What an audacious, funny, terrifying movie this is. Johnny Depp stars as a barber in Victorian London who seeks revenge against the men who framed him for a crime and then took advantage of his absence to ruin his wife and steal his baby daughter. When his first attempt at vengeance fails, he begins slashing the throat of every man he can coax into his barber's chair and his new partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, hacks up the corpses and bakes the meat into pies, one for a penny.

Helena Bonham Carter is funny and as emotionally conflicted as Todd. Alan Rickman is the evil judge Turpin, the man behind the original infamy, and Timothy Spall is his wheedling henchman. Sacha Baron Cohen turns in a nice cameo as a competing barber.

Almost everyone is totally corrupt and/or insane, blood flows like beer at Oktoberfest in Munich, and Stephen Sondheim's music is ravishing. Yes, it's a musical and a horror film and a black comedy. What it is mostly is like nothing you've seen on the screen in years. R

"”Doug Bentin