Forget the Disney animated film, and TV shows, this adaptation of The Legend of Sleep Hollow goes for the jugular, literally!

It’s 1799 and the town of Sleepy Hollow has fallen victim to a series of brutal murders in which all the victims have been decapitated, with the neck wound being instantly cauterised!

Detective Ichabod Crane (Burton fav, Johnny Depp) comes to town to try and solve the crimes. Staying with the Van Tassels, at the request of Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon of the Cook, the Thief his Wife and Her Lover!) , Ichabod takes a fancy to Baltus's daughter Katrina (indie fav Christinna Ricci). As more and more towns folk lose their heads, the trail seems to lead to the Van Tassels...

Being a man of science Ichabod is nothing short of sceptical when the towns folk tell him these beheadings are the work of the headless horseman, once a brutal killer who was decapitated for committing that very crime on countless many, and has risen from the dead to seek revenge and retrieve is head!!

As is always the case with Tim Burton's films, many of his previous film's cast make an appearance, from the likes of Jeffrey(Beetle Juice) Jones as the Reverend Stenwick,   Michael (Alfred the Butler) Gough as Notary James Hardenbrook, and Burton's misses Lisa Marie as young Ichabod's Mother.

So How Does this Transfer Hold Up?

VIDEO
It’s dark, bland and full of smoke, and this Anamorphic Widescreen DVD looks wonderful! Each and every aspect of this transfer has been very well encoded for DVD. Colours are ever so intentionally muted to a point of sepia at times, yet shows bold blooded Reds and truly excellent shadow detail, and talk about sharp detail! It’s a cracker.  As smoke is one of the hardest things to encode properly on DVD I was thrilled to see how well it held up on this DVD.

Spread over two layers of an RSDL DVD, the layer change occurs merely seconds after chapter 16 at time index (sorry I’ve always wanted to use that :) 75:49 and is a little disruptive as there’s a noticeable pause in the flow of the music.
NOTE A ‘difficult’ transfer like Sleepy’s is an excellent reference DVD for getting your system contrast, and brightness right as it’s very very fussy and if a bit off will emphasise grain and artifacting as the film itself has such fine detail.

AUDIO
Being a big fan of Tim Burton, one soon starts to love Danny Elfman’s wicked music scores, and in Sleepy he shines! In Dolby Digital 5.1 mode, your system will get a full throttled  work-out not only in the music department, but also in the sound FX department, it’s almost an "everything but the kitchen sink" deal, but is never over done and distracting with all channels being incredibly active. This is a very dynamic soundtrack that is free of any nasty overbrightness like some movies of today.   The second Audio Track is Dolby Digital 2.0, and sounds a few decibels lower, but is quite nice, but no way near as expansive as the true 5.1 mix.
Sadly, a few moments of sloppy ADR work are exaggerated more so on the Pioneer 717 (even after firmware upgrade). This is really the only down side to the terrific sound mix.

EXTRAS
Included are a very nice collection of goodies. (all extras are Anamorphic Widescreen)

Starting with the menus, the main menu is animated with some groovy floating background text (shadow of the foreground text). The main and special features menus are backed with 2 channel music.

Tim Burton's audio commentary debut is with Sleepy and while it’s a bit bland at times, still has some interesting tidbits to offer. (he’ll no doubt get better with a few more of these up his sleeve :))

Sleepy Hollow Behind the Legend is a 30 minute featurette, made for television and is quite a good watch.

Cast and Crew Interviews : more of the same of what you get in the interviews from the Featurette..still good to see this sort of thing included ..runs about 11 minutes

Cast and Crew Biographies : lots of info, Well researched (something Roadshow seem to make an effort with, unlike some Bios I’ve read!)

Photo Gallery : a feature that always seems to leave me wanting more….some good piccys here.

Dolby Digital Rain Trailer

Theatrical Trailer : unlike the 1.85:1 shot movie, this trailer is 2.35:1 composed (I am told this is because this particular trailer was tagged onto the beginning of a movie/s shot in scope! During it’s theatrical run) and has been cropped accordingly.