A Sleepy Smash!

Critics said that heads would be rolling with the opening of Tim Burton's newest flick, Sleepy Hollow and that was exactly the case when it hit theaters nationwide November 19. So why make a movie about Washington Irving's 18th-century classic? "I've always wanted to make a movie where one of the characters didn't have a head," gothmeister Tim Burton told Entertainment Weekly. Well, Burton got his wish. Heads were rolling everywhere.

Ichabod Crane played by Johnny Depp who you might remember from Burton's wacky flick, Edward Scissorhands, is sent to the small town of Sleepy Hollow in upstate New York to investigate a series of murders in which the victims have been beheaded. Determined to unsolve this murdering mystery, things go awry for Ichabod when he learns that the townspeople fret that the killings are the work of a local headless ghost-on-horseback. Ever rational Crane on the other hand thinks there must be a scientific explanation. The cast is rounded off with damsel-in-distress Katrina Van Tassel played by Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson as her mother, Christopher Walken (with and without his head) as the Headless Horseman, and the supporters who include Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien, Jeffrey Jones, Burton Stalwart and Lisa Marie.

Sleepy Hollow is truly a representation of Burton's personal style. Those of who have seen the movie will all agree that it isn't Depp or Ricci who bring the story to life but rather a murky, silvery-blue darkness and the Gothic loveliness of the sets and costumes. Sleepy Hollow was filmed almost entirely in England. The filmmakers agreed that they wanted a larger-than-life, '50s-style Hammer Horror look. "It's more like a 'fantastic tale,' not a realistic historical reconstruction," director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki tells film.com. "We have to enhance certain elements to accentuate the 'fantastic.' The Hammers did it without knowing they were doing it. We do it because we like it."

The actual Sleepy Hollow town scenes were built from scratch on 20 acres of private property in the Lime Tree Valley, about an hour north of London. Within months, features like a church house, 18th century stores and residences came to life, filming to begin not long after that.

With the film completed and ready to open in theaters Thanksgiving weekend, the cast and crews' parade was rained on no thanks to the MPAA. Receiving a rating of an R meant restrictions for teen and children under 17 unless they were accompanied by an adult. ". . . The R rating upsets me," Burton told Mr. Showbiz last month. "I have no problem showing this to some children. When I was a kid I felt if I didn't have these [horror] movies, I don't know what I would have turned into. These movies helped me. I tried to keep Sleepy Hollow in that zone, and this is the type of movie I would have died to see [as a child] . That's what we wanted to do." Christina Ricci agreed: "It's silly . . . I think kids can see this -- it's too fake and tongue-in-cheek to be really upsetting." Too young to get in? I'd start begging the 'rents pronto.

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