Sweeney Todd: Good film but no thanks for the memories
I am so glad to see that Johnny Depp finally won a Golden Globe, even if I did run crying and screaming out of “Sweeney Todd.”
Well, maybe screaming was a bit of an exaggeration.
But, I did, for the first time in my life, make a mad dash out of a movie theater before the closing credits rolled.
Not that I was mad.
Not angry mad.
A little loony, maybe.
Earlier in on Saturday, my running buddies and I decided that we should do something that didn’t require moving many mus-cles. We had just finished a 7.5-mile run. “Sweeney Todd” sounded like a good way to catch our collective breath.
Or hold it.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Johnny Depp was marvelous. I think Johnny Depp has been marvelous in everything he has ever done. I am particularly fond of “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”
I also like Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman.
All three turned in wonderful performances. Their singing was admirable. The whole look of the film was very Mr. Helena Bonham Carter.
But when you see the warning label that says “this film contains graphic bloody violence,” believe it.
I think the eight of us used quite a lot of muscles as we squirmed, shifted and peeped through our fingers at one blood-spurting slit throat after another.
But that wasn’t what made me feel like a fool in front of my friends.
It was an ever-so-brief scene where one of the cast members goes up in flames.
The screams and the arm movements carried me right back to Waynesboro when I was about 5 years old.
I was watching TV with my grandfather when we heard screaming.
My Grandmother Pugh had gone to bed, but she had fallen asleep while she was smoking.
When I got to the top of the stairs all I remembered were the flames and her arms moving as she ran about.
The rest of the details were not from my memory. My grandfather apparently raced past me, wrapped her in a blanket and put her in the bathtub. She survived, but she was in the hospital for quite a while.
Someone found me in a closet under the stairs.
I don’t know how or why I went there. That closet held my grandmother’s “bite-you.” That was her fur. Two of the three foxes were biting the tails of the others. The third fox had a clamp on its mouth so the wearer could wrap it around and fasten it to the first fox. A gruesome thing. Whenever anyone put it on, it seems like they would snap that mouth clamp at me and say, “Bite you, bite you!”
I was afraid of that fur. But I guess I must have been more afraid of seeing my grandmother on fire.
I guess there are many lessons to learn from that.
Don’t smoke in bed. Don’t scare your children. But do read the MPAA rating on movies.
Ah, just another night at the opera.
Posted by Mary Alice Blackwell at 04:31 PM. Filed under:
Mary Alice Blackwell was a sportswriter for 11 years before turning in her scorebook to cover cops and courts. The Virginia Tech Hokie joined the staff of The Daily Progress in 1987 and has spent the past dozen or so years writing about actors, musicians, artists, authors and, occasionally, her running buddies. 
