The year is 1799, and Ichabod Crane is a New York police constable who has been dispatched to Sleepy Hollow: an upstate Dutch hamlet where there have been a lot of brutal murders involving people getting their heads chopped off. He is welcomed by the town elders, including the wealthy businessman Baltus Van Tassel who has a beautiful young daughter named Katrina, who immediately shows an interest in Ichabod. And vice versa. Once he starts his investigation, he hears the story about what the locals believe to be the cause of all the decapitations: the Headless Horseman, who was once a Hessian mercenary from the American Revolutionary War. Ichabod just scoffs of such superstitious nonsense, but his skepticism is put to the test over and over again as more people keeps dying.
Sleepy Hollow is a dark fantasy horror film from 1999, directed by Tim Burton and loosely based on the 1820’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It stars Johnny Depp in the role as Ichabod Crane, and Christina Ricci in the role as Katrina. Christopher Lee also has a supporting role here, as the Burgomaster, among some other well-known faces. The development of the movie started in 1993, where Kevin Yagher was originally set to direct the film as some kind of low-budget slasher horror film. There were some disagreements, causing Paramount to demote Yagher to prosthetic makeup designer instead, and Tim Burton was brought on board in 1998.
Originally, the character Ichabod Crane is described as a very unattractive man in the novel, and Johnny Depp offered to wear prosthetics on his face to carry on those appearance traits. Paramount didn’t want any of that, though (hmmm….I wonder why…) so the character is more based on Ichabod’s squeamishness and eccentricity, but turning him into a skeptic. A rather big contrast to the animated Disney film from 1949 where he’s kind of a dick, and superstitious to the core.
The relationship between Ichabod and Katrina is handled in a completely different way here, and the characters are given much more depth and backstory, and we are also getting the backstory of the headless horseman himself. Especially grim is the story of Ichabod’s childhood and his mother’s death, which gives us a very grisly scene involving an iron maiden. Speaking of grisly scenes, there’s actually a fair amount of them so I think they decided to keep a little bit of that slasher flair from the original idea. There’s bloody and visceral decapitation scenes, and one scene where the headless horseman decapitates the parents of a child hiding under the floorboards, where the kid makes eye contact with his dead mother’s head before meeting the same fate himself, is a particularly vicious scene.
Tim Burton also included some scenes which are homages to the animated Disney movie The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad from 1949. This includes the scene where Ichabod crosses the bridge and hears the frogs croaking his name, and the scene with the flaming pumpkin. There’s a mix of fairytale and gothic horror in a perfect balance, where the slumbering and spooky village of Sleepy Hollow consists of beautiful periodic sets with crooked, twisted trees and old buildings which is a mix of Northern European and American colonial architecture. And while most of the movie was filmed in Leavesden and Shepperton studios, they actually built the village at the Hambleden estate at Lime Tree Valley. Compared to the Disney movie which was very colorful, this one is bleak and misty and kicks up the gothic atmosphere to eleven, perfectly complemented by Danny Elfman’s score.
Sleepy Hollow is a fun gothic horror story that oozes Tim Burton from start to finish, and while very much removed from the original Irving classic, it’s an inventive and fun reimagined version of the story. It is peak Tim Burton, and a perfect Halloween watch!
Director: Tim Burton
Writers: Kevin Yagher, Andrew Kevin Walker
Country & year: UK/USA/Germany, 1999
Actors: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien, Jeffrey Jones, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid, Michael Gough, Christopher Walken, Lisa Marie
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162661/
