Spoiler alert: Helena Bonham Carter is not in this movie.
Crazy, I know. Okay! The year is 1999. The world is ending on January 1st, 2000. People are afraid! Nothing like a good old fashioned horror movie to show everyone that what we should actually be afraid of is 19th century American literature.
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving tells the story of Ichabod Crane, an awkward and lanky school teacher who is in love with the town’s most attractive and richest female, Katrina Van Tassel. After failing to propose to her at a party one night, Ichabod rides home, where he faces off with the mysterious headless horseman.
So the 1949 Walt Disney version, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, is actually a pretty faithful adaption of the story. Although Tim Burton did have his winks to the audience as well.
In this version, however, Ichabod Crane is a New York City police constable who is sent to the upstate town to investigate mysterious beheadings.
Johnny Depp really captures the sort of bumbling, flustered aspect of Ichabod well. He’s not inept, just kind of silly. Plus he faints a lot.
Which makes him perfect for the rich and mysterious Katrina, played by Christina Ricci.
Fun note: Christina Ricci was 18 when this was filmed (the age of Katrina in Irving’s original story) and Johnny Depp was 35. They play love interests.
Everyone in the film is a suspect, and the film does a good job of making us suspicious of every one of them. For starters, Katrina is a practicing witch.
The town all fully believes and accepts the origin story of the Headless Horseman, who was a Hessian mercenary in the Revolutionary War before he was beheaded and buried in the woods. Now he rises from the grave in search of new heads.
Oh and he’s also Christopher Walken.
The film is pretty gory, which caused some critics to criticize it for being over the top in its violence. But it has a lightheartedness about it that kind of makes some of the serious violence seem silly. I mean, watching a headless horseman chop someone’s head clean off is sort of comical, right?
Ichabod focuses his investigation entirely in the realm of science, which leads him down several dead-ends. It’s only when he begins to accept the supernatural in his life that the picture begins to come together. There are interesting contradicting ideas about religion versus logic, or seeing versus believing at play, which makes for a good detective story with the added element of horror.
Sleepy Hollow went on to win an Oscar for Art Direction and is a fun film for any October movie night.
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