Tim Burton has a distinctive style that lends itself well to certain stories. Luckily, it works very well when he's imitating the classic Hammer horror films of the 60's and 70's.
One of the ways that this is obvious is in the use of BLOOD. Burton likes his color pallet to be somewhat subdued, it seems, from the pallor of his actors' faces, the blued background, the heavy black, browns, and light blues of the costumes. But when that BLOOD shows up onscreen, it's bright, super-saturated with oxygen, and it makes its presence known. And, luckily, there's a lot of BLOOD to go around.
Most Americans used to be familiar with the stories of Washington Irving, one of the first popular writers in American fiction. Whether he's still read in school or not, or the story has been perverted in your mind by reimaginings and reinterpretations, I'm not sure; so I'll just give a quick rundown of the original Sleepy Hollow story:
Ichabod Crane was a schoolteacher in Sleepy Hollow, New York, an outsider in the heavily Dutch community. Despite looking like the bird of his surname, he became popular with the local ladies, especially Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a local bigwig. This put him on the wrong side of Brom Bones, typically pictured as the head jock of the area. Ichabod, a superstitious man by nature, may or may not have met his end thanks to the Headless Horseman, a Hessian soldier who lost his head to a cannon shot in the late kerfuffle between Britain and its former colonies. It's left to the reader to speculate whether it was the Hessian, Brom, or heartache that expedited Ichabod's speedy departure. You'll note that there is a distinct lack of BLOOD in the story.
"You wanna know how I lost my head?"
Burton's version... deviates from the classic tale.
This is in line with the Hammer horror films, which treated the source material as a framework to spring off from.
The film opens with Danny Elfman's score forebodingly playing over events that culminate in a man (Martin Landau) and his coachman receiving an enthusiastic haircut from a man on a horse.
Ichabod is a police inspector with the New York City Police Department, and he's an unusual character (unsurprising, since he's played by Burton's friend Johnny Depp). He subscribes to the silly notion that by investigating the evidence and bodies in murder cases, the murders might actually be solved. But such thinking is not exactly appreciated by his bosses (which is disconcerting when one of them is Sir Christopher Lee in a cameo as an intimidating judge sporting an impressive baritone), so he's shuffled off to solve a series of murders up the Hudson Valley in the hamlet of Sleepy Hollow.
When this man tells you to do something,
you'd bloody well get it done toot-sweet, Sunshine.
Depp plays Ichabod as being nervous and out of his depth. He gains confidence in his abilities as the plot progresses and as he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, but always ready to pass out. I also suspect that Burton was sitting just off camera holding a syringe full of BLOOD just so he could shoot his friend in the face with it.
Katrina Van Tassel is played by Christina Ricci in a blonde wig. While her performance is not bad, she seems to have trouble with some of the dialog she's given. Her character's motivation stems from a need to protect those close to her, and she conveys this rather well.
The residents of Sleepy Hollow are rounded out with veteran actors for the town elders (Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones, Michael Gough, and others), Casper Van Dien as Brom Bones, newcomer Marc Pickering as Young Masbeth, and Queen Bess herself, Miranda Richardson, as Lady Van Tassel.
The plot follows Ichabod investigating the deaths of the residents, who shuffle loose the mortal coil in a single way: Decapitation!
Which brings us to the true gem of this film. Christopher Walken as the Headless Horseman is not so much chewing the scenery as he is using his filed teeth to tear chunks out and swallow whole. He never utters a word, unless you count "AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH" as dialog, yet he conveys the utter joy that the Hessian takes in the slaughter. Walken is onscreen for precious few minutes, but his double, Ray Park, who did most (if not all) of the stuntwork and swordplay for the character pulls off some great screen fighting and bifurcating.
This is pretty much the only time when he isn't screaming for either joy or ice cream
throughout the entire film. And it's not a drawback.
Which gets me to the special effects. Mr Park wore a hood over his head, and the SFX team seamlessly removed it from the shots, as well as adding a stand up collar. And then there are the subtle ways that the practical effects were blended with CGI. When the CGI is leaned on a little too much, it becomes noticeable and slightly cringe inducing, but it's forgivable for the time that the film was released. The color, fog, sets all come together to create an atmosphere of claustrophobia and oppression. Bravo to the set designers and SFX teams, job well done.
Now, tone is a bit of a tricky topic here. At times, the film feels like a straight suspense horror. Then a head spins several times before falling off its perch and rolling down a hill to come to a rest in Johnny Depp's crotch. It's unpredictable, as the plot tries to be, but it leaves me feeling like I should seek help for laughing
What else can I say? If you're looking to watch a Tim Burton film (and all that entails) with plenty of GRASS-GROWING AGENT, decapitations, Johnny Depp being weird, Christopher Walken looking like he's having the time of his life, a whodunit with a touch of the supernatural, along with an impressive production in regards to set and costume design, then this just might be the film for your October viewing.
Have fun everyone.
-Rambler
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