Film and Television Variations
Notable film and television variations include:
- The Headless Horseman (1922), a silent version directed by Edward Venturini, and starring Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane. It was filmed on location in New York's Hudson River Valley.
- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), directed by James Algar, Clyde Geronimi and Jack Kinney, produced by Walt Disney Productions and narrated by Bing Crosby. It is an animated cartoon adaptation of the story, paired with a similar treatment of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. The climactic ride is more extended than in the original story, and the possibility is stressed that the visually impressive Horseman is in fact a ghost rather than a human in disguise. Later the Sleepy Hollow portion of the film was separated from the companion film, and shown separately as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1958.
- A short animated version produced in 1972 was narrated by John Carradine.
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1980), directed by Henning Schellerup. A television movie on NBC filmed in Utah, starring Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane, Meg Foster as Katrina, and Dick Butkus as Brahm Bones. Producer Charles Sellier was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on the movie. The film is not closely adapted to the original story, depicting Crane as a skeptic regarding ghosts and the supernatural, although it foreshadows Tim Burton's similar 1999 treatment.
- Tall Tales & Legends episode "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1987), starring Ed Begley, Jr. as Ichabod Crane, Beverly D'Angelo as Katrina Van Tassel, and Charles Durning as Doffue Van Tassel who is also the narrator. Produced and hosted by Shelley Duvall.
- In 1988 PBS and Rabbit Ears Productions produced a multi-award winning animated adaptation and a subsequent book depicting the Irving story. Illustrations, directing, and adaptation was done by Robert Van Nutt, music by Tim Story, and the narration by Glenn Close.
- The Real Ghostbusters featured an episode with a descendant of Ichabod Crane cursed by a headless apparition on a motorcycle who chases her.
- In the Nickelodeon television series Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1992), the episode "The Tale of the Midnight Ride" serves as a sequel to the classic story. In this episode a boy moves to Sleepy Hollow where he develops a crush on a girl. One night after the Halloween dance, they see the ghost of Ichabod Crane and send him over the bridge that the Headless Horseman cannot cross, prompting the Headless Horseman to then come after them.
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1999) was a Canadian television film starring Brent Carver and Rachelle Lefevre which was filmed in Montreal.
- Sleepy Hollow (1999) was a feature film directed by Tim Burton, though the adaptation takes many liberties with the plot and characters, changing Crane from the local schoolmaster into a police constable sent from New York to investigate recent murders, with the Horseman being used as a weapon against the local landowners. Johnny Depp starred as Ichabod Crane while Christopher Walken plays the Headless Horseman. The cast also featured Christina Ricci as Katrina, and Casper Van Dien as Brom.
- The Night of the Headless Horseman (1999) was an hour long computer animated FOX TV special utilizing motion capture.
- The Haunted Pumpkin of Sleepy Hollow (2002) was an hour long animated special from PorchLight Entertainment.
- The Hollow (2004) was a TV movie that premiered on the ABC Family channel starring Kevin Zegers and Kaley Cuoco. The adaptation focused on a teenage descendant of Ichabod Crane.
- "The Legend of Sleepy Halliwell" (2004) was an episode of the TV show Charmed. A headless horseman murders the teachers at Magic School by beheading them.
- Halloween Hound: The Legend of Creepy Collars is the second-season premiere of the PBS series Wishbone. In this episode, the show's central character and narrator, a talking dog named Wishbone, imagines himself as Ichabod Crane and re-enacts the Headless Horseman story in his imagination as his owner, a boy named Joe Talbot, goes on a Halloween night scavenger hunt. In Wishbone's imagined story, he is scared off by the Headless Horseman. When the villagers find the shattered pumpkin the following morning, Brom rides among them. The camera focuses on the saddle on Brom's horse, showing that it has a unique design similar to the one used by the Headless Horseman.
Read more about this topic: The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow
Famous quotes containing the words film, television and/or variations:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)