The costumes are all beautiful.  Christina Ricci wears hand embroidered dresses and dons long blond curls for her role.  Johnny Depp sports a somber pale look, without the malevolence of his Sweeny Todd role.  Both stars are supported by an excellent ensemble including Christopher Lee and Miranda Richardson, who before being a New World witch was an Old World Faerie Queen in "Merlin."

If you want to see a beautifully realized vision of Tim Burton's then make sure to watch "Sleepy Hollow."  The R rating is deserved with all the blood in this gothic horror movie.  Make sure you watch it before showing it to younger viewers, I'm not showing it to my kids.  It's a great one to watch for a thrill, both visually exciting and just scary enough.  Let this fantastic retelling of a classic American story give you what you want out of a Tim Burton film.

Anna Lynne McCord

Okay, so last night was Halloween night. Okay, so I thought it would be a shame to let the season pass without seeing a good horror flick. Okay, so how could I know that what I and a friend were about to see would make me want to renounce my views about over-the-top gore and make me wish I had seen Saw V instead?

In fact, you need not even go as far as that. I believe I would even have rather seen the High School Musical movie that is now out rather than have had to sit through what is surely the most phenomenal upheaval of every tired cliché from every suspense horror film involving teenagers, their high schools and what happens if you can get Satan to make a name-only cameo in the hellish mix.

The film starts out with a flashback to 1997. We see the standard set-up scene of an attractive teenage girl alone in a wilderness area. We find her following notes that are spaced-apart on a line of twine beckoning her to go further. (Which - smart girl that she is - she does). She is led to an abandoned house where her boyfriend, fun-loving prankster that he is, scares the living daylights out of her and after the anti-climax, both proceed with the obligatory make-out scene. They are (of course) interrupted by the girl's psychotic-looking father (again, standard fare) who makes her get into his truck and speeds of down the dirt road where we are introduced to the film's sub-plot of bad decisions made by parents long-ago and nefarious dark forces at work and about to culminate on the girl's eighteenth birthday. After a botched attempt to kill both himself and his daughter by swerving into on-coming traffic (all the while literally thumping on the Bible and asking for forgiveness), they skid to a halt, look at each other, and end-up getting creamed by a semi any way. With his dying strength, the father takes a piece of broken glass and kills the daughter. (By this time, the dread I was already beginning to feel had nothing whatsoever to do with whatever “scary” thing might be coming next).

Open to the present day and we find our heroine, Molly Hartley, (Haley Bennet) in the midst of a nightmare and waking up violently. (And at this point, the film has already met about three-quarters of the recommended horror-movie clichés to get itself categorized as unimaginative garbage). One thing you need to know about this girl is that she has a nosebleed every other scene. In fact, without her nosebleeds, this would be one horror film that would be almost entirely bloodless. We find (much to our non-surprise) that she is someone who (after nearly being killed by her own mother - and is now locked-up in an asylum) is embarking on a new life, new school and a new relationship with her guilt-driven, doting father. (And these are the only areas where the adjective “new” can legitimately be applied). On her first day of school, she is at once button-holed by the same quartet of likely suspects; the nerdish, Bible-thumping girl (more about this later), the hot guy, the hot guy's rabid ex-girlfriend, and the class rebel wild-girl who wants to free our heroine from all of her frumpish inhibitions.

As if this miasma of everything-you've-seen-before-to-the-nth-degree weren't enough, the writer of this celluloid drive-heave even includes a school psychologist who turns out in the end to be (you guessed it) one of the baddies. She is about as subtle a factor in this whole thing as Damien's nanny in The Omen was. From this point, Molly is set on a course to find out her true destiny which she does by way of hearing voices, hallucinations of her whacko, institutionalized mother, dizzy spells and of course, by continuing to bleed all over the place from her nose. (All necessary pieces of the puzzle, you understand).

We finally get to the bottom what is going on with this girl when her mother, freshly escaped from the asylum, finds her daughter alone in her house and once again, attempts to kill her. Only this time, we get the entire explanation from her as to why she is embarked on a course to off her own daughter. It seems that eighteen years ago when her daughter was born (and after several miscarriages), there were some complications, and her brand new baby daughter was about to die. As quickly as you can say “Beelzebub,” a mysterious woman (who turns out, of course, to be the school psychologist) appears on the scene and offers them the classic deal; they get eighteen years with your daughter, and the devil gets her after that. They agree. From here all of the blanks are filled in and one finds that one can pretty much predict the outcome of the film as if one were directing it him or herself. (In the end, she agrees to join the devil's side - as if we are surprised).

However, what I am writing here is every bit as much as a commentary on the condition of this genre of film as it is a review of the film itself. (And if I have dissuaded even one person from going to see this hound or even renting the DVD - which should be out the day after tomorrow! - then I feel I have done my duty!). Earlier, I made a reference to one of the characters in this film who was the “nerdish, Bible-thumping girl.”

And also to the father in the opening scenes who is “literally thumping a bible and asking for forgiveness” before he kills his daughter.

Hollywood has (has had for quite a while, in fact) a large degree of schizophrenia going on in the area of how to depict both Christians and the Bible in its films. Nowhere is this schizophrenia more evident than in the area of the supernatural/horror thriller. The reason for the schizophrenia basically boils down to this: In order to make a film of this type, you usually have to borrow heavily from the Bible in general, and Christianity in particular as source materials if you want an effective background for your archetypal battle between good and evil. You really cannot have Satan show-up in a film (or even being present, yet unseen) and somehow divorce him from all of the theological underpinnings which go to make him, and his attributes, believable.

This has always been the basic rule of thumb since the inception of the horror movie genre. Even if Satan is not actually present in a film like “Frankenstein,” the whole concept of “playing God” (and it's attending ramifications) is. And in any horror film where Satan is not present, he usually leaves his hoof-print. In every Dracula film from the original with Bela Lugosi, to sixties and the seventies with Christopher Lee, to all of the later efforts, the Satanic element is either heavily present, or else tacitly implied.

Yes, Hollywood (particularly the segment which makes the horror films) has a big, schizophrenic problem alright. You see, it doesn't take one who can put together legos, let alone a rocket scientist, to tell that Hollywood doesn't like Christians very much. In fact, it would be a pretty safe bet to say that Hollywood thoroughly despises Christians. One can therefore see the problem with making this type of film from the point of view of a screenwriter who is a bit of a Christianophobe; he has to give both the Bible and Christianity just enough credibility to make his story work, or else he doesn't have a story. He can no more put God and Satan in a story framework without both these as a context than he can put pirates on a prairie and make the whole thing believable.

Therefore, Hollywood has been pillaging the Bible for years with greater gusto than those whom they claim are pillaging rainforests. They don't like Christians or the Bible, yet they simply cannot dispense with either one of them. The only way to make vampires immune to the Cross is to make them some kind of hideous genetic mutations such as in Blade or Underground. In so doing, they have gone and divorced the entire of idea of “vampires” from its long-held (and cherished, by horror fans) legacy of being undead, supernatural (and plenty scary) beings.

Sooo, screenwriters have to make some kind of a compromise and strike a balance between their own dubious sense of aesthetics and a practical approach that won't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Even if in their esteem, it is a rather homely goose). Therefore they decide that while they will go on raping the Bible (and the Book of the Revelation in particular) for ideas, they will also continue, at every opportunity, to depict the Christians in their films as vile, psychotic, cringing, buffoonish and downright villainous. (At one point in the film, the girl who is the Bible-thumping nerd attempts to kill the heroine by drowning her in a baptismal font - in order to “save her soul”). They therefore get what they want; they cull from the Bible (and any attendant literature - Paradise Lost gets a mortifying mention in this film) all they need in the form of apocalyptic symbology or supernatural personae and yet still have good ole' Wally and Wanda Christian on the side to poke fun at.

However, I do not write this simply because I am a Christian (and I am). I write this also as a former horror movie buff. (Add to that present fantasy and sci-fi movie buff). I say “former” because the genre that once produced some to the most genuinely (and legitimately) scary movies when I was growing up, has long since lost it's way in a quirky quagmire of the cheaply visceral (blood and body parts everywhere) and the boringly predictable (hordes of teenagers getting slaughtered every year or else darkly-woven conspiracies affecting those who come of age with Satan as persona-non-gratis in some for or another). Gone are the true chills that only the likes of Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney (Sr. and Jr.), Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing could produce in me. There is a ten-year old in this forty-six year old frame who feels much betrayed. Those days are never coming back and it would be foolhardy of me to sit around pretending that they someday might. I will simply cut my losses by a third and say goodbye (with perhaps a hesitant visit every now and again) to the horror genre. In the realm of the fantastic, there is only science fiction and fantasy really left. (And they have been showing signs of decay for some time now as well).

However, at any rate, this review of mine will probably be somewhat of a maverick anyway. I believe that if Hollywood keeps pumping out bilge like this last installment, it will find not Christians who are the ones lobbing fire-bombs of criticism at it. It will instead wake-up to discover that it has been besieged on all sides by the very ones it was seeking to entertain; horror fans themselves who have now become tired of grafted-on devils and human innards pasted everywhere. Such is the fate of those who pander the same recycled formulae year after bloody year.

In 1983 Pete Walker sick of having his films butchered, made his final movie as a director The House Of The Long Shadows, a star studded traditional horror movie aimed not at the minority audience, but the whole family; in an unusual move the BBFC stamped it with a PG certificate in the UK passing it without cuts. Sadly however Cannon Pictures UK ran into financial trouble and the in the UK the movie hard one of the shorted cinema runs for a movie in that time period. Lost in the ether the movie returned to haunt late night movie fans, and its video release in 1988 was the first movie to be released to the general public to buy in a clear video case, making it a success for VCI (Video Collection International) five years after it was released.

Moving on to the movie itself and it's a proper traditional horror, successful author Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz) makes a bet with his publisher that he can write a bestselling novel in just 24 hours, heading for the British countryside to get the right inspiration for a Wuthering Heights style novel. Arriving in a remote Welsh manor after a series of bizarre events, he is surprised to find the supposedly abandoned house still occupied by servants Victoria (Sheila Keith) and Lord Grisbane (John Carradine). After the initial upset having realised he is not alone, Magee becomes more and more distressed as well as more distracted from his work as the bad weather brings a flood of surprise visitors to the manor including Mary Norton (Julie Peasgood), Lionel (Vincent Price), Corrigan (Christopher Lee), and Sebastian (Peter Cushing) ; with such horror legends all present it would be rude to not have a killer too.

The House Of The Long Shadows really is nothing like Walkers traditional output, it is very much the sort of classic horror we are familiar seeing with the likes of Cushing, Lee, and Price; lots of loud banging music to create effect, thunderstorms, and horrific weather, and nowhere a nipple to be seen. Essentially despite its horror elements, House Of the Long Shadows is actually a very nice movie, no real horror, no real scares, just three of horrors best acting legends hamming it up in an almost homage to the Great British horror era where England ruled the world when it came to horror (1950's-1960's) .

There is a considerable amount of humour in the movie, an early victim of the killer Victoria spends the first portion of the movie offering every guest hot punch, getting most annoyed at the colourful language (anyone who has seen Frightmare will find humour in this fact alone), and singing like a banshee; when she falls foul of the killer Sebastian simply states "Poor Victoria, he must have heard her singing!" a statement that made me laugh 20 years ago when I first saw the movie, and yesterday when I saw it again (again for the first time in 20 years). When not having a knock at Sheila Keith, there are some highly amusing disguises that raise a little giggle, and some incredibly over the top acting from Ex-Hollyoaks star Peasgood, who has now thankfully given up acting in favour of being a sex therapist, hopefully she is better at that career choice.

Arnaz is an unusual casting for movie, the actor literally lived his life getting work off the back of his successful father; Arnaz's only claim to fame (if you call it fame) is that he was a star in the ill fated 1983 TV show Automan. His lack of popularity is abundantly clear here, as he stumbles around his lines often illegibly, and leaves you with a pretty bad taste in your mouth; thankfully the weight and experience of the cast veterans, and I should not forget Carradine that keep the movie going at a bustling speed.

Having taken its time telling the story 50 minutes in the first death occurs and from this point you have 35 minutes and a pretty high body count to take you to the movies end. And the end for someone will be an unexpected and enjoyable twist, having already weaved you in a number of directions with a highly contorting story.

25 years after the movie was made to be perfectly honest the cheese element stands out a mile, however it's still lovely to see. The charm of the movie is that it really was the last of the traditional British style of horror, and like its title it casts a long shadow across the movie industry. House Of The Shadows is an enjoyable movie, and a clear indication that despite its death the British horror industry still had something slightly unique to offer, the uniqueness being in its final twist.

House Of The Long Shadows is a movie that is now "In The Public Domain" with nobody seemingly wanting to assume rights over the movie. This means you can either buy an old VHS release, or a Public Domain DVD (probably with VHS quality) from the likes of Ebay, or even download the movie without fear of persecution. Alternately if you're planning to enter the movie industry as a DVD producer, I gather you can pick this up at a snip, providing your promise to remaster the image quality, prior to release.