Eljumaily-Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Tim Burton’s film The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is quite the adaptation of the original Washington Irving story. The Director takes the basis of the original Icabod’s life and adds many more complications and characters. It is quite incredible how Burton takes a short story and turns it into a full on, couple hour horror film. He adds so many different aspects, such as the evil stepmother, Icabod as a constable, and Icabod’s past. In the original story, Icabod is a school teacher who tries to woo the plump and wealthy Katrina until he is rejected and gets chased out of town (or killed) by the Horseman.

            The film, however, does much more to the story. Icabod is sent to Tarrytown to solve the case of the Headless Horseman, not to teach. He stays in the same house as Katrina and attempts to solve the mysterious deaths. The Headless horseman ends up being the puppet of an evil little girl who grew to marry Katrina’s father become the quintessential evil stepmother. This adds a witch to the story, which makes sense because of the history behind Tarrytown and the “witch” scares. Lady Van Tassel performs all sorts of magic to get what she wants, which in turn triggers many memories Burton’s Icabod has of his childhood and what happened to his mother.

            What Burton essentially does is take the original story and make it so much more complicated for Icabod. Diving much deeper than Irving, Burton gives Crane scars on his hands, much like the physical deformities that many of his other characters have had. Herein lies the major conflict for the main character, who forces himself to look at life very logically and disbelieving, using reason to give himself truth, yet for every night in Tarrytown he has flashbacks to his mothers death, which was fueled by his father’s belief of witchery. Icabod remembers seeing his mother’s dead body and falling back onto another death machine, impaling his hands. This confusion between the two makes him nearly useless for the first part of the story.

            Burton also adds a trickster; the evil stepmother. Lady Van Tassel’s bitterness about being a poor child drives her to learn witchery. She uses these skills to pull others into her misery, such as the Horseman and through him all of his victims. This gives the story reason for more conflict and adds more flair to the original. It makes it more of a fairytale/horror story and brings a lot more excitement. She is the femme fatale that takes advantage of her beauty and uses it for her horrible intentions.

            Overall, Burton’s version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has many more conflicts and sides to it. Instead of taking the normal short story and trying to put the original’s miniscule content into a couple hour production, he adds conflict and elements that make for a better film. He adds bits of himself by making Icabod more misunderstood and by giving the Headless Horseman a femme fatale controller, making all his horrible actions innocent as compared to Irving’s purely evil villain.