As were most teenagers in the late 90s, I was a Tim Burton fan. It was hard not to be given his striking aesthetic and proclivity for telling dark fairy tales in a way that no other storyteller was at the time. Edward Scissorhands (1990) was a revelation to me and A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), while not a directorial effort, was a staple of both holiday seasons that it’s runtime concerned. So, when I discovered that he was adapting Irving Washington’s classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for the big screen, I was understandably ecstatic.
Seeing it posed some challenges. Primarily, I wasn’t old enough to buy a ticket. In the past, friends had gathered willing parents to get us into R-rated films, but as we were approaching the holiday season, I knew wrangling unsuspecting parents would become increasingly difficult due to busy schedules and familial obligations.
It was the weekend after Thanksgiving when the opportunity finally presented itself. Several of my older cousins were in town and someone at a family gathering proposed we all see Toy Story 2 (1999). As an unabashed Pixar fan, the idea seemed fine by me, so I called my girlfriend at the time and invited her along. We hit the theater and got in line to buy tickets. While standing there, idly waiting behind a group of rowdy grade schoolers, I eyed the large standee for Sleepy Hollow and sighed.
One of my older cousins caught me staring and nudged me back to Earth. He glanced at the standee and said quietly, “you wanna see Sleepy Hollow instead?”
I blinked a few times, scarcely aware of what he had asked. So he asked again. This time, I perked up. I expressed the usual, neurotic amount of concern, all of which he brushed off smoothly. His response was simply, “No big deal, I’ll buy two tickets to Sleepy Hollow and you two can meet up with us when it’s over.”
My girlfriend overheard and agreed to the terms. In an instant, my luck had turned. I was being handed tickets to a movie I didn’t dream I’d be seeing and one I had been waiting for on bated breath. In what seemed like no time at all, I was sitting in the theater, waiting for the movie to start.
The movie was as dark and foreboding as the trailer suggested, fitted with a score as gorgeous and lush as the eerily twisted landscape which surrounded the mysterious figures chewing its demented scenery. I was utterly engrossed, effortlessly transported back to the sights, sounds and themes of the Halloween season which had ended mere weeks before.
Over the years the movie became a staple of the season, a fixture of the days leading up until October 31st, indeed one of the films that captured the spirit, mood and look of every horror fan’s favorite holiday. Not because of the fantastic cast, score, production design or even the many references to Disney’s iconic version of the same tale (I’m looking at you frogs croaking: Icha-bod), but because of all of those things combined.
Still, when I reflect back on the film and its Halloween wonders, I always land on the same iconic sequence as representing the greater whole: the scene where Constable Ichabod Crane witnesses the Headless Horseman led decapitation of Magistrate Philipse. From Andrew Kevin Walker’s eloquent words on the page to Tim Burton’s stylish, twisted onscreen realization, the scene offers the sort of iconography one associates with Halloween alongside the fast-paced, hard-edged frights which lend themselves to such macabre machinations.
THE SCENE
Constable Ichabod confronts Magistrate Philipse as he attempts to run out of town in the middle of the night. They argue: Philipse maintaining that he is in the sights of the Headless Horseman because of the information that he harbors and Ichabod claiming the Horseman to be a fabrication, the real killer a man of flesh and blood. Ichabod’s frustration rises, especially in light of Philipse’s Talisman which the Magistrate claims protects him from the Headless Horseman. Then, the Headless Horseman emerges from the woods and rides down Philipse in front of Ichabod, severing the man’s head with one swift swipe of his sword. Philipse’s head rolls down the hill and lands in Ichabod’s lap. The Horseman turns and rides toward Ichabod, stabbing his sword into the head and claiming it before riding back off into the woods. Ichabod is left behind and promptly faints from the shock of the experience.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
A Mounted Man is approaching on a heavily loaded Pack Horse… Philipse making his getaway from Sleepy Hollow. As he reaches the foreground, Ichabod on Gunpowder intercepts him, grabbing the bridle of the Pack Horse.
As is the case throughout, the script is an efficient playbook to which the film closely adheres. What it lacks is Burton’s signature sense of atmosphere, something that this sequence has an abundance of.
The scene opens in a wide shot, depicting the misty, hilly landscape as a path crawls through the fog and toward an old windmill somewhat obscured in the distance. A crude scarecrow stands in the foreground, surrounded by stacks of hay spread sporadically about the field. Before Magistrate Philipse even enters the frame, there is a strong sense of mystery and foreboding seeping into every corner of the shot.
Philipse guides his horse and cart down along the path only to be intercepted by Ichabod, as scripted. While bits and pieces of the dialogue between the two characters are altered or omitted, on the whole the exchange plays out onscreen exactly as it does on the page. Beginning in a medium-wide shot of the two men walking side by side, the camera slowly moves in as they argue.
The view reaches a medium-close up as the disparity between Icahbod’s beliefs and those of the townsfolk are brought again to the forefront with the line “Powers against which there is no defense” and Ichabod’s accusation that Philipse is the father of the dead widow’s child. It’s then that the exchange switches to a shot-reverse-shot dynamic, alternating close-ups of the two dueling characters.
It’s when Philipse exclaims, “The Horseman killed her!” that the image cuts away from the two men, instead focusing on the nearby woods. In the script, this is referenced slightly earlier as: Ichabod hears sounds… of sheep in agitation at some distance… In the film, this appears as a foggy path leading into an opening of scraggly tree limbs and brush, adjacent to the old scarecrow. Lightning flashes some distance away, illuminating the path into the deep, dark wood.
Other than this, the film continues to hold tightly to the script, the argument between Ichabod and Philipse continuing and amplifying. Ichabod again denounces the existence of the Horseman and even challenges Philipse beliefs in what the script refers to as an amulet (but is shown to be an ankh) which Phillipse claims, “protects me from the Horseman!”
The image cuts back to the sheep, streaming and bleating across the path. Ichabod forgets to finish his thought, turning distractedly to watch the animals hurry past behind him. Then the image flashes to close ups of both men, now hushed. Gone is their desire and will to argue, replaced by fear and trepidation in the face of the unknown.
In the script: The horses go crazy, BRAYING and rearing. A SOUND is HEARD, distant: THUNDERING HOOFBEATS. Wind kicks up.
Onscreen, the film takes a second to breathe. The scarecrow shifts slightly, creaking noisily in the wind, calling attention to how eerily silent the woods otherwise are. The thing’s twisted fingers match the branches which surround it, seeming to point down the path as lightning continues to strike dully in the distance, getting closer all the time. The image cuts back and forth from Philipse and the path. An owl hoots loudly. That’s when a horse brays and hooves pound in the distance.
The camera moves swiftly in on Magistrate Philipse, his mouth opening in horror as the frame finishes in a tight close-up. He utters, “Oh my God…” and runs away as scripted. Then, the image changes course and holds on Ichabod, providing him the same, swift motion as his realization is captured in a shot which mirrors what we last saw of Philipse.
The forest explodes open, foliage bending to make way as the HEADLESS HORSEMAN gallops into view atop DAREDEVIL.
The screenplay depicts an animated woods, one which bends to the will of the Horseman. The film, however, offers a deadened, spiritual place, brought to life emotionally by the thick sense of atmosphere but not physically, as is suggested on the page. The shot opens in a wide as the Horseman emerges coming down the path. He is jet black at first, silhouetted within the fog and dim moonlight, eventually coming into crisper view as he rides headlong toward the center of the frame.
He removes his sword and twirls it in the air with little effort, almost as though he is performing some sort of act and is reveling in his skill before his adoring audience. In the script, Ichabod attempts to draw his flintlock pistol but the film does away with that, rather offering one incredibly brief close-up of Ichabod being bowled over by the sheer force of the Horseman as it passes him by.
Then, quite aptly, the screenplay reads: After this, everything happens very quickly —
What occurs next is done in a fast succession of cuts which is reflected in the script as well, many actions separated as though their own paragraphs:
The Horseman chases Philipse.
Philipse looks over his shoulder.
The Horseman draws his sword.
In the film, the cuts create a sense of controlled chaos, an oncoming threat that is felt by the fear and immediacy brought about by the action onscreen. This leads to an over the shoulder medium-wide shot depicting Philipse as he holds up his ankh in response to the drawn sword of the oncoming Headless Horseman. The Horseman brings down his sword with one swift motion, sending the Magistrate’s head spinning, severed atop his shoulders: Philipse’s severed head spins. His body falls and folds.
The script calls attention once more to Philipse’s Talisman which flies through the air toward Ichabod. Then, The Horseman turns Daredevil in a wide circle and rides straight toward Ichabod. In the film, the Horseman stops in a wide-shot over Philipse’s corpse, rearing triumphantly. The ankh is out of the picture, proven worthless. Meanwhile, the head bounces and rolls down the hill, toward Ichabod. Ichabod attempts to dodge it but fails as the thing lands squarely between his legs. He stares down at it and it, with is wide eyed stare, looks right back at him.
The lightning flashes again. No wide turn, Ichabod is directly in the Horseman’s path. The Headless Horseman bears down upon Ichabod, his sword raised. Ichabod barely has time to react before the sword plunges down, inches away from his groin and lands with a squelch in the back of the head of Magistrate Philipse. With the head in tow, the Horseman rides back off toward the woods.
The script calls for essentially the same thing, albeit with alternate blocking, the Horseman is upon him and past him! — heading toward Philipse’s corpse… leans effortlessly to skewer Philipse’s head with his sword. After this, With the head as his prize, the Horseman races away.
Again, Ichabod fills the frame in a close up. Only now he appears paler than before, clearly in shock and unable to process or immediately accept what it is that he has just bore witness to. So, as he does in the script, He faints.
As before, the film follows the script rather closely, all the while imbuing the events with a sense of dense atmosphere and dread. The final shot of the sequence moves back to a wide, depicting the scarecrow as it turns creakily once more under the influence of the Headless Horseman’s ghostly wind, resuming its original position after a few rotations. The Horseman disappears into the misty path behind it, illuminated briefly by the odd rainless lightning which seems to follow the specter wherever it goes.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“In the death of Magistrate Philipse,” director Tim Burton said in the feature Reflections on Sleepy Hollow found on the Sleepy Hollow blu-ray disc (Available here), “we choreographed that right on the spot… there was a lot of improvisation in terms of shooting because of the way we had to shoot it.”
“I think this is the one where we had the most limited depth [of field] and we needed the most… every shot had to be redesigned and haystacks moved around to create as much depth as possible,” Tim Burton added in his commentary found on the same disc.
My cousin may not remember sneaking me a ticket to an R-rated Tim Burton flick back in 1999, but I will never forget it. While the film may have pre-dated my discovery of horror, it was yet another stepping stone on my journey toward loving the genre. It offered a gorgeous visual, audible and tonal experience and just abut every element of the film worked in tandem to evoke that intangible spirit that only comes alive in the days surrounding Halloween.
Of course, so much of the film accomplishes these things so effortlessly that choosing one moment is difficult at best, but I can’t deny the power of Ichabod’s first face-to-face encounter with the demon in which he so vehemently disbelieves. It’s simple, straight forward and yet dripping with dread, speaking to what works about the picture, top to bottom.
“We paid close attention to horror movie imagery like the windmill or the scarecrows to try to, you know, give it its overall feeling,” Tim Burton said in his commentary when discussing the scene. “We tried to give each head chop its own little spin, so to speak…”
In the feature Behind the Legend found on the aforementioned blu-ray disc, the make-up effects designers discussed how they made plaster casts of all of the victims heads. The casts were then silicon painted and hairs were individually punched in. Teeth casts were made as well, with muscle, a spine and throat tissue added for maximum realism.
In the case of Magistrate Philipse, Tim Burton wanted his head to spin, as scripted, so a head and shoulders piece was crafted separately. For the wide shot, the department created a full replica body which was held together by electromagnets and designed to fall precisely the right way once the head came off.
The movie has an otherworldly vibe to it, it’s a sort of fairy tale come to life that resonated with me deeply from the moment I first saw it. It felt like the kind of folklore you might hear while sitting around a camp fire. Something that might’ve happened in a time long since gone, something unbelievable and yet altogether plausible in the back of the imagination.
All in all, it’s a movie in line with the very best Tim Burton had done before. A vision that fit right at home with Edward Scissorhands or A Nightmare Before Christmas and one I still revisit, every year in October to this day. Only now, I don’t need my cousin’s help to check it out.
In the end, I think I’ll always equate this movie with the sort of scope and influence Tim Burton’s wild storytelling capabilities hold. There’s something magical about the idea that he had a functioning town built from the ground up over the course of several months or the hundreds of sheep and animals that were brought in to live there or the eerie woods he had constructed on a studio sound stage, all in the stead of creating something real— tangible— even though it should feel anything but.
That’s the magic of the season this movie will always represent to me. The power of Halloween.
Imagine, as Tim Burton puts it in his commentary, “big Spanish horses on a small stage at a full gallop” and I think you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about… that is, if you haven’t already.
Sleepy Hollow (1999): Written by Andrew Kevin Walker & Directed by Tim Burton
