We were lucky to see this in the theater opening night. One of us (me) was a little too drunk to fully appreciate it, but not too drunk to scream at the top of my lungs a couple of times (once during the scene with the witch in her cave–I think that actually sobered me up some, I jumped so high). You don’t need to be a big Johnny Depp fan to appreciate this clip… just of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow–especially the Disney version, which Tim Burton said this dream sequence was a specific homage to. I sure as hell appreciate the movie now!

The  word ‘iconic’ has been almost sickeningly over-used in the last few years, especially in reference to TV and movie scenes (especially irritating to me as a writer and a movie geek when it’s something recent and not really earned iconic status yet). As in, Yes, here we have a tribute to the iconic scene in The Devil Inside where she pulls down her lower lip to reveal the upside-down cross carved into her— SHUT UP! STOP THAT! However, Ichabod Crane, the covered bridge, the flaming pumpkin… that one of the coolest fucking images I’ve carried in my memory since I watched the movie on Halloween in grade school, when they still aired it on Halloween. Scared the crap out of me and any of my friends I was watching with. Sometimes we cringed and peeked through our fingers, because we all knew it was coming…

 

OK, back to Johnny Depp. I recall when I read the screenplay online in 1999, knowing Depp was cast, thinking there were better choices to play Ichabod Crane, but oh well. However, he totally won me over. Below is a montage someone made of the comic relief moments in this rather dark (but really entertaining;, basically, Depp’s version of Crane fainting, being scared of spiders… actually, he makes him seem like a pussy but honestly, I wouldn’t even be brave enough to stay in town after the first creepy thing he saw.  Would you want to stick around Sleepy Hollow?

Check it out below, it’ll brighten your Monday:

 

Though I wish she’d left in the horror-movie version of the witch going ‘Large Marge’ on Depp, after the big jump scare, it was hilarious. As I recall, they showed his terrified reaction, then cut to the outside of the cave and him briskly walking out of the cave, announcing, “We are leaving!” “What?” “We are leaving now!” I do recall that moment got the biggest laugh of the movie when we saw it.