   There he was.   Johnny Depp.   In white face with a white streak in his teased out blue-black hair.   I had forgotten that Tim Burton had directed a new adaptation of the old tale.   I had seen the trailer and quickly decided that I had no interest in watching Johnny Depp overact in Victorian costume while chewing on Victorian scenery.   I had seen Burton’s take on Sleepy Hollow, and although I generally enjoy the work of Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, and Christopher Walken, and thought they delivered appreciable performances, I was less than impressed by Burton’s quirky c. g. i. enhanced take on the tale.

     What further didn’t help the book’s first impression is that I hate movie tie-in re-releases of source materials which have pictures of the actors from the film on the cover.   Allow me to clarify as to why.   When I read a book I enjoy allowing my imagination, assisted by the author’s work, to create the appearance of the characters in my mind.   When I read the source material for a film, I have enough difficulty forgetting the filmic experience without being reminded of it every time I inadvertently glance at the cover of the book.   This was so distracting with my copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club that I used thick black magic marker to cover up the entire cover of the book except for the pink bar of soap with the title of the book in raised lettering, then sealing the cover with clear packing tape so the marker wouldn’t rub off on my fingertips whenever I read the book.

     The reason I did that is after getting to know Fight Club the film, I read the source material and went on to read everything that Chuck Palahniuk had published which was readily available.   I’ve gone on to become quite the enthusiast of Palahniuk’s body of work, and I can appreciate Chuck Palahniuk’s book Fight Club in a different way than I enjoy David Fincher’s filmic adaptation.   So when I want to watch the film, I watch the film.   When I wanted to read the book instead, I didn’t want Ed Norton and Brad Pitt leering at me with those smug pseudo-confrontational expressions on their faces.   So I blacked them out.

     Oddly enough, although I don’t appreciate movie tie-in re-releases of the works that preceded them, I have a cultish appreciation for novelizations.   When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was the novelization of ‘Fletch’, which I must have read at least fifty times.   When I finally watched the movie, it was a disappointment.

     The reason I engaged in that somewhat lengthy digression is to clarify that the rest of this review is based on the content of the book, not the cover, and is in no way meant to be a reflection of the adaptation.

     I wasn’t unaware of Sweeney Todd before I received the e-mail from the publisher.   We had studied Sweeney Todd in one of my introductory theater classes in college, where we watched a VHS copy of the Angela Lansbury version.   I’m not a big fan of musicals, and I despise Angela Lansbury, mostly because my mother insisted on watching ‘Murder She Wrote’ whenever it was on, when there was much better television programming that we were missing.   To this day, any mention of Angela Lansbury, Murder She Wrote, or even hearing that stupid theme song is enough to put me in a worse mood.   But despite all of this, I liked the underlying story.   There’s this barber that slits people’s throats and dumps them into the basement, where this lady grinds them up into filling for her meat pies.   Cool.   I don’t think my life was worse for the experience, and at the very least I got the joke in Kevin Smith’s execrable ‘Jersey Girl’ where Ben Affleck and his oh so cute daughter select the play for their performance at his daughter’s school’s talent show.

     I had a vague awareness that Sweeney Todd was initially released in serialized installments and that it was considered as one of the more contemporarily recognized examples of the “Penny Dreadfuls” or “Shilling Shockers”.   The editor’s introduction alone is worth the price of purchase for anyone curious about the history of this historically fascinating variety of horror literature.   I had heard of ‘Varney the Vampyre’ and ‘Sweeney Todd’ before reading the editor’s introduction, but knowing of something is entirely different than knowing about something.   The author’s introduction is a graceful mix of the chronological and thematic history of Sweeney Todd.   And by graceful, I mean that the author’s introduction is deeply informative, but also easily accessible to any reader’s passing interest.   Although I must admit I spaced out a few times while reading it.

     Speaking of spacing out, having finished with the introduction, let’s address the content.   You know that there’s this barber that slits people’s throats and dumps them into the basement, where this lady grinds them up into filling for her meat pies.   And essentially that’s all you need to know to know about Sweeney Todd.   But for those interested in having a deeper knowledge of the Penny Dreadful phenomenon, Sweeney Todd is essential reading.

     Essential reading, but not exciting reading.   There is murder and mayhem and bloodshed and a conspiracy that results in cannibalism.   But these elements are few and far between.   Very far between.   Most of the serial addresses the interactions of a vast network of supporting characters and their trials and tribulations.   It could be ventured to say that although Sweeney Todd is the title character, he is not the principal character.   The work is an involving study of the life and times and the societal influences of the period that the work was created in.   Indeed, although considered an inferior derivation of the works of Charles Dickens at the time of their publication, these serials reconsidered with the benefit of historical detachment may even be considered superior to the works of Dickens.   The Penny Dreadfuls pandered to the baser instincts of its audience to retain readership.   The readers wanted blood and murder and intrigue and mayhem and the creators of these works provided them in doses which were incredibly plentiful considering the relative conservatism of the printed word at the time of their creation.   Although decried as a terrible influence and basest examples of literature of their time, I would much rather read of the exploits of Sweeney Todd than the drawing room drama of Charles Dickens.

Available from Oxford University Press: http://www.oup.co.uk/

About the Reviewer:

Scott Lefebvre can write about whatever you want him to write about.
Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.
His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.
He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.
He is currently working on ten novel-length book projects which will be released in 2014.
He also publishes themed collections of interviews from his interview blog You Are Entitled To My Opinion.
His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.
He is the Assistant Program Director for The Arkham Film Society and produces electronic music under the names Master Control and LOVECRAFTWORK.
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