FRIGHT NIGHT; DIRECTOR'S FEAR OF HORSES BREATHES CREEPY LIFE INTO `SLEEPY HOLLOW'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

There are a number of reasons why it makes sense that Tim Burton would direct a horror movie based on ``The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.''

The best one, though? He doesn't like horses.

``I'm not a horse person, y'know?'' says the 39-year-old, Burbank-bred filmmaker. ``And they don't like show business, I don't think. I've never dealt with them before and they are amazing; these big, Spanish animals on enclosed stage sets, going full-speed, was completely surreal.

``But I am kind of afraid of them.''

It's hard to imagine any other director of Burton's stature confronting his fears by making a movie about a headless horseman. But nobody has ever accused the goateed, beret-wearing auteur of doing the expected thing. A surprise member of the film industry's elite personal-artists-who-make-big-box-office -bucks contingent, Burton balances being one of Hollywood's biggest box-office helmers (``Beetlejuice,'' ``Edward Scissorhands,'' the first two ``Batman'' movies) with being one of its most idiosyncratic (the aforementioned plus ``Mars Attacks!'' and ``Ed Wood,'' among others) filmmakers.

Of those two most recent films, ``Wood,'' the story of the most inept moviemaker in recorded history, earned widespread critical acclaim and supporting actor Martin Landau an Academy Award. The antic ``Mars'' had its critical champions - it was considered a subversive if childish goof on the popular but idiotic ``Independence Day'' - but was mostly considered an artistic fizzle. Both movies were rare Burton box-office duds, and looked at in some Hollywood circles as perverse attempts on his part to establish a zonky artistic integrity over his reputation for commercial acumen.

But if the horse thing represents a different kind of creative perversity, much of the impetus for Burton's ``Sleepy Hollow'' was of a much more affectionate nature.

A great fan of the cheesy-but-zippy horror films made by England's Hammer Studios from the '50s through the '70s, Burton wanted to recapture their lurid charms with a very nice '90s budget of $80 million. He wanted to work again with his favorite actor, Johnny Depp (the star of ``Eds'' - both ``Wood'' and ``Scissorhands'') and work with such old Hammer standbys as Michael Gough (who plays Alfred in the Batfilms) and Christopher Lee.

And the story, set in a Hudson River Valley hamlet 200 years ago, offered a perfect chance to craft a relatively straightforward supernatural mystery accented by Burton touches, not designed as a showcase for them.

``One of the reasons I made this is because it's just, like, a monster movie,'' says Burton between cycles of nervous chuckles. ``It was the kind of movie that gave me a lot when I was a kid. Of course, you try to put thematic things into it, but at the root of the project you just want to make a strong, visceral, fun monster movie.''

``Sleepy Hollow's'' script, conceived by the disturbing ``Seven's'' Andrew Kevin Walker and polished by British playwright (and ``Shakespeare in Love'' Oscar winner) Tom Stoppard, takes extensive liberties with Washington Irving's classic, early-American story. It's more of a supernatural detective yarn in which Ichabod Crane has been changed from a tremulous teacher into a ``scientific'' detective from New York City, sent upstate to discover the source of some ghastly decapitation murders.

He finds the village of Sleepy Hollow rife with conspiracies and closeted skeletons. The beguiling Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci) turns out to be a bit of a witch (and hardly the witchiest one thereabouts). The local superstitions Crane initially dismisses, he soon discovers, are terrifyingly real - so real, in fact, that our supposedly rationalist, supposed hero finds himself constantly fainting dead away.

``My approach was to take the Ichabod that existed and elasticize him a little,'' says Depp. ``I thought of Ichabod as being too in touch with his feminine side, maybe like a 9-year-old girl trapped in a grown man's body.''

``One of the things I like about Johnny is that he's so open to trying things,'' Burton explains. ``It's great to deal with an actor who's not vain or concerned about how they look - in fact, he probably wanted Ichabod to look worse. There's just a freedom to that.''

This was crucial to achieving Burton's goal of a mildly comical but deeply human Crane that could anchor the fantasy in some kind of emotional reality.

``I liked that the character thinks too much, that he pretends he knows what he's talking about when he doesn't and that he wants to be brave and isn't, necessarily,'' Burton says. ``You're not everything that you think you are or want to be sometimes, and I just find that to be charming and very human.''

If Depp's performance brings some degree of believability to the phantasmagoric proceedings, little else does. Everything about the film is stylized to the nth degree, and by extensive effort.

The film's nightmare/fairy tale look was achieved to a great extent on English soundstages; the village of Sleepy Hollow itself was entirely constructed on an estate north of London.

An entire forest, including a gnarled, blood-spurting tree where the Horseman stores his ever-growing collection of freshly severed heads, was built indoors. Those horrifically convincing loose noggins were created by co-writer Kevin Yagher, a special-effects master whose mayhem resume includes the likes of ``Starship Troopers'' and ``Face/Off.'' And yes, there was even a mechanical horse used in certain shots; it was constructed over the shell used in the 1944 Elizabeth Taylor movie ``National Velvet.''

``Every shot was manufactured; you couldn't, like, quickly shoot lots of stuff because everything had smoke, fog, some kind of effect,'' Burton notes. ``But we tried to shoot as much as we could live. We relied on post effects, but the reason why we built all the sets was to make sure that no actor was working against a blank blue screen, that there was some physical reality in every scene.''

Such control over every aspect of a large filmmaking machine was deeply satisfying for Burton. Especially after coming off a frustrating year of developing a new Superman movie, only to see the project - which boasted the controversial choice of Nicolas Cage to play the Man of Steel - canceled by Warner Bros.

``Look, it happens to people all the time; it's just the first time that it's happened to me,'' Burton concedes. ``But it's not a good thing. Nobody wants to spend a year working on something and then not have it come to pass. This is too harsh of a business to be doing that kind of stuff. For everybody concerned, it's just kind of a waste.''

Which begs the question: Was ``Sleepy Hollow'' an attempt to make a more accessible film than his last couple of projects, and thus renew Burton's shaken clout?

There's that nervous laugh again.

``It's always easy to look back on things, but from the beginning, I was always surprised if something was a success or a failure,'' says Burton, who went from cartoonist to animator to short filmmaker before making his feature directing debut with the surprise hit ``Pee-wee's Big Adventure.'' ``You just don't really think that way, though you kind of have to because it's a business. At the same time, though, if everybody knew what a hit movie was then there would be only hit movies, right?

``That's kind of why I like Ichabod so much; I just sort of relate to that pretending-like-you-know-what-you're-talking-about syndrome,'' Burton admits. ``It's very Hollywood.''

Staff writer Phillip Zonkel contributed to this story.

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5 Photos

Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) Waking `Sleepy Hollow'

Director Tim Burton faces the headless horseman - and his own fears - in new film

(2) Christina Ricci plays the bewitching Katrina Van Tassel.

(3) Johnny Depp stars as the hero, Ichabod Crane.

(4) Christopher Walken is the fearsome headless horseman.

(5) ``Sleepy Hollow,'' set in a Hudson River Valley hamlet 200 years ago, offered director Tim Burton the chance to craft a relatively straightforward supernatural mystery accented by his own unique touches.