Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

In 1846, Benjamin Barker, a barber, arrives in London, accompanied by sailor Anthony Hope. Fifteen years earlier, he was falsely convicted and exiled by the corrupt Judge Turpin, who lusted after Barker’s wife Lucy. Barker adopts the alias “Sweeney Todd” and returns to his old Fleet Street shop, situated above Mrs. Nellie Lovett’s meat pie shop, where she sells the “worst pies in London”. Lovett tells him that Turpin raped Lucy, who then poisoned herself with arsenic. The couple’s daughter, Johanna, is now Turpin’s ward. Todd vows revenge and re-opens his barbershop after Mrs. Lovett, who loves him unrequitedly, presents him with his old straight razors. Anthony becomes enamored with Johanna, but is caught by Turpin and driven away by his henchman, Beadle Bamford.

Todd denounces faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli’s hair tonic as a fraud and humiliates him in a public shaving contest judged by Bamford. A few days later, Pirelli arrives at Todd’s shop, with his boy assistant Tobias Ragg. Pirelli identifies himself as Todd’s former assistant, Davy Collins, and threatens to reveal Todd’s secret unless Todd gives him half his earnings.