"Sleepy Hollow" Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken, et al

[Ed Augusts]

This movie is a dark and very-nearly-nasty piece of goods, since the
old Tim Burton touch, adding those delicately evil Halloween jack-o-
lanterns and making all the outdoor scenes gloomfully B&W doesn't help
induce very much cheer. But who said a movie about a "Headless
Horseman" who beheads a stunning quantity of people during the course
of the movie ought to bring us any cheer, unless we like that much
'blood and darkness' in our cinema?

Another Weird Johnny Depp Role

Alternately more cowardly and frightened than the kids in this movie,
and then bravely rushing in where no one else dares to tread, Johnny
Depp is hard to get a handle on, and he's a bit too handsome to carry
off the part of the utter nit-wit which was Washington Irving's
original view of Ichabod Crane, but he does just about right by this
1799 "forensics expert" role that was crafted for him in this film.
Imagine a Sherlock Holmes inventing crime detection and various new
kinds of medical examination equipment, not in London but about 80
years earlier, in Manhattan... It's a role that has never been played
before. Johnny Depp sure gets a variety of parts, doesn't he? A
Pirate, a Luciferian Book Scout, a candy maker; a cross-dressing film
director; a teen who cries alligator tears, a mad barber, and now,
Ichabod Crane--meets--Medical Examiner. (Washington Irving would have
been very, Very puzzled!)

It's also a film where Christina Ricci is smashingly lovely as a
blonde in her role of a young girl with perhaps too much knowledge of
the occult... Miranda Richardson is her ultimately even more
"occultish" step-mother... Christopher Walken plays the Hessian
Soldier who becomes the "H. H.", he only gets 10th BILLING -- his
name appears NOWHERE on the video 'box'... Christopher Lee plays the
N.Y. City "Burgomaster" and gets 15th Billing for his efforts. By the
way, Walken's teeth are sharper than a rogue Javelina here; our only
regret -- he does not get ONE LINE in the whole movie, maybe because
he's dead! But there are some nice touches, the film gives us images
of a very early America, at a time between revolutions and wars, a
time we seldom see shown on screen. It is done well, if briefly... The
view of New York City in the last frames reminds me of the unfolding
view of Fifth Avenue at the end of "Easter Parade"

What's Up With the Pregnant Mom-to-Be Double Murder?

But before we get to the end of the movie, we have to absorb the
intricacies of a plot which includes the rather brutal view of one
brave young man being sliced & diced, a man having his head cut off,
another man having his head cut off, another man having his head cut
off, a witch-of-the-woods channeling an entity for the Detective that
makes her eyes bug out like Michael Keaton in "Beetlejuice", and the
strange discovery, by Detective Crane, that a woman, whose body has to
be exhumed for our forensics expert/male lead to view it, was
pregnant with child.. there is a slash across one side of her stomach
proving that the Headless Horseman killed not only her but her unborn
babe. It is never really explained why it was necessary to kill this
child. It couldn't have been a very late-term pregnancy because only
one man in the village seems to have known she was pregnant at all...
so why slice-out a first trimester fetus when the woman was being
killed, anyway? Oh. There is a scene in a church where several
people are garrishly, gruesomely, murdered. The "H. H." cannot step
his foot inside church grounds, so he catapults his victim, head
first, just outside the church grounds, for an easy kill.

Why'd the Four Year Old Have to Get Beheaded?

There is a later scene in which a boy of about 4 years of age is
placed under the floorboards by his terrified, soon-to-be-decapitated
mom, and she (and we) think he'll be safe there, but the Headless
Horsema turns on his heel and walks back, 'senses' him and pulls him
-- kicking and sceaming -- out of his hiding place. It is to be
assumed that when we next see the bag the Headless Horseman is
carrying, it contains the heads of three people -- father, mother, and
the 4 year old child. I am not sure why the authors/director thought
this "overkill" was necessary. When is it really necessary to kill a
sweet-looking four year old boy in a movie? That kind of thing is
truly very seldom done. I could count on the fingers of one hand how
often I've seen that kind of thing on screen. So! WHY was it deemed
appropriate in this film? We already knew the H. H. was a bad-ass
character, we didn't have to see him additionally destroy dad, mom,
and a tot!

That's just one reason I am not cheering wildly about this movie.

Please note the BLOOPER of the carriage traveling N to Sleepy Hollow
on the W side of the Hudson, whereas Sleepy Hollow is/was on the E
side of the river and a journey north could not have been attempted on
the W side, unless you wanted to ferry across the Hudson around West
Point or thereabouts! BEST, ------Ed

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