Buzaid- Sleepy Hallow

               Burton takes Washington Irving’s story and turns it into a Sherlock Holmes investigation. Ichabod Crane, in Irving’s story, is a lean, lanky, unattractive schoolmaster from Connecticut who has a romantic attraction to Katrina Van Tassel, the 18-year-old daughter of the wealthy landowner, Baltus Van Tassel. During a party at the Van Tassel home, the guests tell tales of the Headless Horseman, the ghost of a Hessian soldier that fell victim to a cannonball during the American Revolutionary War and now haunts the nearby forest in "nightly quest of his head." After the party, Ichabod is pursued through the forest by the Horseman himself and is never heard from again.

And that's basically it. Definitely not the same of a feature-length Hollywood film.

In Burton’s film, Sleepy Hollow, the Van Tassel party is in there, as well as the romantic rivalry between Ichabod and Brom. Brom even dresses up as the Horseman in one scene to scare Ichabod (only to be cut down by the real Horseman shortly after). And that's where the similarities pretty much end.

There is one major difference from and one major addition to Irving's story. The major difference is in Ichabod's profession -- Johnny Depp plays an eccentric and excitable constable from New York City, not a meek schoolteacher from Connecticut. Irving's Ichabod seems to be extremely superstitious, whereas Depp's Ichabod is a skeptic, believing all seemingly supernatural occurrences can be explained through nature and science. He doesn't stand by that philosophy for very long, though -- he starts believing in "ghosts and goblins" after a few of those six fainting spells.

The major addition is the nature of the Horseman itself. Burton's Horseman is a ghost, no question about it. And he doesn't go about chopping off heads without reason -- there is a method to his murders, all part of a major conspiracy involving traditional families in Sleepy Hollow. And of course it’s the “evil, witch-like, step-mother” in town who is calling the shots -- or rather, the decapitations -- with the Horseman.

In Burton's film, the Horseman isn't simply a figure of fear and superstition -- he's the plot itself. I think Burton rather enhanced Irving's story mostly for visual effects. Like all Burton films we can always point out his staples in terms of style.