Headless Horseman

A group of seven young people ride into a Deliverance like town in the piney woods in the Appalachians and to their dismay find this is the hunting ground of the headless horseman. Washington Irving did not tell the truth about it being in the Hudson Valley, it was really in Eastern Tennessee. Anyway old headless has been doing his accursed thing for two centuries now.

If this one didn't come out on the Science Fiction Channel it would have been one of those early season big screen releases that folks just love to go to for the gore.

As the jock types and wise kids get shortened a little bit on Halloween, it turns out that the kid who reads the classic literature, Billy Aaron Brown, comes up with a way to defeat the unreasoning one.

Watching this slasher flick, the song that Bing Crosby sang about The Headless Horseman from the Walt Disney cartoon feature of Ichabod Crane kept going through my head. They should have featured it here, it couldn't possibly have hurt the film.

It's hard to believe how lousy this trash is. Never mind the title; this has nothing to do with the Sleepy Hollow legend, nor does it have any of the meaning that story does. It has no meaning at all.

Just some gratuitous torture porn serial slasher flick with acting that makes a kindergarten play look like Oscar material by comparison. It's the same old routine you've seen 14,363,889 times before: a bunch of obnoxious screaming teens are arrested for no reason at all by a stereotyped wacko hillbilly sheriff. The kids are clichéd personality types from Saved by the Bell that would never hang out together in real life (bimbo, nerd, jock, dumb fat kid, smart shy girl with glasses, goth, stoner, etc.) Then a whole town of weirdos picks on them. Then some guy with a fake looking Halloween costume and cheap rasta wig stands around staring at them a lot, drooling blood a lot, and killing them off one by one a lot. But you'll never care what happens to these dimwits; if anything, you'll probably hope they get croaked; at least that'll stop the screaming.

Who will live? Who will die? Who really cares?

Released in 2007 and directed by a pre-Sharknado Anthony C. Ferrante, "Headless Horseman" is a modern-day re-imagining of Washington Irving's classic horror folk-tale, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Although it has a creative and imaginative story, the film is severely marred by poor performances.

The plot unfolds on All Hallow's Eve, when seven college students en route to a party, decide to take a shortcut and wind up in the "lost" eerie town of Wormwood. According to local legend, 100 years ago a madman kidnapped and violently tortured some kids until the townspeople took matters into their own hands and beheaded him. Now, he returns every seven years as the Headless Horseman to exact revenge by taking the heads of seven new victims. Our unsuspecting newly-arrived college visitors soon find themselves being hunted down one-by-one as the legendary figure seeks his vengeance.

I understand that in these lower budget b-movies, rookie actors will do rookie acting that is not always the best, and I take this into consideration when rating movies. However, even with that in mind, the acting in this was just bad. Even the more experienced cast members like Richard Moll delivered cringe-performances. Rebecca Mozo, an actress I've never seen before, was the one standout and did a good job."

In terms of visuals, the effects and creature design for the headless horseman were good, especially considering it was made in 2007. There are some cool atmospheric and intimidating shots of the Headless Horseman who's physical appearance slowly and creepily changes throughout the film. Other than that, the cinematography and music are mostly forgettable.

Overall, for fans of schlocky-horror movies, "Headless Horseman" can be an entertaining watch if you can get past the acting. 6/10.

7 college students (most of them look like they go through their second divorce already) make a road trip and find themselves in a strange small town.

Conveniently, the townspeople have to sacrifice SEVEN young people to the Headless Horseman, who visits the town every halloween...

What can be said about the movie: The special effects are bad, the story is boring and the acting is sometimes ridiculous (especially the old store owner). The Headless Horseman itself looks ok, but lacks scariness. The sets are decent.

Conclusion: It's bad, but it's not "best of the worst" material either. Just boring, predictable and trashy.

P. S.: Elizabeth Prestel's (Candy) acting style fits better in an Adult Movie...

I found this to be a standard television horror movie that I have seen. There is not much to the story other than a group of teens gets trapped in a town with a Headless Horseman. The movie does provide an interesting backstory to the Horseman and the town that he resigned in. But the movie is easily predictable and repetitive, with the characters trying to escape but fail a lot of times. I wish the movie had expanded more on the town and the people who lived there to explain their backstory. Other than that, it's just the characters getting killed off one by one and keep returning to the town. The suspense is rather weak since things happened pretty quickly to have any tension to it, and it isn't that thrilling at all. And it's not fun at all. I have little to say about the characters because all of them are one-dimensional and lack any likeability to them. Each one of them have one trait to them and isn't that interesting at all. The townsfolks are your generic creepy locals who have a reason why they try to keep them in the town. But aren't that memorable to watch. The special effects are what you expect from a television movie. The CGI looks awful and looks like something from a Playstation 2 Era. It doesn't translate well, and it looks bad with the gore effects. The practical effects aren't that impressive to see and is rather weak. One more thing to point out is that when the Horseman gets a victim head, he puts it over some liquid thing that slows build up his head back. But the effects look pretty bad when you see it.

Headless Horseman is a medicore television movie that isn't worth watching and sticks with Sleepy Hollow instead.