By Ted Baldwin

     Similarities to Pumpkinhead should not be ignored, but it is not a slight to either film. Ten years later, this is big budget and well done.

     What Dickens, and Poe and Irving did so deliciously well in print, Tim Burton has done with a vengeance in film. Every frame of Sleepy hollow looks like it has stepped out of the dank New England countryside in the dead of Winter. And the feeling that all is not well comes barreling down on you on horseback, taking your head to hell.

     It is a landscape not for the faint of heart, but just such a person arrives in the form of Ichabod Crane, here transformed from skeptical schoolmaster into a New York City Police Inspector. He has demons of his own, and nightmares that lead him into revelations. But in Sleepy Hollow, the nightmares are flesh and bone, but hardly bloodless.

     In this version, enhanced and all but belabored, a Hessian Madman is engaged to terrorize the townsfolk and route the soldiers. Maniacal he is (Christopher Walken's casting in this part says it all) and swift of sword. Until the moment he is ambushed and himself beheaded, there is no peace. Now 20 years later, he has been summoned from Hell, sans head, and sets about doing in most of the town leaders.

     Johnny Depp is great as the awkward, prying inspector - weak kneed and lily-livered. Somehow he manges to crawl from under the covers and confront the beast - but there are darker secrets to be revealed. Who is summoning the ghost and for what reason? And what terrible secret is lurking beneath Depp's coverings? And what is all that crap he keeps pulling out of his medical bag?

     Christina Ricci (Addams Family, Pecker) is all growed up here, but not to do good, apparently. And Miranda Richardson rounds out the cast - many of whom are Burton favorites. (Which makes me wonder - what would PeeWee Herman be like in the role of Ichabod? Creepy-ey!)

     Amid the rampant sorcery and head-choppings-off, there is fog, and evil, fiery pumpkins, and randy New Englanders. (Did I mention Casper Van Dien?) But in all of the perhaps 25 beheadings we see on screen, it never takes on any air of gratuitousness. Walken's pointy toothed singlemindedness delivers the goods and Burton has turned in a film that will become a must-see tradition for all just-barely-old-enough children to run screaming from every All Hallowed's Eve.

They have a cool website, too.