At first glance, Washington Irving's classic Sketch Book entry "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" would seem a perfect match for Burton's sensibility. The short story has an awkward, geeky character--the cowardly, superstitious schoolteacher Ichabod Crane. It also has a bucolic community haunted by an inexplicable apparition--the ghost of a decapitated Hessian who gallops through the woods as The Headless Horseman. There's even a chaste romance, between Ichabod and a Dutchman's daughter. With little modification, "Sleepy Hollow" could slide right behind Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and A Nightmare Before Christmas as another Tim Burton gothic fantasy.

But Burton and screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (author of Seven and an early version of 8MM) have decided to retrofit Irving's story. Ichabod Crane (played by Johnny Depp) has been made into a literal-minded forensic policeman sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of decapitations, which may portend a plot by one of the town's landlords to increase his holdings through foul play. Crane's nemesis in the Irving story, Brom Bones, has been reduced to a token appearance (perhaps because he's played by the vapid Casper Van Dien). The bulk of the Burton/Walker Sleepy Hollow involves Crane's attempt to solve the mystery of who has summoned the spirit of The Headless Horseman--for which he enlists the aid of a pretty, witchcraft-practicing local girl named Katarina Van Tassel (played by Christina Ricci).

Distancing himself even further from Irving's story, Burton has intended his Sleepy Hollow to be an homage to the bloody, cleavage-laden spookfests of the '60s--the products of the British-based Hammer Films. To that end, he has plenty of lopped-off heads flying about, albeit tastefully and practically gore-free. (Sleepy Hollow has a soft "R" rating--there's little in it to disturb a child over 12.) Burton also has Depp and company stiffen up, to give an air of mock seriousness to the lurid tableau.

The Hammer parody works sporadically--sometimes it's funny to hear Depp drone on about science while he's covered in demonic blood, and sometimes his clipped tones seem like a gratingly bad impression of Dave Foley. As for the changes to Irving's story, they're not worth getting upset about; Burton and Walker have changed the details so completely that the film is a wholly different animal. If anything, one wishes that the filmmakers had just gone ahead and disposed of incongruous holdovers like Brom Bones and the occasionally knock-kneed Crane, and instead delved more deeply into the application of reason in a world of superstition.

Instead, they waste time on a complicated murder-for-real-estate scheme that ends up being one of those mysteries that can be solved only by a long speech at the end by the character we least suspect. (Unfortunately, I don't think that part is supposed to be a parody.) Burton also dwells on Ichabod's recurring nightmares--a compelling subject with a conventional payoff. The ghosts of Crane's past--instigated by a religious fanatic, no less--are typical of Burton's limited imagination when it comes to character; his worst nightmare is a man with a Bible.

What Burton excels at is design, and if ever a movie could get by on its look alone, Sleepy Hollow is it. The film is set as the 18th century turns to the 19th, and the drab post-revolutionary garb blends into the ice-blue haze in the air and the long New England shadows. Burton keeps the pace quick and strings together several pulse-pounding (if not especially scary) action sequences. And The Headless Horseman effect--a combination of CGI and the work of stuntman Ray "Darth Maul" Park--is truly stunning.

In many ways, Sleepy Hollow is the most direct, least pretentious film Burton has made since Beetlejuice. But that doesn't mean it isn't infused with Burtonian clichs. In addition to the dire authority figures and the lovable loner with the scarred past, the movie ends as all Burton gothic fantasies do--with a big fight in a tower.