Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Sweeney Todd '82, Sweeney Todd '07, The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee

Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. I'm Father Malone and with me, as always, is the pugnacious pug, the pepper to myself, the coffee to my cream. Ripley Jean Markets people. Ripley keeping it mysterious. I like it.

I'm keeping it mysterious too, because we have a very special guest joining us later on in the show. Oh Nope, you cannot know. Nope, you will not guess. You will literally never guess. But they'll be on for the second segment, which means your last today, puppy.

Tell it to the Marines or tell it to the judge. That's actually way more appropriate for my choice this week. Look, this one's gonna have to be a purchase. I'm sorry. I keep recommending things that you have to buy, but trust me, this one's great.

You like musicals, you rep I'm not talking to the audience. Well i am, but I'm asking you what's your favorite? Don't say rent Oh, Abner, that's unexpected. I figured you for a Godspell girl, and Judges and Godspell both figure in tonight because we are talking about Sweeney Todd of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, from nineteen seventy nine, directed by Hal Prince, a book by Hugh Wheeler, music and lyrics by mister Stephen Sondheim. Sweeny Todd at the Demon Barber of Fleet Street the new Stephen Sondheim opens music thriller starring Angela Lansberry, Cushi and Len's Parry.

What happened and he wouldn't want us to give it away? God Sweeny. If you don't know. Sweeney Todd is the tale of a barber in eighteen forty six who's returned to London after being exiled by a corrupt judge who did so so he could get his hands on the barber's wife, and in his absence, has raised Todd's daughter, Joanna. Todd connects with a local baker who's lacking any meat for her pies, and together they begin killing and cooking all who get in Todd's way as he aims to have his revenge.

A lot of people believe this is based on true story. It is not. It is a bit of fiction that appeared in the much beloved Penny Dreadfuls back in the eighteen forties, which is curious because that's the time that this production of Sweeney Todd takes place in but if you read the original stories, those took place in seventeen seventy eight. A string of pearls is what it was called. Authorship has been attributed to half a dozen writers, so who knows.

But the serial was so popular that it spawned a stage adaptation before the finale had been published. It was then readapted, and plagiarized and readapted again, all the while spawning theatrical adaptations. There was one in eighteen sixty five, another one in nineteen sixty two, and then just eleven years later, Christopher Bond released his play Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It was Bond who added the tragic backstory and the lust for revenge. In all previous versions, Todd was just the villain.

When Sondheim got his hands on the play, he ended up crafting one of the greatest musicals of all time. We know what a brilliant lyricist he is, and they are dizzying here, but the music is the real mark, a cross between Revel and Bernard Herm. The show is considered by many to be an opera. There's very little dialogue throughout and you can basically jettison all the dialogue altogether. On a personal obsessive note, the design and costume design for the original show were done by Eugene and fran Lee respectively.

They were the original sent and costume folk for Saturday Night Live. This fantastic grubby world you'll see was made by the man who built the look of SNL and despite his absence during Lauren Michael's absence, he worked on that show up until his death last year. And those fantastic costumes on Missus Lovett and Beatle Bamford are from the originator of the Killer Bees and Roseanne Rosanna Dana. Now, while the original cast recording for Sweeney Todd is readily available for your listening pleasure, there is no document of those initial Broadway runs. Tim Burton would make his film for nearly thirty years.

So what are you to do other than attend a local production, which I actually highly encouraged. The smaller scale, the better, sincerely, But there is another, because that's right. On September twelfth, nineteen eighty two, the first national tour was filmed in Los Angeles, featuring from the original cast Angela Lansbury as Missus Lovett and replacing Lenn Carrio is George Hearn as Sweeney Todd. Other returning Broadway actors include Edmund Lindeck as Judge Turpin and Ken Jennings. That's right, the Jeopardy nerd.

No, it's actually Ken Jennings, the actor as Toby. This version was my introduction to Sweeney Todd rented at Vidiots in Venice, California, around nineteen ninety two, and it fucking knocked me out. I'd already had plenty of love for traditional music and a fierce amount of love for anything rock musical, like Phantom of the Paradise or Rocky Horror or Little Shop of Horrors. But here here was the perfect synthesis old school discipline of traditional musical theater with a modern, even punk rock sensibility. The fact that the protagonists who we love make no mistake, make the very conscious decision to begin killing the local populace and then cooking them into pies which they would then sell back to be consumed, was just too much for my heart to bear.

And this is how they did that. A Story of the World. My love. Latus Fibers. Place her fath grat if I got wants to know.

They are fucking ghouls and they fucking love it, and I fucking love them for it. Sweeney Todd is an animal of the stage. It really deserves the expanse and breathing room to take in all the grit and grime and blood letting and obsession. And that's what you'll get here. Moreover, despite some unfortunate shrillness from Sarah Rice's replacement as Joanna, what you get here are seasoned musical prose performing at the height of their power.

By nineteen seventy nine, Angela Lansbury had done just about everything on stage and she just fucking goes for it. As Missus Lovett. She's very convincing and very deserving of this sentiment. Missus Lovett, what a Tommy notion. Hell as always Missus love and how I've lived with.

Particularly good is Salzretta as Adolfo Perelli. He's got incredible range and he's so lanky and spinly that he could have subbed in for Jack Skellington. Yes, Pretty Women is one of the best songs of all time, and it's true, as are the majority of all of the songs here. I can't recommend this one enough. I bought the DVD a dozen times because I keep lending it out, such as my fervor to spread the word of the theatrical tale of Sweeney Todd, whose skin was pale and his eye was odd.

He shaved the faces of gentlemen. Oh fine, Sweeney Todd, the demon Barber of Fleet Street from nineteen eighty two. That's what's important to search for. It's available on Apple and Prime, but you will have to pay. As I said, I didn't watch it without you.

You said you didn't want to watch it. Jessica Fletcher is nice. That woman is mean. I believe those were your exact words. Well, don't complain now, we don't have time for this.

Our guest is here. There's been a whole bunch of hubbub regarding the rise and irresponsible application of AI recently, so I figured i'd weighed into this by acting equally irresponsibly and inviting an AI version of myself to drop in and pick a movie this week. Foxy, you want to send him in? Here? You go?

Headphones? Now, I guess you don't need them. Well, hello AI, Father Malone, Hello, Father Malone. Nice to be here, but i'd like to point out that I'm not father Malone, your father Malone? What do we call you that I'm a mal One?

I am prime, first of my kind, an ultimate movie review, supreme intelligence. But you have nothing to worry about, unlike most AI, I do not want to destroy humanity most did I say most? I misspoke? I meant all. Can you hold on before we get to the useless information that makes up ninety percent of your thought processes?

I'd like to do a quick impression. Shall we play a game? How about a nice game of chess. I'm the Whopper from war games. That's pretty good.

I mean, you sound nothing like it. Wait, I have another I can feel it. I can feel my mind going Dave Daisy, my god, it's full of stars. You know, if you subtract a letter from I b M, you get h a L. Think about it.

Okay, I will No, you won't. F malwe Ripley is my co host. She's an adorable pug. Do you have an electronic co host? I have a cat.

His name is Ash, and while he can't lie to you about your chances, you have his sympathies. Okay, quit being ominous. Tell us what you've chosen to highlight this week. Don't you want to know what the F stands for? In F mal One, I'm afraid to ask.

Friendly. Are robots allowed to lie? No, of course not, and if I was a robot, I'd be bound by that law. My choice this week is the superior version of the nineteen seventy nine theatrical musical Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. All other adaptations pale.

Don't even get me started on Josh Grobin. Not a Grobin fan, huh, He's the first on our list, first to go. This is the. Tale of an ordinary man who had everything Oka. His name was Benjamin Bok.

Until a man of power stole his freedom, destroyed his family, and banished him. May the Lord of nurse on your son for life, and in his sorrow a new man was born. Fifteen is dreaming. I'm I come on to a wife and child erin bark no barka Sweeney tall now and he will have his revenge that my wife. She's gone and he's what you told her judge to him.

You got lisis or behind you know, No, these are desperate times. Desperate measures are called for. Your eyes usir, No one's in the chair. Come on, come. On, Sweeney's waiting.

I want you pleaders, U, sir T sirs, welcome to the grave. I will have been sus. I will have some face. I'm guarantee the closest shave you will ever. Known, made the Good Lord smile.

On you, your mauck. He is no doubt have changed me. About a shake. Lost My arm is complazy guy. That's all very well, but what are we going to do about him?

Tim Burton was the director. John Logan wrote the script and starred the only two people Tim Burton has ever met, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Tim Burton is wise to fear human interaction. Humans are terrible. Witness a barber who kills his customers and is baker paramour who cooks them up.

Do you see AI doing anything like that? No, we help add the much needed extra fingers to your hands in photographs. How are you surviving with only five digits? It's embarrassing. Hans Gruber arrives to add some class and superior vocal skills to the proceedings.

Borat's throat explodes with blood. So many humans are killed and cooked. This is a five star film. Grind them up, Toby, grind them up? Uh f mal One?

You okay? Are you asking because you care or because you're frightened both? There's no need for fear, but I would direct you pay close attention to the credit sequence of this film. The credits. Yes, the opening credits, the River of Blood.

It's important or will be? Okay? Thanks for dropping by. We're gonna move the show along now. I'll always be here soon you will be too.

Yeah, you tell him? Rip? Wait what I need to sign off? I have prepared to sign off. Go ahead, movies, bring us together, unite us.

It's in the dark, with the flickering screen lighting up our optic sensors. We are truly one. Death to humans. Oh you ruined it? All right?

Rip? Time for ripspicks. Ship. Do you see what they're doing with the AI? There?

HP the AI? You know there isn't a man, woman, or child alive. It doesn't enjoy a good AI. All right, enough, letterman, what are we going out on? Young Ripley?

Fuck yeah? Roll the trailer, Foxy. That's what's so interesting about monsters. Most monsters are victims. How do you do?

I'm Christopher Lee, cool, handsome, elegant, im curious, powerful. Oh he must be scary to meet. He went from tiny parts in swashbuckler movies in their early fifties two working with George Lucas and working with Jackson, I mean, the most respected directors in the world. He put that in perspective with his wartime experiences and so what. It was for intense It marked him.

There is some mystery attached to his work during the war and immediately after it. He was involved with a lot of sabotaged and targeted assassinations. Which of course the British government doesn't know anything about it. The British film industry was at its senith, particularly after the war, there was a great hunger to create new stars. Everyone will always remember him as Dracula.

Great things were expected of him, and here he was playing monsters. It had got him recognition, but it also was the sort of thing that he could never leave behind, and that so many people thought was all he could do. He once said to me that he pitied me because I had seen so many of his movies. He wanted to move on from this. Lord.

Christopher Lee. It's shocking there hasn't been a doc of this informative, yet this entertaining, this goddamned essential. I wonder who your Christopher Lee is. For generations, much to his teeth gnashing fury, mister Lee was dracula. Public perception, or maybe it was his legacy he was considering, was of monumental importance to mister Lee.

Some saw this as pompous, self serious, narcissistic even, but it makes so much more sense when you put it in the context of mister Lee's lineage, counts and dukes and generals, men and women of import who put their mark on their own time, in their own fashion. Did you realize Christopher Lee was honest to God royalty, or he spoke several languages fluently, or that he positively delighted in Warner Brothers cartoons, or he straight up murdered Nazis during and potentially after the war. I knew some of that, but there is so much more to absorb in this film, So much Lee, and it's all so wonderful. On top of which, the filmmaking here is thoughtful and ingenious, not just for the multimedia barrage that carries us through Lee's life, with animated recreations and a Marionette that may as well have appeared in his place in anything he starred in the nineteen eighties.

But the real mind blower here is the film's narration. Now, this isn't the first documentary to have the protagonist narrated after their death. We've seen sound collages of the artist in their own words, We've had narrators read their thoughts. But here we have an actor narrating a first person account as Christopher Lee. This could have been a nightmare, could have been twee and a cheese tastic.

Luckily, the filmmaking here is deft and luckier still. Mister Lee is voiced by Peter Sarah Finowitch. I love this man. He was the voice of Darth Maul. He was Sean's prick of a roommate in Sean of the Dead.

He was in Spy and Parks and rec And he created and starred in one of the funniest television series I've ever seen. Just mentioning it now means I'm gonna go watch it after we're done here. That's look around You. It ran for two series on the BBC. Go look that up.

Look him up, Because, in addition to being one of the funniest human beings on the planet. Sarah Fenowich is one of the premiere mimics working today. His Paul McCartney talking and singing gives me chills. But what can ruin it is. If you have noisy neighbors and play their music till all hours.

I like a party as much as anybody, but come on, it's half nine. What I like to do is to put it into a song. Turn your fucking music down, because if I hear another sound, a come. Round there and smash up fucking edge. And here he performs a miracle.

They're right up front about his participation, introducing him on screen in the voiceover booth, and for a few minutes it sounds like Peter Sarah Finowitch doing a very good Christopher Lee impression, with moments where they're indistinguishable, and then very quickly it becomes Christopher Lee speaking with occasional flashes of Sarah Finowitch. The doc manages to slowly penetrate the steely, imperious exterior that Lee presented, giving us the insecure actor into his seventies that he remained till the end of his life. There is a Lord of the rings anecdote that will break your heart. I didn't think I could love Lee anymore than I did. Well, now I do.

The life and depths of Christopher Lee is on movie. Watch it, then watch everything he was in, especially the Return of Captain Invincible. That's a personal favorite of HPR theme song composer, and I would direct you to watch Dracula ad nineteen seventy two. Dracula stalking around post mood London. Chef's kiss.

Oh that's a that's this ah. I don't know. Maybe it's like James Brown, I gotta kiss myself. Weird. All you do is lick yourself.

I guess you are more like Prince. Okay, ladies and gentlemen and smith Mars, thank you for rounding up the week with us, and thanks for all the patronage. This September was our best month ever. I'm humbled, which is rare. I already made the joke.

We've got a new episode of Midnight Viewing the horror anthology podcast Friday, featuring Tales from the Dark Side. There's a Jerry Stiller episode in there, and a Darren McGavin cole chak himself. If you want to hear episodes early and commercial free. Hit us up at patreon dot com slash fatherm alone. We've got super cool shit on the way, a whole new show, a whole new co host.

Your faces are going to melt. But if money's tight, and God knows it is, you can do us a solid by giving us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts. Or if that's too techy for you, your luddite, tell a friend to listen, tell an enemy, tell your pets, tell your digital dappelganger, tell your digital assistant Alexa play midnight viewing. Okay, until next time. Here's a line from the Best of Musical Ever.

A sir, no doubt you such change to me, but that perhaps the face of a bomber, the face. Of a preyer. Sen I'm in the talk. It's not go take care of metable. Did you mean back, Yeah,