Troubled, secretive and unpredictable, the cutthroat coiffeur of London legend is another perfect misfit for the combined talents of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Sweeney Todd is their sixth collaboration.

Neutrals will find it an enjoyably off-kilter slice of Grand Guignol; a satisfying marriage of Burton’s gothic sensibility and Stephen Sondheim’s brooding music and lyrics. Horror and musical purists, however, may be mortified.

We meet Sweeney on a ship pulling into London, soured by fifteen years of false imprisonment in Australia. Shunning his real name - Benjamin Barker - he presents a dim view of the world to his callow companion Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower).

And all because covetous old lech Judge Turpin (Rickman) fancied Mrs Barker. But with Benjamin sent away on a trumped-up charge, she took her own life. So Turpin kept the next best thing: her daughter Joanna (Jayne Wisener).

Sweeney learns all this from Mrs Lovett, purveyor of “the worst pies in London”. Badly affected by a meat shortage, she rents him the upper floor of her shop. It’s the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

A fateful encounter with a preposterous rival barber (Sacha Baron Cohen) leaves Sweeney with a body to dispose of. And Mrs Lovett still can’t afford meat… What to do…? What to do…?

Before you can say “leave the sideburns”, there’s a cascade of carotid-cleaven corpses tumbling through Sweeney’s trapdoor and into Mrs Lovett’s cellar.

Business duly booms. But as the pastry-wench dreams of life with Sweeney, he can sing only of vengeance and his lost daughter.

No, we hadn’t forgotten about Joanna; it’s just that the subplot in which smitten sailor-boy Anthony tries to rescue her from Turpin and his scuzzy henchman (Tim Spall) is, next to the fun and games at the pie shop, rather anaemic.

Not many movies receive an 18 certificate for ‘bloody violence’ alone, which gives you some idea of Sweeney’s gore quotient. Yet there’s never any doubt that we’re dealing in pure fantasy.

(The musical and play on which the film is based both stem from a fictional story published 160 years ago; folklore aside, the consensus is that Todd never existed.)

Burton steeps his production in typically gloomy richness and mordant humour, but drains away dread with a cartoonish tone set by the animated opening titles.

The result is basically Edward Scissorhands with a vindictive streak; suitably horrid but never horrifying.

And while the incidental cues are often thunderous, Sondheim delivers no standout numbers. Musically, it’s solid but unspectacular.

Depp and Bonham Carter handle their songs confidently and competently - even if he has a tendency to go a bit David Bowie and together they look like long-lost ancestors of the White Stripes.

So while it might not put you off your steak-and-kidneys for long, Burton’s best film since Ed Wood will come in handy for anyone in need of something for the weekend.

Elliott Noble