he Christmas season is one of the peak financial periods for Hollywood. The studios stock the public’s stockings with care, ensuring that there are big budget movies available to collect maximum holiday coinage. This year, Paramount Pictures’ holiday release is a movie about a sadistic barber who murders his clients while a business associate bakes the corpses into pies and serve them to the public.

And as if that concept weren’t subversive enough, the actors sing most of their dialogue. Could there be a more perfect film thanSweeney Todd to share with your family during the holidays? This is the kind of dark, twisted blockbuster that could only emerge from the imagination of Tim Burton.

Burton has long been an anomaly in Hollywood; a unique director who makes films that smack both as personal and commercially successful. At least, he was until he released a series of titles (Planet Of The Apes, Big Fish, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory) that lacked the edge and creative storytelling that defined his early work. It briefly seemed as though he had burned himself out and lost whatever it was that made his voice special. Fortunately, Sweeney Todd has put any doubts to rest and firmly re-establishes Burton as one of the strangest directors of his generation.

Johnny Depp is the title character who returns to London following decades of false imprisonment. After finding lodging with the owner of the worst pie shop in town, Mrs. Lovett (Burton’s wife Helena Bonham Carter), Sweeney begins his quest for revenge against the evil Judge Turpin (the incomparable Alan Rickman) who framed him and stole his wife and daughter. Posing as a barber, Todd begins slitting the throats of all of his customers, working his way up to the judge, while Mrs. Lovett disposes of the bodies in her suddenly popular pies.