Underrated Tim Burton homage to 1960s Gothic horror films

Rating: 9/10 (10 December 2017)

Gnarled trees drip blood, Christoper Walken with sharpened teeth, and more decapitations than you can shake a stick at! Easily Tim Burton's grizzliest film and one of his most underrated. Burton consistently makes excellent films, but "Sleepy Hollow" typically isn't the first film people think of when asked what's your favorite Burton film? However, "Sleepy Hollow" really does deserve to be right up there as one of his best. It's deliciously bloody homage to 1960s Gothic Hammer Horror films and Italian horror pictures, ALA Mario Bava. Very loosely based upon the Washington Irving short story, this version has Ichabod Crane as a big city police detective sent into the small hamlet of Sleepy Hollow to solve a mystery surrounding a string of murders, beheadings to be precise. The film was written by Andrew Kevin Walker, the man behind the equally good, and grizzly, murder mystery "Se7en" and he does the same solid job of crafting a respectable who-done-it. However, just as with "Se7en," this film's success is really thanks to a strong director and strong cast and less so the script. Johnny Depp plays a very smug and uptight Ichabod Crane who looks down his nose at the rubes populating Sleepy Hollow, with the exception of a blond haired Christina Ricci, who has him completely befuddled. While Crane is sophisticated and intelligent, he's completely lost when it comes to women, social interactions, and, in general, the ways of the world, which is where this film version falls in line with the Irving tale. There's also Bram Bones, the headless horseman, and a few other trappings from the original story, but for the most part, this film strikes out on it's own, but it does feature some very fun nods to the classic Disney version of the Irvings story. Besides Depp and Ricci, there's a strong supporting cast that includes Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid, Martin Landau, Ray Park doing the fighting scene for the headless horseman, Christopher Walken as the Hessian Horseman, and Hammer Horror veterans Michael Gough and Christopher Lee. Overall, Burton's one foray into a hard R-rated horror film is a real treat for fans of 60s Gothic horror films and more in general anyone who just wants to fun, scary, bloody good time.