Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
As if a penny dreadful novel featuring a murderous barber isn't scary enough, Stephen Sondheim decided to make it not just awe-inspiring, but a hundred times scarier with all the bloodshed one can witness. "Freely flows the blood of those who moralize", indeed...
The musical
- After you get over the murderous barber and the cannibalism, enjoy your nightmares about the mentally deranged manchild. Toby's pat-a-cake-pat-a-cake at the end in particular.
- The tooth-pulling scene in the original 1979 run and the 2005 revival.
- "Epiphany" is particularly horrifying. Watching Sweeney take a flying leap into the pit of insanity, combined with the song's tendency to switch between his declaring vengeance on all of humanity and mourning his wife and daughter, will scare anyone. In some productions, the leap is literal: the actor playing Todd will jump off the stage and start shouting in audience members' faces.
- Most actors playing Todd shout at Antony "OUT! I SAY OUT!" (which is the cue to the orchestra and conductor to begin the song proper). George Hearn (probably the most well known for his Roaring Rampage of Revenge rendition of Epiphany) in the 1982 taping and 2001 concert on the other hand hisses the line to Antony with a cold and furious Tranquil Fury, even taking a couple of steps forward. Davis Gaines (who plays Antony in the 2001 concert edition) runs out of there looking about ready to piss his pants.
- While "A Little Priest" crosses the line multiple times to end up utterly hilarious, the leadup is fairly chilling as Mrs. Lovett gets a bright idea about what to do with Pirelli's body and how to use Sweeney's bloodlust to fuel her business. Sweeney turning against humanity is at least somewhat understandable, considering the sheer hell he's been through; what's Lovett's excuse?
- At the end of "God, That's Good!" Mrs. Lovett is delighted to see Todd's newest customer going up to his shop, gleefully saying "Fresh supplies!"
- The beggar woman becomes that much more horrifically tragic when you realize she's Sweeney's wife, and the combination of the traumatic assault, her attempted suicide, and her time in Bedlam House have left her a shell of her former self.
- Judge Turpin is Nightmare Fuel in human form.
- Judge Turpin's version of Johanna is sometimes cut...and for good reason. A horror-thriller musical about serial killers and cannibalism is disturbing enough, but Turpin flogging himself to get rid of the impure thoughts about his ward and having a frigging orgasm because of it takes it to a whole new level.
- Early on in the musical, you learn through the songs "A Barber and His Wife" and "Poor Thing" that Turpin wanted Lucy so badly that he had Barker transported to Australia on false charges. When that and his attempts at seduction didn't work, Turpin had the Beedle lure Lucy to his house under the pretenses that he was "all contrite" and "blames himself for her dreadful plight". Lucy gets there in the middle of a masquerade ball. She then drinks but (depending on the play's interpretation) either means Turpin was Slipping a Mickey or he got her rip-roaring drunk. The music crescendos as the dancers "all just stood there and laughed" and surround them....
- Then there's Fogg's Asylum...
- The awful screeching sound heard at the very beginning, as well as whenever Todd kills someone. Mercifully, the 2014 Lincoln Center production replaces it with a much less jarring megaphone siren.
- That shrill screeching sound is actually from a factory whistle, and it really is jarring.
- Oh, it gets even better. You're lulled into a false sense of security at the beginning of the show with an organ playing. It's creepy but composed in such a way that it's soothing. Then, right as the houselights go out, plunging everyone into darkness...SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!
- To up the ante? The whistle sounds at totally random (but important to the plot) times. It's still going to make you jump in your seat and you're left waiting to hear that awful shrieking whistle.
- There is a bootleg of Dorothy Loudon as Mrs. Lovett, where in her final scene they redid the dance to the oven so George Hearn sings as Dorothy screams and pleas to Todd, realising what’s he’s going to do to her.
- While the song "Kiss Me/Ladies In Their Sensitives" is a humorous song, there's a slight one in the staging (seen prominently in the taping from 1982 and in the 2014 concert). Antony and Johanna's part ends with them kissing (implying that they're making out) and freezing in place. The staging continues with the Judge and the Beadle walking to the Judge's home and stopping just before he enters the house. You can see him preparing to either open the door (2014 concert) or climb the steps (in the 1982 taping)...right next to where Antony and Johanna are making out. He was very close to catching them in the act and given how he reacted to learning Johanna intended to run away from him? Who knows what would've happened...
The 2007 film
- Judge Turpin, in a terrifying owl mask, raping Lucy as his group of socialites simply watch and laugh, along with the Beadle making a sick grin. Unlike most performances of the musical, you can hear her screams as everything is going on. It's widely considered to be even scarier than the abundance of violence in the movie. "Poor thing", indeed.
- Mrs. Lovett mentions that Lucy could handle raising a child alone after her husband was arrested for no reason, and knowingly turned down the Judge's persistent advances. It was him cornering her drunk and raping her that drove her over the edge.
- When Lucy and the Beadle arrive at the party, he randomly grabs a flute of champagne and gives to to Lucy before pushing her into the crowd of dancers while looking in the direction of the audience with an evil smirk. Lucy takes a sip...but she looks dizzy and disoriented before finally collapsing onto a sofa. You realize then that she'd been slipped a roofie like drug.
- The shrieking laughter at Lucy's expense is emphasized by the orchestra's string section Mickey Mousing some nasty squeaking noises.
- Sweeney's reaction to this is just chilling.
- Mrs. Lovett mentions that Lucy could handle raising a child alone after her husband was arrested for no reason, and knowingly turned down the Judge's persistent advances. It was him cornering her drunk and raping her that drove her over the edge.
- A brief blink-and-miss-it moment towards the end of "Green Finch and Linnett Bird", but one can notice that Judge Turpin installed a spy-hole through the door leading into the bedroom that Joanna's held hostage...
- Beadle Bamford. While Judge Turpin raped Benjamin Barker's/Sweeney Todd's wife, the Beadle looked on with far too much interest. Later, he praises Turpin for sentencing a nine-year-old boy to death for stealing a pretty small, insignificant thing.
- Less severe than other examples (because he's shown to be completely fine a couple scenes later), but the Beadle's absolutely brutal beating towards poor Anthony is pretty hard to watch, especially because Anthony is one of the only genuinely kind and sympathetic characters in the film. Beadle even does a little dance-like "skip" with each blow, making it clear how much he's enjoying it.
- Count on "Epiphany" (where Todd simultaneously swears revenge on the world that stood by while he went through the Trauma Conga Line from Hell and mourns both Lucy and Johanna in a case of Sanity Slippage) delivering this. As mentioned above, in the stage musical, the actor playing Todd addresses various members of the audience and will even leap off the stage to individually confront them. This is impossible to do in the film without going into Narm territory but Burton comes up with an effective solution. During the parts where Todd is screaming about giving various people a shave, he paces through the crowded streets, individually stopping by various men with each line. The intended victims don't react, which gives a frightening edge. Men of London beware...Sweeney's waiting!
- After learning that Antony plans to help Johanna escape, Turpin comes into Johanna's room to see her packing. Their resulting confrontation reads very much like he's preparing to rape her and then the Beadle actually does lunge at her while Johanna shrieks in terror. Cut to Antony watching outside the house (waiting for Johanna) only to see her being dragged kicking and screaming to a wagon.
- All of the throat slitting scenes. Unlike the stage show, which use clearly harmless stage trickery, this movie loves getting up close to the victim's throats as Todd really digs his razor in, blood splattering everywhere, complete with nauseating sound-effects to make it extra-visceral. The worst is Pirelli's: the pained gurgling noises really sell it. Even leaving aside the gruesome ways they're murdered, it's horrifying to see so many innocent men be killed in rapid succession, not for anything they've done but because they got caught up in a madman's revenge upon the world.
- And then the way they're all dropped onto their skulls via the chute to the cellar. Beadle Bamford even gets his head split open on impact with the cellar floor!
- Hoo, and then there's Judge Turpin's death. Todd doesn't just give him a cut to the throat like the stage musical. Here, he goes into an absolute frenzy and repeatedly stabs Turpin in the neck before he gives the slash. Sweet Lord, have fun sleeping after seeing that.
- Watching Mrs Lovett's customers consume her meat pies (and enjoying them) can be unsettling for some viewers considering we know what the pies are made of. When Toby discovers the human corpses in the meat grinder in the basement and realises exactly what he's been eating, he's visibly horrified.
- The beggar woman's capacity for this was ramped right up for the movie.
- The fate of Fogg. Instead of being shot dead by Johanna like in the play, Anthony spirits her away from the asylum, leaving him "to the mercy of (his)... 'children.'" No sooner do the couple leave the cell than Fogg is immediately swarmed and violently ripped apart by a gaggle of his deranged female prisoners, emaciated and unkempt enough to resemble a zombie horde. Considering at the very least that he probably didn't feed them well, and the core story involves cannibalism, Fogg was probably devoured by the frenzied mob of female inmates before Johanna and Anthony left the building.
- The scene with Toby in the evil basement, when the poor kid finally learns what's in the pies –- and then has to watch as the just-murdered Beadle Bamford gets dumped right down into the basement with him. And then Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney come down into the sewer looking for him because they want to murder him too.
- When Johanna finally comes face to face with Sweeney, he is absolutely covered in blood due to having just savagely murdered the bastard responsible for transporting him for life when she was just a little baby and dropping him down the chute. He doesn't recognize her as his daughter because of her disguise, and shows every sign of wanting to kill her for being a witness to the horror he's just unleashed. That's gonna stick with you for a while...
- When Sweeney finds out Lovett lied to him, he takes her off her guard by dancing with her –- and throws her into her own oven to be burned alive. Unlike the stage play, we can see exactly what happens as she screams and thrashes while she burns up. The last shot of her (pictured above) shows a shrieking, thrashing black thing, with her face having melted off! It's telling that, for a movie with multiple scenes of people getting their throats slashed, many viewers considered this to be the scariest scene in the movie!
- Toby killing Todd. In the play, his Heroic BSoD is shown by having him stumble about while mumbling nursery rhymes with a crazed half-laugh. Here? He crawls out of the sewer, casually picks up Todd's razor, casually slits his throat, and lumbers out the door, all while completely stone-faced. There's some indication that his resulting trauma has turned him into another Todd.
