"Crafted with passion."

Rating: 9/10 (26 April 2005)

Tim Burton really is one of the most important fantasy film makers of our time. He crafts his films with a passion that is absent from most other contemporary directors. Many modern day movies are addled with special effects and little else, but Burton has shown in films such as Ed Wood and in Sleepy Hollow that he is a good old-fashioned story teller who loves his art.
Sleepy Hollow (based on the story by Washington Irving) is set in New York in 1799 and tales the story of the forward thinking Constable Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) who is sneered at by his colleagues because of his advanced techniques in detecting how a person died by performing autopsies. Don't forget that back then when a doctor cut up a body in search of the truth, they were seen as sorcerers!. Crane is sent by the Burgomaster (Christopher Lee) to the small village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of killings in which the victims have all been ritually beheaded by what the superstitious locals believe to have been committed by a headless horseman. During the course of his investigations, Crane stumbles upon sexual deviances, old rivalries and witchcraft.
Sleepy Hollow is very much in the style of the earlier Hammer films not only because it features two of Hammer's veterans in the cast, Christopher Lee as the Burgomaster and Michael Gough as Notary James Hardenbrook, but the set design by Rick Heinrichs and the cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki bare all the style of that studios best films. Of course the violence is more graphic here because times have moved on since Hammer were the kings of horror. However, there is echoes of the style and poetry which make them great to watch forty years on here. There have been many rumours of Hammer making a comeback and if that did ever materialise, I think Tim Burton would make the perfect substitute for Terence Fisher as he displays some of that film makers qualities. Good characterisations, atmosphere and a welcome touch of intelligence to what in other film makers hands would of been pure sensationalist material.