Sleepy Hollow (1999)
All images courtesy Mandalay Pictures/American Zoetrope via movie-screencaps.com.
“...ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves.”
SPOOKY SPOILER WARNING
As millennials, we all live in Tim Burton’s shadow, and some of us like it that way more than others. Being a kindergartener that only wanted to wear black with her saddle shoes and who inhabited the 001.9 and 130 sections of the old town library, his early work made me feel what would be later known as “seen.” The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) cut my teeth on wishing it was Halloween all year around, and Winona Ryder’s Lydia in Beetlejuice (1988) walked me through middle school under a black and red umbrella. Michael Keaton is still my preferred Batman (1989), and Edward Scissorhands (1990) provides the allotted single tear I’m allowed to shed per quarter. Buried beneath a couple of good later films and many others that were made primarily to produce Hot Topic merchandise is my favorite of Burton’s oeuvre, Sleepy Hollow (1999).
Upon its release, the reception of Sleepy Hollow was mixed. Based on Washington Irving’s 1820 gothic story with multiple references to The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), many adaptations of The Legend were already present. The Headless Horseman himself is a fixture in the American Halloween mindset. Burton’s trademark emphasis on high style based on Hammer Horror films won awards in industry circles and the Academy Award for Best Art & Set Decoration, yet some critics were unappreciative of how the story was modified to suit a feature-length film. Its artistic yet ubiquitous gore earned Burton’s second R rating, alienating most children and adults who didn’t understand his love letter to late 20th-century B Horror flicks. One might say that he hit the nail too hard on the head. Sleepy Hollow still languishes on Burton’s IMDb list, forgotten like a broken tombstone overgrown with moss. This is a shame, for within this shallow graveyard lies an unappreciated anti-heroine bent on revenge: Miranda Richardson’s ‘Lady van Tassel.’
“Surprise, b*tch.”
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’s original plot follows the gold-digging schoolteacher with Scooby Doo and Shaggy’s shared appetite, Ichabod Crane, as he arrives in the small community and immediately tries to woo its beautiful heiress, Katrina van Tassel. As the only child of her father Baltus, no mother figure is present and she stands to inherit his entire estate. Not only are Ichabod’s plans thwarted, but he becomes that season’s victim of Sleepy Hollow’s local haint, the Headless Horseman. Although Burton alters Ichabod’s character into a New York City constable, who truly is a seeker of truth and justice, he retains the Horseman’s true origin story as a ruthless Hessian mercenary. Instead of having his head blown off by a cannonball, as the legend goes, Burton’s Horseman is decapitated by American soldiers in one of Christopher Walken’s most improbable roles. Twins are never a good sign in Horror films, and the precocious little snitch who causes and then watches the Horseman’s death is especially chilling.
The assembly of seasoned, mostly English actors in Sleepy Hollow appears as one would expect in an eighteenth century period drama; white, male, and powerful. Harry Potter fans will recognize the town’s leading citizen, Michael Gambon as Baltus van Tassel, and Richard Griffiths as the Magistrate Philipse. Michael Gough (Alfred in Burton’s Batman series) came out of retirement to act alongside Emperor Palpatine, otherwise known as Ian McDiarmid. Most unsettling is the appearance of Burton regular Jeffrey Jones, as well as the elephant in the room of hindsight, Johnny Depp as the lead character. Having not kept up with the ongoing court cases involving his ex-wife Amber Heard due to my own emotional distress, Sleepy Hollow is to me a time capsule of how things once were. Depp’s performance predates the cartoons he would later play, and is a credit to his more understated roles within his partnerships with Burton. This collection of characters is also a broad representation of the true horror we all still live with today, that particular brand of colonial American patriarchy.
As the film progresses and more of Sleepy Hollow’s citizens are found with their heads missing, Crane’s investigation reveals a conspiracy amongst the town elders that leads to the most prosperous and prominent in their ranks, Baltus van Tassel. Torn between logic and passion for Katrina, played with meringue-like purity by Christina Ricci, he pursues this lead. The theory is quashed when Baltus is impaled by a fencepost and dragged from the church pulpit through a window. With his wife last seen being approached by the Horseman, her headless body is found and Katrina becomes the town’s great lady. Also a practitioner of protective magic that failed to save her father, Crane nonetheless believes that Katrina is behind the murders but of course cannot convict her. Despite Katrina’s obvious bereavement, he departs until realizing his mistake. Upon returning, he finds that Lady van Tassel’s body is not actually her own, and his beloved is missing.
Commanding one of the few female speaking roles in Sleepy Hollow, Miranda Richardson was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar based on a two-minute performance in Damage (1992). She’s the type of actress who can pivot a scene with a single eyebrow arch, a slight clench of her fist, or a sharp vocal inflection. Few will be surprised to learn that being a woman in the late eighteenth century was tough, especially in a small, isolated farming community where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Although the Dutch were historically more progressive with regards to women’s rights, daughters were still married off for their child-bearing abilities, and a dowry-less girl with a bad family reputation was unlikely to make a suitable match if any at all. Left unprotected, she would either perish, or she would use the exact methods of which her family was accused to bring Hell upon earth and send it after those who wronged her. Unlike the Hitchcockian Ice Queens that no doubt inspired her character, Lady van Tassel isn’t afraid to bloody her own hands. In fact, she enjoys it.
True to Hammer form, Sleepy Hollow’s denouement reveals that it is Lady van Tassel, née Mary Archer, who controls the Headless Horseman. Left to fend for themselves in the woods, she and her sister were victims of the former major landowner’s cruelty and the community’s cultural misogyny. Following their father’s death, he installed the young van Tassel family in their former home in an early example of colonial gentrification. Exiled and soon motherless, the orphaned Mary made a dark pact for revenge. The stage involving the Horseman, however, was last in her plan. After placing herself beside Baltus in a years-long bid for power, by various means Mary ensnared each of Sleepy Hollow’s town patriarchs. This may be enough for your typical, run-of-the-windmill villainess or determined doyenne, depending on your viewpoint, but not for the new Mevrouw van Tassel. Aided by her Mephistophilean manservant, Mary entirely razed the community’s dominant power structure and anyone else who stumbled into her path, with only her stepdaughter and a meddling constable left standing.
What Mary’s plans may have been following these final obstacles are unknown, and I encourage the reader to give Sleepy Hollow a watch during this Halloween season to learn its thrilling conclusion. It’s not the Attic’s official opinion that decapitation is a viable solution for most problems, nor should anyone be offering anything to Satan willy-nilly.* The film deserves critical revision due to its surprisingly favorable representation of powerful, protective magic, its stunning costumes and set, and the notion that greedy, hypocritical men in power should have it taken from them. Halloween is a fun, sometimes kitschy holiday, but it’s also a high holy day for witchcraft practitioners worldwide. During the time in which the film is based, these forces were a reality for far more everyday people than they are today. Sleepy Hollow respectfully embodies these attributes with references to traditional folk magic, highly stylized terror and gore, and the invitation to a complete fantasy in which the actual monsters are nonetheless real.
*…unless?
Zoë G. Burnett is a writer and film enthusiast based in Massachusetts. A lover of all things paranormal and pink, she is currently working on her first book about witchcraft and classic style. Zoë is a Contributing Editor and The Attic on Eighth’s Film Columnist.
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