Reeling Backward: "Sleepy Hollow" (1999)

 

One of the greatest disappointments of my cinematic lifetime is the devolution of Tim Burton. 

Along with the Coen brothers, he was at the very top of my list of favorite filmmakers during the 1980s and '90s. Burton made breathtakingly original movies, often combining existing stories or mythologies with elements of horror and twisted comedy to create something that felt at once new and very old: "Beetlejuice," "Batman" and its sequel, "Edward Scissorhands," "Ed Wood," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and on.

1999's "Sleepy Hollow" seemed to represent the apex, or at least the median, of his career. It was an R-rated, big-budget spectacle that took the legend of the Headless Horseman as a mere jumping-off point for something that was singularly Burtonian. It's hardly his best film but perhaps one closest to the essence of his filmmaking ethos.

And then, disaster.

Beginning with his next film, 2001's awful "Planet of the Apes," Burton dove over the edge of some boundless abyss. He went from being arguably Hollywood's most original voice to the King of the Crappy Remakes. 

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Dark Shadows," "Dumbo," "Alice in Wonderland," "Dark Shadows," "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" -- it seems there was no moldy intellectual property knocking about that Burton was unwilling to sign onto for a cynical, opportunistic reboot. Most of them made a lot of money, and so we've gotten more of the same.

Meanwhile, on the rare occasion Burton returned briefly to his outsider roots -- "Big Eyes," "Big Fish" -- it's been less of a commercial success. 

(Oddly, I split with the Coen boys the same time as Burton, beginning with 2001's "The Man Who Wasn't There." Just as they achieved mainstream success both commercially and with the respect of their peers as expressed through prestigious awards, I've found them afflicted with a case of the dread Serious Filmmakers disease. Only their Westerns, "True Grit" and "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," have truly pleased me since.)

I haven't watched "Sleepy Hollow" in at least a decade, so given the season I thought it would be a nice visit down pleasant memory lane. Don't think ill of of me, but joining the trip was my youngest, who seems to share my taste for scary movies that the oldest son lacks. Other than one or two fingers-over-eyes moments, he did just fine and enjoyed the movie as much as me, and possibly more. 

I must say that today the film's R rating seems rather overburdensome, as it's no bloodier than the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy of the same period. Though I suppose a few lingering closeups of severed necks, along with a general theme that's heavy on the occult, likely tipped the scales toward the harsher rating from the MPAA. 

The script by Andrew Kevin Walker -- known for films dallying with perversion, "8MM" and "Se7en" -- combines the Gothic horror aspects of the original story by Washington Irving with a sort of Sherlock Holmes-esque murder-mystery, with a dash of the moralistic musings of "The Scarlet Letter." Here, Irving's fable of a love triangle mixed with local legends of hauntings gives way to a much more complex conspiracy involving most of the town's key figures.

Apologies: just one spoiler warning after more than two decades, so turn back now if you wish to keep the film's secrets to discover yourself.

One last brief aside before we continue: Sleepy Hollow was not actually a town, but merely a glen (neighborhood) of Tarry Town in upstate New York, today called Tarrytown. It originally incorporated in the 19th century as North Tarrytown, but owing to the lingering notoriety and tourist appeal from the story and various cinematic adaptations, changed its name to Sleepy Hollow in 1996. 

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery has remained throughout, however, along with the Old Dutch Church referenced in the story. My father-in-law, who grew up in Tarrytown, is buried there (along with Irving) and his service was held at the church.

"Sleepy Hollow" is a magnificent-looking film, shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki so as to seem leeched of nearly all color, except for some vibrant blood reds and other dashes of hue that stand out in stark relief. The costumes and production design are also sumptuous -- by Colleen Atwood, and Peter Young and Rick Heinrichs, respectively -- and all three received well-deserved Oscar nominations, with the latter winning.

The big joke of the movie is that Ichabod Crane, played by Burton muse Johnny Depp, is not your typical action hero but a squeamish sort prone to fainting and being repelled by blood and dead bodies -- which, of course, he encounters in abundant frequency. Rather than being a visiting schoolmaster vying for the hand of the town rich man's daughter, he is a constable sent from New York City (banished, really) to investigate three recent murders using newfangled scientific techniques and contraptions. 

With his milk-pale skin, foppy hair and persnickety mannerisms, Depp's Crane seems like a deliberate rejection of stereotypical Hollywood manhood, and for one I could not be more pleased by it. This more or less began Depp's penchant for highly stylized performances, epitomized by his Willy Wonka and Captain Jack Sparrow from the (seemingly endless) "Pirates of the Caribbean" series. 

Christina Ricci plays Katrina Van Tassel, the aforementioned daughter of Sleepy Hollow's most propserous citizen, Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon). At one point she becomes Crane's prime suspect behind the Headless Horseman, played with great effect in a wordless performance by Christopher Walken. 

At first Crane believes the Horseman to be a mere myth, and indeed there's some play on this by local strongman Brom (Casper Van Dien), his chief rival for Katrina's affections, who at one point dresses up as the Horseman and frightens Crane half to death, knocking him out with a flaming pumpkin smashed to the head. (I'd forgotten, but this is actually the event that mostly directly recalls Irving's story.)

Soon Crane becomes convinced the Horseman is real, but being controlled by some local party who possesses his skull and uses this power to assassinate their enemies.

I must confess I'd quite forgotten about all the contretemps with the townsfolk, and even who the true villain turns out to be. It's a messy bit of exposition that never is really clearly spelled out, other than it centers around a local widow who has been impregnated and the various parties -- midwife, doctor, magistrate, notary and several witnesses -- who became embroiled in the scandal.

Katrina is soon revealed to be a witch, though eventually shown to be a good one. In fact, she is just one of a bevy of witches to be revealed in the story. Others include Baltus' second wife, Mary, and her twin sister (both played by Miranda Richardson), and Crane's own mother, seen in flashback by Lisa Marie, who was tortured and murdered by his religious father. 

Katrina was presumably taught her craft by her late mother (apparently murdered by Mary), so Baltus had the distinction of wedding not one but two witches.

Other players include Ian McDiarmid as Thomas Lancaster, the town doctor, who is sleeping with the Van Tassel servant, Sarah; James Hardenbrook (Michael Gough), the cowardly banker and keeper of documents; Jeffrey Jones as Rev. Steenwyck, who is secretly dallying with Mary Van Tassel; Samuel Philipse (Richard Griffiths), the local magistrate who buries his guilty conscience in drink; and Marc Pickering as Masbath, a boy whose father is murdered by the Horseman for bearing witness and becomes Crane's stalwart servant. 

In perhaps the film's most genuinely terrifying sequence, the horseman is sent to slay the midwife, Killian (Claire Skinner), and ends up killing her husband (Steven Waddington) and young son (Sean Stephens), too. The boy watches his parents murdered through the slats of the floorboards under which he is hiding, and then gets his own axe treatment, too.

(And if there's one part likely to wind up giving my kid nightmares, that's probably it.)

Like a classic Agatha Christie whodunit, the movie is surprisingly loaded with movements of the plot. We soon lose track of which of the townsfolk are doing ill and to whom, and bide our time until the next occasion the Horseman shows up to do some death-dealing.

Done up in all black, variously wielding swords and axes and riding his massive steed Daredevil (apparently undead as well), the Headless Horseman is quite unnerving. He whips about with surprising speed and pinpoint precision, as if able to see perfectly well despite not having a head. 

Stuntman-turned-actor Ray Park, best known for playing Darth Maul in the Star Wars franchise, takes over the Horseman for the combat and riding scenes. Rather than doing the usual built-up rig worn up on the shoulders, he performed the entire role wearing a blue ski mask that was digitally removed by Industrial Light & Magic. It's a terrifically effective presence.

Seeing the movie again, I'm reminded that the pacing of "Sleepy Hollow" is not the soundest -- terrific, horrifying action scenes giving way to some rather dull talkie parts in between. But it's the mood that makes it such a spectacular success.

We variously find ourselves laughing, or cringing, or being completely befuddled by what's going on. Some scenes land as straight-up horror, like when Crane and his companions track the Horseman down to his grave at the Tree of the Dead, where he springs forth from the grasping roots, and returns the same way, as if through the dripping gate of Hell itself.

Then we'll have parts, like the Horseman's assault on the Old Dutch Church with the townsfolk trapped in side, where he spears Van Tassel through the heart using a post of the sanctuary fence, which plays more for laughs than cries of fear. 

Or both, or one and then the other, or the other way around. I can imagine being in the theater when this film first came out, and I'd bet when this scene came round half the audience was shrieking and the other chortling.

That's the Tim Burton I remember and cherish. Maybe we'll get him back again someday, for good.

 

Reeling Backward: "The Legend of Hell House" (1973)

In 1973, horror was transitioning into its modern form. Prior to that it had always been a marginalized, rather sedate genre -- closer to fantasy than sheer terror. Killer blobs, killer birds, Byron-esque vampires. Horror movies often seemed to feature an erudite male authority figure trying to explain all the weird phenomena away, at least until he gets his comeuppance.

Roger Corman, Hammer Films and a few others were decidedly different with a gleeful, schlocky approach, though they rarely punctuated the upper levels of mainstream cinematic consciousness. Horror was seen as kiddie movies, and were pitched as such: scary, but not too scary.

George Romero changed things with 1968's "Night of the Living Dead," which actually tickled the primeval fear centers of the brain, not to mention featuring some rather gory violence. But Romero's next few films were fairly forgettable until the "Dead" sequel came a decade later.

Things really got kicked into high gear with the December 1973 release of "The Exorcist," followed by "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" the following year, and "The Shining" the year after that. Six months before "Exorcist" came "The Legend of Hell House," which in many ways stands as the dividing line between new and old horror.

The film, directed by John Hough from a screenplay by Richard Matheson, based on his own book, can be seen today as the wellspring of the "haunted house" subgenre, in which all the action (or nearly so) takes place in a single supernatural location. We can see a lot of its features in subsequent films, from "Poltergeist" on up.

The setup is straightforward: four people spend a week in the Belasco House, the "Mount Everest of haunted houses," at the behest of a decrepit old tycoon (Roland Culver). Each of three experts is to be paid £100,000 -- almost $1.5 million in today's dollars -- to discover if "survival after death" is factually possible. The lineup:

• Dr. Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), a renowned physicist specializing in the study of the occult. He plays the role of the rational doubter, always tut-tutting others' fears.
• Ann Barrett (Gayle Hunnicutt), Dr. Barrett's wife and extraordinarily unwise +1. 
• Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), a young medium and spirtualist who is the most attuned to the house's evil emanations.
• Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowell), another medium and the only survivor -- of sound mind and body, anyway -- from the last attempt to penetrate the mysteries of Belasco House 20 years ago, when he was just a teenager.

The one thing I couldn't help noticing about the story is that the investigators fulfill their contractual obligations within the first day or two, as objects start flying and voices begin moaning. Barrett is using cameras, microphones and more sophisticated equipment to record it all. So they could all have decamped by Tuesday supper, collected their fees and lived happily ever after.

Instead, they determine to solve the puzzle of "Roaring Giant" Emeric Belasco, the debauched millionaire who built the house decades earlier and disappeared after his family was massacred. For some reason this involves spending nights at the house, where they're more vulnerable to the nefarious energies that swirl about there, particularly of the erotic kind. 

Both Hunnicutt and Franklin have nude scenes -- rather chaste by today's standards, as the film did carry a PG rating from the then-new MPAA -- and experience invasions by spirits that compel them to engage in sexual endeavors. 

Ann, rebuffed by her unaffectionate husband, throws herself at Ben, not once but twice, including a memorable suggestion that the four visitors engage in an orgy. Florence, convinced that the primary presence in the house is Daniel Belasco, the lord's tortured son, agrees to let him have ghost-sex with her if it'll calm his restless spirit.

(Spoiler: it doesn't. Whether corporeal or not, men will say anything to a woman to get laid.)

Interestingly, the events take place in the days leading up to Christmas, though the significance of that is never commented upon. The days of the week would put the story as set in 1971 rather than '72.

It's an interesting movie, though not a particularly scary one by modern standards or even, I should think, those of its day. It's a whole lot of talking, questioning, arguing, with a few interruptions by doors that open and close themselves, falling chandeliers, that sort of thing. There's never any sort of physical manifestations of the Belasco spirits. 

The performances are enervating, especially Franklin as a nascent goth girl type of figure, dressing in witch-y clothing. As Ben, McDowell seems largely constipated during most of the film, concentrating his energies internally rather than outward in a protective stance. Given he barely survived his last encounter with the house, we're never provided a compelling reason why he would return.

Much is made in the story about the difference between Ben and Florence's abilities, with the former being a physical medium and the latter a mental medium. These terms are banded about nonchalantly, as if the audience should understand the difference -- or even what a medium is, for that matter. The distinction also grows increasingly meaningless as the movie goes on, with Florence manifesting physical effects of her communion with lost souls, and Ben engaging directly with the spirit of Belasco in the final confrontation.

Speaking of which, the final battle and outcome is rather disappointing. It seems the great mystery of Belasco (spoiler ahead) is that he was actually short, rather than the 6-foot-5 behemoth he purported to be. Ben taunts him as a sawed-off runt he doubts was five feet tall. Belasco even took the dire measure of amputating his own legs so longer prosthetic ones could be installed. 

Talk about the mother of all Napoleon complexes. But I have to say, "He killed because he was wee" does not exactly make for a compelling keystone for a vortex of supernatural evil.

Barrett's plan is to use his big whirring machine as a "reverser" to drain the house of the electromagnetic energy that has built up there over the years. It's totally gobbledygook, but it works, or at least mostly but not entirely, for reasons we shall see.

"The Legend of Hell House" is an interesting film, though not an especially good one. It's more notable for its place in the history of horror than any substantial terror generated. Brasher, wetter fare was still just around the corner.

Reeling Backward: "The Man in the White Suit" (1951)

It's so interesting to me to think that Alec Guinness was largely thought of as a comedic actor in his early prime. My regard for him is based on his iconic dramatic roles in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Star Wars." His first credited screen roles were in adaptations of "Oliver Twist" and "Great Expectations," but he gained his fame as the star of Ealing Studios comedies like "The Lavender Hill Mob," "Kings and Coronets" and "The Ladykillers."

When I set aside my bias, his proclivity to merrymaking is understandable. Guinness had a thin, good-looking face with a slightly rubbery quality. It's a common trait of comic leading men, to have features that are generally classically handsome but seem slightly sabotoged -- a googly eye here or a schnoz a bit too long there. Steve Carell and Leslie Nielsen are good examples. Guinness' sharp bird nose and watery eyes helped him play characters who were misfits on the margins of society. He made for a kindly but stubborn rebel.

"The Man in the White Suit" is a comedy, but with a strong socio-political message. Guinness plays Sidney Stratton, a brilliant chemist working as a janitor in a textile plant who discovers a fiber that is virtually indestructible and never gets dirty. Even oil and grease wipe off like magic.

The first half of the movie is fairly conventional, and not all that interesting. Sidney attempts to complete his experiment successfully, which is hard considering he's doing most of his work on the sly. He's thrown out of the plant owned by a young up-and-comer named Corland. He's played by Michael Gough, best known to modern audiences as Alfred in the original "Batman" movies of the 1980s and '90s. His physical appearance remained remarkably unchanged over the intervening decades, and even he even wore similar eyeglasses in both roles.

The result of all the typical laboratory scenes of bubbling tubes and random explosions is the titular white suit, which turns out to be just as impervious as advertised. It even glows in the dark, the only downside of its miraculous construction being that you can't dye it.

Birnley (Cecil Parker), a wealthy cloth magnate, intends to make a killing selling the stuff exclusively. But soon, wiser minds -- or at least more cold-bloodedly rational ones -- prevail. A bunch of other industry titans converge on Birnley's factory and convince him it would be disastrous. They're led by Sir John Kierlaw (Ernest Thesiger), an ancient capitalist who leers like a bird of prey, wrapped in layers of robes that frame his head like a mantle, and coughing spasmodically. He's literally as rotten on the inside as the out.

The big twist is that the unionized workers, who had initially embraced Sidney as one of their fellows who made good, also come to oppose the miracle cloth. Like the owners, they realize that they would essentially be manufacturing the means of their own obsolescence. Yes, the new clothes would sell like hotcakes -- once. Since they never need washing or replacement, once everyone in the world had the clothes they required, there would never be a need to make more.

I rather liked Vida Hope as Bertha, a tough worker gal who takes a shine to Sidney. She has blunt features and even blunter manners, but in her few scenes we sense a loneliness behind the bluster. It's clearly implied that she's attracted to Sidney, and he's so clueless he doesn't even notice. He's crushed when Bertha reveals that she and the other union members want to suppress his invention, too.

I was much less enamored with the female lead, Birnley's daughter Daphne, played by Joan Greenwood. She speaks in these long drawn-out vowels and intonations of upper-crust Britain that frankly are grating. Imagine Kate Hepburn playing a spoiled rich brat, and about two octaves lower. Daphne is a clever girl with strong streaks of both morality and opportunism. She agrees to take a payoff from Kierlaw to use her womanly charms to entice Sidney into dropping the whole matter, but is thrilled when he resists her advances.

The last act is a farcical affair with lots of chases and slamming doors. The big reveal at the end is that Sidney's invention was a fluke, and the white suit falls to pieces the moment his pursuers lay hands on him. He walks off into the sunset, assured that he'll find the solution to the problem.

I enjoyed "The Man in the White Suit," even as I recognized its many limitations. The common Ealing theme of one man (or a few) up against the establishment is so familiar that we more or less known in advance how things are going to play out, so there are few surprises. But Guinness is charming as the brilliant but socially inept inventor, who dares to invent something entirely new out of whole cloth.

3 stars out of four