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Although the '18' certificate stamped on Tim Burton's latest – a vivid adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's murky London-based Broadway musical – does seem surprising in these days of liberal British censorship, there's plenty of genuine horror to be found above and below Mrs Lovett's pie shop.

Arterial spray flying everywhere, body parts minced to make pastry topped snacks and, most horrifying of all, the bloody awful music throughout.

Still, if you can cope with the 'nice production, shame about the songs' aspect of this typically striking Burton enterprise, there is plenty to appreciate for the eyes, if not the ears. Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee Johnny Depp is a convincingly vengeful presence as Sweeney Todd, formerly Benjamin Barker, imprisoned for 15 years in an Australian penal colony for nothing more than loving a woman desired by morally vacant Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman).

Learning of his wife's death and their daughter's virtual imprisonment at the hands of guardian Turpin and his odious assistant Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall, ace) barber Todd plots to use his newly celebrated skills with a cutthroat razor to, well, cut their throats.

Meanwhile, his friend and unsuccessful pie-making confidant Nellie Lovett, played to pasty perfection (in both pale and bakery senses) by Helena Bonham Carter, spies a business opportunity...

They say that eyes are the windows to the soul and, like the silent movie stars he has often been likened to, Depp conveys more with a mournful glance or hateful glower than just about any other A-Lister.

He is also so darn handsome that he can pull off a white-streaked bouffant and panda-eyed combination that would make anyone else look ridiculous.

But can Johnny sing? A little, though it's more akin to ending sentences in a different key to when he started them. The majority of the cast are much the same; passable rather than remarkable.

As noted several times, the songs are far from the film's selling point.