Since sweeping the Tony Awards in 1979, Stephen Sondheim’s musically brilliant and shockingly bloody Broadway stage extravaganza, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” has remained continually popular, proving to be a touring and revival success before now finally making it into director Tim Burton’s capable hands, nearly 30 years later. Who else but Burton, with an artful eye for the macabre and a dedicated belief in the capabilities of his frequent leading man, Johnny Depp, could present a film adaptation of this material and remain so remarkably faithful to the original source?

With some additional writing by John Logan who along with Burton injects a good deal more blood and gore than any stage presentation would allow for, this film benefits greatly from the visually stunning work of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who flawlessly captures what one might imagine to be the dank and economically oppressed 19th-century streets of London.

The story is a simple one. A young barber, Benjamin Barker, (Depp) along with his wife, Lucy, and their child, Johanna, are threatened and tormented by the evil and corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). Wishing to take Barker’s wife for himself, the judge has the bewildered barber set up on false charges and banished to Australia. After a gruesome and torrid attack that drives Lucy into insanity, Turpin turns his attention to Joanna and claims her as his ward.

Years later, after escaping from prison, Barker returns to his old barber shop where he is reacquainted with Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), his former landlady and a baker of meat pies. Delighted by his return, the besotted Mrs. Lovett almost cheerfully recounts the story of Lucy’s apparent demise and informs Barker that Turpin has his daughter. Agreeing to accept her assistance, Barker reclaims his silver razors (kept in the floorboards of her building), reopens his barber shop under the name of Sweeney Todd, and sets out to enact revenge on the villainous Turpin.

After a run-in with a rival barber that ends in murder, Todd and Mrs. Lovett hatch a lucrative plan for disposing of the body and with times being hard and the shortage of meat, the couple begins killing unsuspecting customers and baking their bodies in pies. Business takes off and Todd, running short on patience, finally seats the famous Judge Turpin in his barber chair, and thus begins a decent into darkness for each of the principal characters.

With depth and intensity, Depp and Bonham Carter share a marvelous screen presence and offer appropriately creepy characterizations. Depp handles the singing with his trademark wild abandon, and the result is surprisingly effective. Although this is not the trained voice of a Broadway veteran, Depp can and does handle the music and more importantly fully embraces the role of the tragically flawed, yet sympathetic, Sweeney Todd. Along with Depp, Rickman and Bonham Carter seem comfortably suited to their characters and incorporate their strengths as actors into their musical performances.

Oscar nominations will be announced by the time this review is published and it will be interesting to see if Depp garners a well-deserved Best Actor nod after his recent Golden Globe win. Compiling a list of the top five movies of this year seems more of a challenge, but should “Sweeney Todd” be in the running, it certainly will be in the company of some other thematically dark pictures.

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Like “No Country For Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood,” this musical extravaganza is not for the squeamish. Still, fans of Burton, Depp and Sondheim’s extraordinary musical score, will find there is a lot to appreciate about the cinematic rendering of this bloody, but beloved story.

(Rated R; 4 stars out of 4)