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Barber shop singing never felt so foreboding as it does in Sweeney Todd's shop on Fleet Street. Customers step in hoping for a haircut and end up with their throats slit. And that's not the worst of it.

The ghoulish villain, played with unhinged relish by Johnny Depp, tilts the seat back and sends his victims sliding down to the room below, where his piemaker landlady butchers them and uses the meat to cook the best pies in London.

Adapted from Stephen Sondheim's 1979 Broadway musical, "Sweeney Todd" ranges from funny to harrowing. It's easy to be mesmerized by the relentless, disgusting and fearlessly offensive tale of a showtune-singing barber who takes sadistic pleasure in giving his customers, as he puts it, the closest shave they'll ever get.

That such a revolting premise makes for toe-tapping hilarity is proof of the wonders of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." The flashy, often devastating production shames such watered-down Broadway adaptations as "Phantom of the Opera," "Rent," "The Producers" and "Dreamgirls" and has far more in common with the stellar "Hairspray" and genius-level, Oscar-winning "Chicago," which revived the trend in 2002.

Director Tim Burton ratchets up his obsession with the morbid and grotesque to an extreme he's never touched even in such dark comedies as "Beetle Juice" or "Corpse Bride." Burton's London is a murky roach nest of grime, grit and soot. The moody pallor that hangs over every inch of the screen synthesizes Todd's bitter hatred for humanity.

Depp, who claimed to not be able to sing before accepting the role, proves with each earthy, bellowing lyric that there's just about nothing he can't do as well as or better than any other actor. His ethereal performance accomplishes the difficult task of not letting you despise him.

An economical, involving backstory shows how Todd was robbed of his family, life and innocence by a false charge from a lawman (Alan Rickman) who coveted his wife. The prologue helps win you to Todd's side and identify with him as he starts on a murderous vengeance quest that devolves into a senseless spree of murder.

He's supported well by Helena Bonham Carter, the landlady piemaker who projects her feelings of adoration and willfully overlooks the fact that Todd can no longer feel anything. She becomes his zealous accomplice, protecting Todd against everyone but himself, even as she hides a soul-destroying secret from him.

While you're watching "Sweeney Todd," you feel as much at the mercy of Burton as Todd's customers are to the demon barber.

You'll be twisted, manipulated and repulsed, but always entertained. You might also find yourself uttering "God, That's Good."