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'Head' to the videostore and rent it
by CarlosC (movies profile)
Feb 17, 2008
23
of
31 people found this review helpful
Tim Burton and a gaggle of old pals, including front-man Johnny Depp and music man Danny Elfman, take on the Headless Horseman in Burton's adaptation of the Washington Irving classic. It's vintage Burton, complete with an homage to old movie-making as one of its central themes, atmospheric sets and production design, and a dark, gothic quality throughout. Burton's only counterpoint to gloom is black humor, making SLEEPY HOLLOW one spooky affair.
Film buffs will relish the tribute to 'Hammer horror,' here. Everything, from a cameo by Christopher Lee as a thunder-throated Burgomaster to the bountiful bosoms pouring out of strained corsets, recalls the hot-blooded horror of Britain's Hammer Films in the 1960s. Lee played FRANKENSTEIN (1957), THE MUMMY (1959) and, more memorably, DRACULA (1958) in Hammer's sexy, gory retelling of 1930s monster flicks. Martin Landau, who won an Oscar playing Bela Lugosi in Burton's ED WOOD (1994), has a cameo as well.
Also returning from Burton's past, Michael Gough, who played Alfred the Butler in the BATMAN (1989) films, plays a cloudy-eyed Notary. Back, too, from the BATMAN series is Christopher Walken, who plays the Headless Horseman -- before losing his head. In Burton's BATMAN RETURNS (1992), Walken played Max Schreck, named after the silent film actor in the German expressionist classic, NOSFERATU (1922). This time, Walken plays a Hessian bounty hunter with razor-like teeth, and the battles flashbacks recall a similar sequence in producer Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA (1992). Ray Park -- Darth Maul of STAR WARS EPISODE I fame -- is Walken's headless stunt double.
The knowing film references and familiar cast make SLEEPY HOLLOW a self-assured enterprise, and the confidence gives the movie real presence. Burton's SLEEPY HOLLOW is a palpable place, and its actors inhabit that location. The ways in which the movie differs from the Washington Irving story are made necessary by the realities of story telling on the big screen in the twentieth century as opposed to short story writing in the seventeenth century. For us, the concept of a headless horseman is not enough. We must *see* him do his thing.
The movie's allegorical finale takes place in a windmill, reminding some of the bellfry confrontation that ended Burton's BATMAN. Movie connosseurs will recall the fire in the windmill at the end of FRANKENSTEIN (1931), also. Although this may be the visual end of the movie, it is not the end of the story. The movie ends with a villain who must explain extended loose-ends to us verbally, violating the movie maxim, "Show us -- don't tell us." From a visually-driven director like Burton, this disconnect between thematics and visuals is even more disconcerting than the separation of head and horseman.
(Carlos Colorado) |
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