The Headless Horseman

This is not a great film. It is very slow. The book was very scary. The 1999 film Sleep Hollow based on the same book Legend of sleepy hollow by Washington Irving. The short cartoon the Legend of sleepy hollow is very entertaining. This is badly written. It is also badly acted. There try to makes short story into a long movie. By adding stuff that just for the sake of making it long. So they could make a full length movie. They did not capture the fear of the book. The book is one of the scariest stories ever. And this is just boring and slow. It is not scary at all. There should have made it a short film then it might have been fun. Instead of being just boring.

This is an early telling of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and runs 71 minutes. Considering that this film starred Will Rogers, I had very high hopes for this silent picture and assumed it would be a comedy. However, I soon noticed that the print was extremely horrible and often difficult to watch. Then I noticed that although Rogers was very talented and funny, in this film he was about as funny as Walter Cronkite. And then I noticed that I kept falling asleep during the film--strike three! The bottom line is that although this is a relatively faithful retelling of the Washington Irving short story, there just isn't any life in it. Plus, given that practically every viewer knows what happens at the end, there isn't any suspense either. It's watchable and interesting to note that they actually filmed it in Upstate New York, but that's really about it.

Sadly, the film is bundled another silent,THE MECHANICAL MAN, on DVD. This Italian film manages to be even less interesting or entertaining that THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN and so I strongly caution all sane people from buying this DVD. Fortunately I got it from Netflix--otherwise, I'd be feeling pretty angry now!

I always liked the Disney version of this story and since I like Will Rogers and I find it fascinating to see silent versions of more modern films I like, I made my way into the screening room at Cinevent 2012.

Our star, Will Rogers, is best known for his wit, which cannot be on display here because it is a silent. Strike one. The buildup to the reason to watch the movie, the headless horseman, was so long and dull, that I found myself nodding off several times, as were many of the people around me. Strike two. The climax came much too late and suddenly to justify watching this movie. Strike three.

The runtime on this movie is a little more than an hour, but it feels like triple that. It is painful to watch.

I can't remember seeing a film starring Will Rogers any time in the past. This is a dull, endless version of the famous Washington Irving story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." It follows the plot pretty well, but Rogers seems kind of a well-fed lummox which doesn't really follow the story's description. The townspeople hire him to teach in their school. He is a harsh master, alienating the kids and causing the parents to believe he practices witchcraft. Mostly, the quality of the show is lacking and hard to watch. Even for 1922, it is weak and tiresome. Why Katrina has any interest in him is a bit of a mystery.

Merely adequate retelling of the famous story. Its chief interest lies in the location filming in New York's Hudson River Valley, including the actual Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow. The screenplay introduces a non-Irving subplot of Ichabod Crane being accused of witchcraft in a prank by Brom Bones. None of the comic scenes are particularly funny; one can imagine what Buster Keaton might have done as Ichabod. Some attempts are made at pictorialism, aided by the panchromatic film used here. But the valley's autumnal colors described by Washington Irving are sadly missing in black and white. And the day-for-night scenes of the climactic chase look like pure daylight without the deep blue tinting undoubtedly used in original prints.