SLEEPY HOLLOW PT. 2
Well, things got a little hectic there for a bit but, finally, here's the second part to Sleepy Hollow.
Ok, when we last left off Ichabod had found the Horseman's resting place. The Horseman and his HellHorse burst out of the Tree of the Dead and was in a hurry to be somewhere. Ichabod was following.
We see a nice, cozy, family scene between a husband, his wife and their small son. I'm sure this will end well. And actually, they ate so damn cute that it makes me mad they get Horseman'd. Speaking of whom, he kicks the door down. The husband tries to fight him off and the mother runs to hide the little boy under the floorboards. Then he comes for her. She knows she's pretty much screwed. The boy is hiding and the Horseman seems about to leave then...
I'm sorry, I can't even wrote it. Knowing what a Bitch the villain is it makes sense that they sent the Horseman after the entire family but still. What a Bitch! And actually here is where some filmmakers should take note. We don't actually see the Horseman decapitate the boy. We get all the information we need from the floorboards being torn up and the Horseman stuffing something in his bag on the way out the door. Let the imagination do the rest.
As the Horseman is leaving Brom attacks him but the Horseman appears to have no interest in him. The h horseman just fends off the attacks and keeps walking. Ichabod tries to stop Brom from going after him but brim keeps up the attack and Ichabod helps, getting a sword through the shoulder for his troubles. He fares much better than Brom, however, who gets cut in half.
Back at the Van Tassel house Ichabod is ill from the sword strike. For some reason. It's a clean, cauterized stab wound so there shouldn't be an infection at all. Of course, it is a Hell blade so maybe there's that.
Anywho, he tells the people gathered that the Horseman does not kill at random, that his targets are chosen by whomever holds his head. Katrina's downstairs doing witchy things and brings him a broth to drink. While he's out he finishes his memories of his mother. As a small boy he follows where his father took his mother and finds her in an iron maiden. He stumbles backward into a spiky chair thing, leaving the strange scars on his hand.
Back in the present he tells Katrina what happened to his mother and questions his decision to come there. There follows some cheese about kisses, witching, being bewitched blah blah blah.
Ichabod wakes up to find Lady Van Tassel waiting on him and she tells him that the servant girl, Sarah had run off.
Young Masbeth comes in and Ichabod does some deducting and ends up at the notaries, after scribbling a bit in his book. The end result being that he suspects Baltus Van Tassel because with the Van Garret's out of the way the fortune now goes to Van Tassel.
Ichabod returns to his room to find Katrina sitting at his desk looking at what he wrote. A terse exchange follows and she leaves but not before she sees where he hid the evidence against her father. Ichabod freaks out over a spider and makes young Masbeth move the bed to kill it. Under the bed they find a pentagram which Masbeth says is the evil eye and that someone is trying to harm Ichabod.
That night Ichabod sees a hooded figure mysteriously walking to somewhere. He stumbles upon Lady Van Tassel having some kinky-ish sex with the local minister. He watches as she cuts her hand and rubs it on the preachers back.
Cut to the next morning? I'm not sure. The movie is so gloomy it's hard to tell what time of the day it is. Ichabod find that his evidence is missing and do deduces that Katrina has taken it and goes to the rundown cottage. He finds her there, burning the evidence. A while bunch of melodrama ensues ending with her saying, "Farewell Ichabod Crane, I curse the day you came to Sleepy Hollow!"
And takes off on her horse.
Later he's talking to Lady Van Tassel. I just noticed this. Her hand is hurt (from her slicing it with a knife during the holy sexy-times) and she's struggling to take a hot, cast iron pot from the stove. And he makes no offer to help her at all. It cracks me up.
Anywhat, they chat a bit about Katrina then she says that she knows he followed her that night and saw her and asks him not to tell her husband. She also practically shoves her cut in his face which is a little gross. Speaking of which, her husband pops in sees the cut and she says that she'll bind it with arrowroot flowers that she'll gather before the town meeting.
Which, in the next scene, we see her doing. With the Horseman behind her.
We're now at the church where everyone is gathering for the big town meeting and Baltus Van Tassel comes running up on his house telling Katrina that the Horseman killed her stepmother. Ok, this is an itty bitty gripe. And I'm sure it was probably done to keep it straight that the current Lady Van Tassel is not Katrina's birth mother. BUT! At that time they did not use the phrase step-mother much. Since family bonds were considered unbreakable she would have just been called Katrina's mother or, if clarification were needed, mother-in-law. I'm done, carry on.
Soon after the Horseman appears and everyone rushes into the church. The Horseman cannot enter hallowed ground. So he's pacing outside while they shoot at him, because, you know, that's so effective.
Meanwhile, inside, there's drama brewing. It looks like one of the conspirators is going to confess when the reverend beans him on the head with a cross. Baltus shoots the reverend.
Outside the Horseman has figured if Baltus won't come to him willingly then a fence post spear through the heart will bring him. He pulls Baltus outside and, mission accomplished, leaves with his prize.
Katrina faints, dropping a piece of chalk, the same color in which the sign under his bed was drawn and also which Katrina was drawing inside the church.
This shot is very pretty. It's an overhead of Katrina in a pulpit but it looks like a shrine or funeral bier. It pan's slowly over the stunned crowd to show what she was drawing on the floor. Which leads Ichabod to conclude that it was her summoning the Horseman (forgetting I guess that he had the same sign under his bed and the Horseman never came for him).
He leaves the next day while she is either still unconscious or asleep. Masbeth tells him that he's an idiot to think that it was Katrina. Ichabod doesn't want to believe it but thinks that's the only conclusion. He burns his notes but cannot bring himself to burn the spellbook she gave him.
In the carriage he looks in the book and realizes that the symbol was one of protection, not evil. He also sees the body of 'Lady Van Tassel' being loaded into a coffin. He realizes that something is amiss and at that same moment, back at the Van Tassel house the very alive and well Lady Van Tassel steps from the shadows. Katrina faints, yet again. Well, that was easy for her.
Lady takes Katrina to a crappy windmill to do her monologuing and summon the Horseman to come for Katrina. She had cut off the servant girls head and cut her hand to make it look like her body and Baltus took off as soon as he saw the Horseman so he didn't actually see her get killed.
It turns out that Lady had lived in the rundown cottage with her mother, sister, and father until the fathers death. Then Van Garret kicked them out and no one would take them in because her mother was accused of witchcraft. Which is a little weird because Katrina does witchy things the whole movie. Whatever.
Anywhere, she, her mother and sister lives in the woods. Her mother died within a year. When she and her sister came upon the Horseman that day in the woods she promised her soul to Satan if she could call up the Horseman for revenge.
After this there's a lot of running from the Horseman and excitement and whatnot.
Ichabod gives the Horseman his head back. What's really funny is that he's getting his ass totally kicked by Lady Van Tassel and it isn't until Katrina clubs her with a branch that he's able to grab the skull.
The Horseman, knowing who had summoned him decides to take Lady Van Tassel back with him to hell.
Ichabod returns to New York, along with Masbeth. A happy ending for all.
Since its no longer October :( . I'll be staying a mystery series with chapter by chapter recaps. The book will be Dead Dancing Women by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli. It's written about the area I live in so how could I not? Especially since it's ripe for being picked on!
As always, any suggestions or comments ate always welcome!
Showing posts with label Sleepy Hollow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sleepy Hollow. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Saturday, October 31, 2015
SLEEPY HOLLOW
HEADS WILL ROLL
Best. Tagline. Ever.
I got a request to do Sleepy Hollow. Naturally, I aim to serve. And, to be honest, it's not exactly painful because I love Sleepy Hollow. I love the atmosphere, the acting is to notch (with one slight exception) and the sets are gorgeous.
And, oh yeah, an awesome HellHorse and requisite Headless rider. What's not to love?
And yay! for the request! That means I might actually have a reader or two and that they'd like me! Bestill my little Luna heart.
It may not be 'classic' but it's a really fun movie to watch. It has suspense, a bit of bloodshed, humor and loads and loads of atmosphere.
SYNOPSIS:
Detective Ichabod Crane is being taken to task for his unorthodox scientific methods. He's being given a chance to prove himself. He's being sent to upstate New York to investigate a rash of beheadings in, you guessed it, Sleepy Hollow. Well he prove that science and reason are the ultimate crime-solving technique? Or will superstition make him it's bitch?
The Pickings:
I should confess right now that this will be a little bit biased because anything Headless Horseman related (or Johnny Depp for that matter) makes me squeal like the girliest fangirl of them all. No matter how cheesy the cartoon or movie about him the awesomeness of the HellHorse and Horseman cannot be screwed up. I even love The Haunted Pumpkin of Sleepy Hollow and that's a pretty cheaply made cartoon. Of course, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad by Disney is my absolute favorite.
It's also one of the few movies based on a book in which I fully support the changes. The movie has a brisk, tension-filled pace to it that is broken up by humor. The humor is used well and is never thrown in our face.
The book plods a little slower but I won't trash on it too much since it has been a very long time since I've read it.
But enough about the book. Let's get on to the movie.
We open with a nervous man being driven hastily through a dark night in the country. The be-wigged passenger hears a noise and checks on his drives who is in the box of the carriage (the bench which the carriage driver sits). When he sees that his driver is now minus a head he wigs on out (not sorry for the pun) and jumps from the carriage. A brief chase ensues in which the passenger runs into a scarecrow that looks remarkably similar to Pumpkin Jack from The Nightmare before Christmas. Wonder what he could be doing there ;).
Now we're in New York with Constable Ichabod Crane. He's inspecting a body on the wharf. He wants to do an autopsy on it and he and his boss bicker about it a bit. Then we go to the courtroom where the scariest judge of EVER is presiding (Christopher Lee). He tells Ichabod that he is sending Ichabod to upstate New York where the town of Sleep Hollow has had a rash of grisly beheadings. He also makes it clear that this is his chance to prove himself.
So now we head to Sleepy Hollow, a sleepy little hamlet. They're having a party to raise people's spirits. Or something. With all the death and dying it seems in poor taste to me but maybe they're just bored. It also involves an odd party game called ' The Pickety Witch' which involves a blindfolded girl trying to guess whose face she touches and gives them a kiss if she guesses wrong.
Sidenote: I did a search for ' The Pickety Witch' but all I got were references to Sleepy Hollow and a band with that name. So I'm guessing it's not a real game.
She grabs Ichabod as he passes through and he says he is a stranger but she plants one on his cheek anyway. She takes off her blindfold to reveal Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci).
She takes him to her father who has arranged a meeting with the other Important Community Men who tell him about the Headless Horseman and his origins. He was a Hessian fighter in the Revolutionary War who enjoyed the bloodshed and carnage. He was finally caught when soldiers shot his horse and he ran into the woods, trying to hide but was captured when a little girl snaked a twig to attract the attention of the soldiers. They killed him and buried him but now he has returned.
Ichabod scoffs at their superstition and insists that it is a person of flesh and blood behind these murders.
The horseman rides again that night.
That next morning Ichabod rides out to inspect the corpse. Despite some squeamishness he did an admirable job. He realizes that the head is missing and that the only reason to normally take the head is to prevent identification. Since everyone knows the deceased anyway the heads must serve another purpose.
Not sure how much later at the grave of the newest victim the dead man's son offers his services to Crane. At first Crane refuses but changes his mind. The Magistrate (who is Mr. Durstley on the Harry Potter movies but he kind of looks like a hedgehog in this so he'll be Magistrate Hedgehog here). Anyhow, he tells Crane that there are the bodies but four graves. Ichabod figures out this means that the Widow Winship, who was one of the victims, was pregnant.
That night Ichabod is attacked by a Headless Horseman and gets a flaming pumpkin chucked at his head. Before he passes out he hears laughter and realizes it was Brom Bones and his friends. The awesome part about this is that the way it's staged it looks like a shot from the Disney Ichabod Crane. Which is totally cool.
While Ichabod is out he has a dream/flashback to when he was a child. These scenes are stylistically different from the rest of the movie. The movie is very drab, faded colors. The dream sequences with his mother are brightly lit and warm. Except for the grim scenes that we know are foreshadowing something forbidding. Then the color palette changes to stark colors. Whites and reds and blacks.
He wakes early the next morning to find Katrina reading a book by the fire. She hides it quickly and explains that her father believes it was the reading of romance novels that gave her mother the fever that she died from. Which seems dumb to us but that was a legitimate criticism of novels at the time. Also, by romances she probably doesn't mean romantic love stories which are what we call romances now but Gothic horror tales ala The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe.
Anywhy, she randomly decides to give him a book of spells that was her mother's. She tells him that the land her family lives on used to be Van Garret landand that she and her family moved into a small cottage when she was very young. She offers to show him the cottage and they ride out to see it. She notices some unusual scars on his hands and asks him about them but he brushes it off. The cottage is a ruin now and she talks a little bit about her mother and points out an archer carved into the back of the fireplace. She doodles some designs in the dirt that upset Ichabod. They resemble the ones his mother drew.
It's kind of hard to tell daytime from nighttime because of the gloom that pervades the movie, I'm assuming it's night because the next scene is evening.
He confronts Magistrate Hedgehog about what he knows. Hedgehog is fleeing the village in fear for his life, especially after having divulged the secret to Ichabod.
The Horseman appears and beheads Magistrate Hedgehog but appears to have no interest in Ichabod. Ichabod faints.
Later at Van Tassel's. Ichabod is freaking out over there actually being a Horseman. Johnny Depp is hilarious. He's all jammed up in the corner acting like a total wuss. Then he faints again.
Back to the dream world. Young Ichabod is playing with his mom in the garden. Ok, why is holding hands and spinning considered so much fun? I can think of at least three movies that show it and in all honesty if it were me, I'd throw up. Then she goes spinning up into the air. In the dream Ichabod's father catches her little witchy doodles in the fireplace (apparently she was too stupid to erase them) and drags her off to the evil white and red room because we all know how evil drawings of a spiral and a star can be.
Ichabod wakes up to overhear the Important Community Men arguing over sending Ichabod back and getting a better detective. One who doesn't faint all the time I presume.
Ichabod comes downstairs to tell them he is resolved on solving the mystery and he's off to the Western Woods where the Horseman died. It cracks me up that the only person willing to go with him is the kid, Young Masbeth.
So, off they head into the woods. They find a cave that is inhabited by a woman who appears to be a witch. She tells Masbeth to take a hike and summons 'something' called the Other which tells him to go to the Tree of the Dead , the Horseman's resting place.
Some people think this part is cheesy but I love it. The set is awesome and the actress does an excellently creepy job.
Soon Ichabod and Masbeth realize that they're being followed and meet up with Katrina. So, the only people in the village full of strapping men and the only two people that would go with him are a boy and a girl.
They find the Tree of the Dead. Ichabod hacks into it and a bunch of heads come tumbling out. There's a very cute moment where Masbeth hides his face and Katrina holds him. It's very sweet.
Ichabod dis up the Horseman's grave and sees that the body is still there but his head is missing. Scary things start happening around the Tree and the coolest fucking thing of always happens when the Horseman and the HellHorse burst from the Tree. Ichabod follows.
Since this is getting a little long I'll break it into two parts like I did Silver Bullet. I'd be happy to know which way is easier to read. All in one post like Fright Night or broken down into two parts like Silver Bullet.
As always I'm open to any suggestions or comments. If there's a movie you'd like to know more about just let me know!
!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
HEADS WILL ROLL
Best. Tagline. Ever.
I got a request to do Sleepy Hollow. Naturally, I aim to serve. And, to be honest, it's not exactly painful because I love Sleepy Hollow. I love the atmosphere, the acting is to notch (with one slight exception) and the sets are gorgeous.
And, oh yeah, an awesome HellHorse and requisite Headless rider. What's not to love?
And yay! for the request! That means I might actually have a reader or two and that they'd like me! Bestill my little Luna heart.
It may not be 'classic' but it's a really fun movie to watch. It has suspense, a bit of bloodshed, humor and loads and loads of atmosphere.
SYNOPSIS:
Detective Ichabod Crane is being taken to task for his unorthodox scientific methods. He's being given a chance to prove himself. He's being sent to upstate New York to investigate a rash of beheadings in, you guessed it, Sleepy Hollow. Well he prove that science and reason are the ultimate crime-solving technique? Or will superstition make him it's bitch?
The Pickings:
I should confess right now that this will be a little bit biased because anything Headless Horseman related (or Johnny Depp for that matter) makes me squeal like the girliest fangirl of them all. No matter how cheesy the cartoon or movie about him the awesomeness of the HellHorse and Horseman cannot be screwed up. I even love The Haunted Pumpkin of Sleepy Hollow and that's a pretty cheaply made cartoon. Of course, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad by Disney is my absolute favorite.
It's also one of the few movies based on a book in which I fully support the changes. The movie has a brisk, tension-filled pace to it that is broken up by humor. The humor is used well and is never thrown in our face.
The book plods a little slower but I won't trash on it too much since it has been a very long time since I've read it.
But enough about the book. Let's get on to the movie.
We open with a nervous man being driven hastily through a dark night in the country. The be-wigged passenger hears a noise and checks on his drives who is in the box of the carriage (the bench which the carriage driver sits). When he sees that his driver is now minus a head he wigs on out (not sorry for the pun) and jumps from the carriage. A brief chase ensues in which the passenger runs into a scarecrow that looks remarkably similar to Pumpkin Jack from The Nightmare before Christmas. Wonder what he could be doing there ;).
Now we're in New York with Constable Ichabod Crane. He's inspecting a body on the wharf. He wants to do an autopsy on it and he and his boss bicker about it a bit. Then we go to the courtroom where the scariest judge of EVER is presiding (Christopher Lee). He tells Ichabod that he is sending Ichabod to upstate New York where the town of Sleep Hollow has had a rash of grisly beheadings. He also makes it clear that this is his chance to prove himself.
So now we head to Sleepy Hollow, a sleepy little hamlet. They're having a party to raise people's spirits. Or something. With all the death and dying it seems in poor taste to me but maybe they're just bored. It also involves an odd party game called ' The Pickety Witch' which involves a blindfolded girl trying to guess whose face she touches and gives them a kiss if she guesses wrong.
Sidenote: I did a search for ' The Pickety Witch' but all I got were references to Sleepy Hollow and a band with that name. So I'm guessing it's not a real game.
She grabs Ichabod as he passes through and he says he is a stranger but she plants one on his cheek anyway. She takes off her blindfold to reveal Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci).
She takes him to her father who has arranged a meeting with the other Important Community Men who tell him about the Headless Horseman and his origins. He was a Hessian fighter in the Revolutionary War who enjoyed the bloodshed and carnage. He was finally caught when soldiers shot his horse and he ran into the woods, trying to hide but was captured when a little girl snaked a twig to attract the attention of the soldiers. They killed him and buried him but now he has returned.
Ichabod scoffs at their superstition and insists that it is a person of flesh and blood behind these murders.
The horseman rides again that night.
That next morning Ichabod rides out to inspect the corpse. Despite some squeamishness he did an admirable job. He realizes that the head is missing and that the only reason to normally take the head is to prevent identification. Since everyone knows the deceased anyway the heads must serve another purpose.
Not sure how much later at the grave of the newest victim the dead man's son offers his services to Crane. At first Crane refuses but changes his mind. The Magistrate (who is Mr. Durstley on the Harry Potter movies but he kind of looks like a hedgehog in this so he'll be Magistrate Hedgehog here). Anyhow, he tells Crane that there are the bodies but four graves. Ichabod figures out this means that the Widow Winship, who was one of the victims, was pregnant.
That night Ichabod is attacked by a Headless Horseman and gets a flaming pumpkin chucked at his head. Before he passes out he hears laughter and realizes it was Brom Bones and his friends. The awesome part about this is that the way it's staged it looks like a shot from the Disney Ichabod Crane. Which is totally cool.
While Ichabod is out he has a dream/flashback to when he was a child. These scenes are stylistically different from the rest of the movie. The movie is very drab, faded colors. The dream sequences with his mother are brightly lit and warm. Except for the grim scenes that we know are foreshadowing something forbidding. Then the color palette changes to stark colors. Whites and reds and blacks.
He wakes early the next morning to find Katrina reading a book by the fire. She hides it quickly and explains that her father believes it was the reading of romance novels that gave her mother the fever that she died from. Which seems dumb to us but that was a legitimate criticism of novels at the time. Also, by romances she probably doesn't mean romantic love stories which are what we call romances now but Gothic horror tales ala The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe.
Anywhy, she randomly decides to give him a book of spells that was her mother's. She tells him that the land her family lives on used to be Van Garret landand that she and her family moved into a small cottage when she was very young. She offers to show him the cottage and they ride out to see it. She notices some unusual scars on his hands and asks him about them but he brushes it off. The cottage is a ruin now and she talks a little bit about her mother and points out an archer carved into the back of the fireplace. She doodles some designs in the dirt that upset Ichabod. They resemble the ones his mother drew.
It's kind of hard to tell daytime from nighttime because of the gloom that pervades the movie, I'm assuming it's night because the next scene is evening.
He confronts Magistrate Hedgehog about what he knows. Hedgehog is fleeing the village in fear for his life, especially after having divulged the secret to Ichabod.
The Horseman appears and beheads Magistrate Hedgehog but appears to have no interest in Ichabod. Ichabod faints.
Later at Van Tassel's. Ichabod is freaking out over there actually being a Horseman. Johnny Depp is hilarious. He's all jammed up in the corner acting like a total wuss. Then he faints again.
Back to the dream world. Young Ichabod is playing with his mom in the garden. Ok, why is holding hands and spinning considered so much fun? I can think of at least three movies that show it and in all honesty if it were me, I'd throw up. Then she goes spinning up into the air. In the dream Ichabod's father catches her little witchy doodles in the fireplace (apparently she was too stupid to erase them) and drags her off to the evil white and red room because we all know how evil drawings of a spiral and a star can be.
Ichabod wakes up to overhear the Important Community Men arguing over sending Ichabod back and getting a better detective. One who doesn't faint all the time I presume.
Ichabod comes downstairs to tell them he is resolved on solving the mystery and he's off to the Western Woods where the Horseman died. It cracks me up that the only person willing to go with him is the kid, Young Masbeth.
So, off they head into the woods. They find a cave that is inhabited by a woman who appears to be a witch. She tells Masbeth to take a hike and summons 'something' called the Other which tells him to go to the Tree of the Dead , the Horseman's resting place.
Some people think this part is cheesy but I love it. The set is awesome and the actress does an excellently creepy job.
Soon Ichabod and Masbeth realize that they're being followed and meet up with Katrina. So, the only people in the village full of strapping men and the only two people that would go with him are a boy and a girl.
They find the Tree of the Dead. Ichabod hacks into it and a bunch of heads come tumbling out. There's a very cute moment where Masbeth hides his face and Katrina holds him. It's very sweet.
Ichabod dis up the Horseman's grave and sees that the body is still there but his head is missing. Scary things start happening around the Tree and the coolest fucking thing of always happens when the Horseman and the HellHorse burst from the Tree. Ichabod follows.
Since this is getting a little long I'll break it into two parts like I did Silver Bullet. I'd be happy to know which way is easier to read. All in one post like Fright Night or broken down into two parts like Silver Bullet.
As always I'm open to any suggestions or comments. If there's a movie you'd like to know more about just let me know!
!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
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