SLEEPY HOLLOW

Beheaded bewitched berserker, or,
How to get a head in Hollywood

The Washington Irving story gets expanded into a horror thriller by Kevin Yagher and  Andrew Kevin Walker, then given over to the distinctive talents of Tim Burton.

The Headless Horseman has never been much of a monster, in my opinion. Sure, he was pretty scary in that Disney cartoon I saw when I was 5 - which also inspired the film - but he was just some ghost on a horse, right? I mean, what good is a monster without a face?

Well, if nothing else, Burton and company have made old HH into a first class movie monster, a powerful killing machine comparable to an 18th century Terminator. Put him astride a black nightmare steed, riding through a New England forest that would scare the Blair Witch, and you've got one potent screen spook. Extra credit is due Mexican-born (!) cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki for the eerie look of this picture.

Johnny Depp stars as Ichabod Crane, NYC constable and neo-scientific detective decades before Poe. Crane, outraging the burgomaster (Christopher Lee) with his attention to truth, is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a peculiar string of serial killings marked by decapitation.

Crane finds the village quaking in terror - and he soon joins them, finding that the crimes continually defy all rational explanation. This is the age of reason coming forth, only to be quickly batted back by the world of witchcraft and the supernatural.

This is another very odd and beautiful film by Burton, dressing up grue in a Hollywood storybook where he can paint it in his familiar gray & black pallette and pass it as mainstream product. Audiences that would be repelled by b-movie splatter gladly accept the same in a gorgeous storybook setting. Like Ed Wood duping the Baptists into bankrolling a "supernatural thriller". Though toward the end it indulges in some mundane stunt-work, this is a film that challenges order with chaos and treats it like a party. In  brief: my kind of film.

Sword fu; explosions; chases on horseback; impalement; gore; blood; witches; ghosts; monsters; many heads roll; p-stars Depp. Christina Ricci; Lee; Michael Gough; Lisa Marie; Ray Park (stunts) & Christopher Walken.

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The Movie Madness section and its contents are ©2007 Brian Thomas