Sleepy Hollow

* * * *

Cast: Johnny Depp, Christine Ricci, Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson

Director: Tim Burton

Rating: M

Opens: January 1, Village, Hoyts Cinemas



In which that great purveyor of Gothic giggles, Tim Burton, adapts the Washington Irving spook story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and delivers a wee wonder of a horror film.

Anyone with a lasting affection for the oddball qualities of the Hammer Horror movies of the 60s should feel happy here. And not just because old Hammer chap Christopher Lee has an early cameo in this 1799 tale.

Lee plays the New York magistrate who sends Constable Ichabod Crane to the town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of murders where townsfolk have lost their heads to what may be a supernatural serial killer.

That is to say, the Headless Horseman.

Like the Hammers it was clearly inspired by, it plays like a gory, blackly funny pantomime, the performances of Depp as Crane and Ricci as Sleepy Hollow's resident damsel Katrina Van Tassel as boldly delivered and stylised as the design of the film.

The look of it verges towards the monochromatic - it certainly does wondrous things with fog - with the occasional gush of the reddest blood.

Depp's Crane is no dashing hero but more of a troubled and somewhat cowardly idealist who initially hopes science will be his weapon against the supposed galloping ghoul who is decapitating the local citizenry one by one.

It is rich in mostly Brit supporting players too, all obviously having a hoot of a time. They include Miranda Richardson as Katrina's stepmother Lady Van Tassel, and Michael Gambon as her husband Baltus, one of the town's burghers who may be hiding something about the killings.

It occasionally lapses into some Beetlejuice-styled cheap jack-in-the-box tricks which jar against the mock-earnestness of the rest of the proceedings. But still, Sleepy Hollow is a beguilingly off-kilter spookfest and Burton's obvious affection for the source material is infectious. Treat yourself to a nightmare after Christmas.