Dispatches From The 1st Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival

Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

2019 marks the 200th anniversary of Irving’s classic tale, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” an iconic American original that has firmly gripped the cultural psyche since its first publication. Sleepy Hollow has bewitched not only Irving, but also artists of every creative pursuit for the past two centuries—including masters of the cinematic arts. The first ever Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival (SHIFF) sought to celebrate this legacy of artistic inspiration and achievement.

In addition to the bicentennial of his story—and an uncanny happenstance worthy of Irving himself—2019 is also the 70th anniversary of the beloved 1949 Walt Disney animated classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and the 20th anniversary of Tim Burton’s acclaimed 2009 feature film, Sleepy Hollow. The festival commemorated both of these landmarks on the big screen in addition to a celebration of Brian De Palma’s cult classic feature film Phantom of the Paradise, and a salute to the legendary TV and film franchise Dark Shadows (two feature films of which were shot in Sleepy Hollow and at the Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown). The organizers and staff of the first Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival are determined to make the ambitious festival an annual event.

Opening night kicked off with a VIP c*cktail reception at Tarrytown’s Horsefeathers Pub, a chic, attractive eatery and pub in the center of town, and around the corner from the Tarrytown Music Hall, the festival’s primary venue. Owner Julia McCue transformed the pub into a Halloween-themed dreamscape right down to sangria punch served from transfusion bags on IV poles. Festival staff had the opportunity to socialize with Festival guests in a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere. Notables included producer Edward R. Pressman, writer/actor Michael McCartney (Halloween: Resurrection), actor Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), set to star in a prime time production of his acclaimed one-man show Nevermore, in which Combs plays Edgar Allan Poe. Directed by Stuart Gordon, director of Re-Animator, and written by Dennis Paoli, Nevermore is a critically heralded experience that has delighted audiences for more than a decade.

Meeting Herbert West of Re-Animator

Film Inquiry was among the few journalistic outlets invited, and Jeffrey Combs spoke briefly with Film Inquiry. I mentioned that I discovered Poe in junior high school, when I was assigned to read “The Tell-Tale Heart,” one of the few pieces of required reading in those unhappy years that I actually liked.

“Me too,” Combs said. “It was exciting, and accessible.” Still, Combs initially hesitated to take on the role, because he was already so closely identified with horror. “I resisted it for quite awhile,” he said. He talked about the research into Edgar Allan Poe necessary to create the character on stage, and the eeriness of walking by Poe’s grave on his way to a performance of Nevermore in Baltimore, where Poe lived briefly at the end of his life, but where he also wrote his classic poem “The Raven.”

Poe’s short and often tragic life captivated Combs. “Poe was orphaned when he was only three,” he says, “and sold ‘The Raven’ for only $11.00.” Combs feels like he knows Poe, and after a decade of recreating him on stage, he probably should. And he’s well aware of Poe’s untimely end. He was barely forty when he died. “He died young and penniless,” Combs mused, “and his grave was unmarked.”

Phantom of the Paradise and Phantom of  Winnipeg

Opening night continued with a special screening of Brian DePalma’s cult classic Phantom of the Paradise, followed by the US premiere of the award-winning documentary Phantom of Winnipeg, which chronicles the odd love affair between the city of Winnipeg and DePalma’s movie. The documentary features both interviews with locals, as well with Phantom of the Paradise stars Paul Williams and Gerrit Graham. Both Williams and Graham, in addition to producer Edward R. Pressman, delighted the full-house audience with a live Q&A session between movies. Paul Williams received the first Washington Irving Legend Award.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: New Version of an Old Tal

Friday afternoon saw a special screening at the Festival’s second venue, the Warner Library, of filmmaker Andrea Sadler’s new version of Washington Irving’s classic Halloween tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Sadler’s film is a filmed version of storyteller Jonathan Kruk’s critically acclaimed telling of the original story. Kruk himself has been selected as Best Storyteller in the Hudson Valley, and Irving’s story is one of his specialties.

Later the same afternoon, the Warner Library site hosted a screening of director Steven Heil’s new feature Another Yesterday, in which a Japanese-American high school student spars with his father while bonding with two social outcasts, one who is bullied because he’s gay, and another who claims she is being followed by a spirit.

Peter Strickland’s In Fabric unspooled at the Tarrytown Music Hall Friday afternoon as well. Strickland’s new horror film stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a woman who visits a London department store in search of a dress to transform her life. She is fitted with a flattering, blood-red gown which ultimately unleashes a malevolent curse that threatens everyone who comes in its path. The screening was outside the Festival competition.

Akuy Eenda Maawehlaang witnesses the Ramapough-Lenape Nation’s struggle to gather as a community and pray on their own land, in the face of legal and financial abuse at the hands of the township of Mahwah, and a private homeowners’ association known as The Polo Club. Director Brooklyn Demme’s personal grief, from losing his filmmaking parent, with whom the project began, is inextricably woven with an old tale of Lenape mythology and a new story of wildlife endangerment. The screening at the Warner Library was followed by a Q&A with members of the Ramapough tribe. The screening was outside the Festival competition.

At 7:00 PM at the Warner Library, audiences were delighted by “Horace Whitley and the Unimaginable Horror Actor”, a live performance by author and storyteller David Neilsen, who performs a wild, Lovecraft-inspired and infused, original one-act play that melds horror and upper-class farce in irresistibly spooky, fun fashion. An ancient evil tomb, horrific creatures… Uruguayan scotch… It’s all here in this live tale of an adventurer’s exploits. Who could ask for anything more?

At 11:30 Friday evening, appropriately enough, the Festival celebrated the Friday the 13^th franchise with a special screening of Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter. Director Joseph Zito keeps up a brisk, brutal pace, and special effects makeup artist Tom Savini keeps the crimson flowing, as Jason slashes his way through a cast that including Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. The Final Chapter maintains its sturdy place in the Friday the 13^th canon, and to help its 35^th anniversary, composer Harry Manfredini, whose remarkable orchestral scores are as vital to the franchise as Jason himself, was in the house for a pre-screening Q&A.

On Saturday at 10:00 AM, the Warner Library and Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival presented a free screening of the 1985 Walt Disney fantasy adventure Return To Oz, a follow-up tale to the legendary classic The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Walter Murch and starring Fairuza Balk, Nicol Williamson and Piper Laurie, Return To Oz has built a following of devoted fans that continues to grow. After the screening, with the film’s renowned with the film’s renowned composer, David Shire (All the President’s Men, Short Circuit, Zodiac) presented a Q&A moderated by Tim Greiving (NPR, The Los Angeles Times).

Plan 9 From Outer Space: Live Stage Reading

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space is a cult classic—not because it presages the zombie apocalypse genre, a decade before George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, although that is an argument one could make—but because it is perhaps one of the most singularly ineptly executed motion pictures ever made. This a movie one has to see to believe. It really is that bad.

That of course makes the movie hysterically, if unintentionally, funny. In Wood’s movie, residents of the San Fernando Valley are under attack by flying saucers from outer space. The alien invaders, led by Dudley Manlove as Eros (we’re serious) and his assistant Tanna (Joanna Lee), intend to conquer the San Fernando Valley, and then the world, by resurrecting corpses from a Hollywood cemetery.

The living dead, including a cape-wearing corpse (Bela Lugosi, and his frequent stand-in, Ed Wood’s wife’s chiropractor, who bore no obvious resemblance to Lugosi), a vampire (out-of-work TV star Vampira) and a slow-footed cop (Tor Johnson) who was investigating the strange goings-on in the cemetery, stalk curious humans who wander into the cemetery looking for evidence of the UFO’s.

The onstage included Dana Gould, Bobcat Goldthwait, John Hodgman, Jonah Rey, Kathryn Aagesen, Frank Conniff and Jeffrey Combs, who couldn’t hide their own amusement at the unintentionally comical dialogue, along with some new narration which highlighted the movie’s shoestring budget sets and special effects, continuity errors and lack of scientific acumen. The audience couldn’t have been happier.

Making Apes

The festival hosted the east coast premiere screening of Making Apes: The Artists Who Changed Film. The eye-opening, feature-length documentary about the Hollywood artists who created the iconic makeups seen in the original 1968 classic Planet of the Apes and their lasting impact on cinema features interviews with makeup artists and actors from the original film franchise, modern makeup artists and filmmakers, including Guillermo Del Toro, John Landis and Joe Dante, who were deeply influenced by the franchise. The screening was followed by an in-person Q&A with director William Conlin, hosted by comedian and Apes aficionado Dana Gould.

Nevermore: Edgar Allan Poe Comes to Life On Stage

The line went around the block Saturday night, as an enthusiastic audience queued up to see actor Jeffrey Combs  (Re-Animator, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, The Frighteners) perform his acclaimed one man show, transporting the audience back to 1848 where Combs brings Edgar Allan Poe to life with dramatic recitals of some of the legendary author’s greatest works, while laying bare his tortured, impassioned soul. Combs performed without an intermission, adding to the intensity of the production, and gave the audience a compassionate but unsparing view of Poe the orphan, the penniless genius, the tortured alcoholic and lifelong romantic. The experience was electrifying.

20^th Anniversary of Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow

Sunday was closing day, and kicked off with a 20^th anniversary, special screening of Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow by Cinefex Magazine at the Tarrytown Music Hall. Burton’s take on the immortal Washington Irving tale, starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci and Christopher Walken, is visually gorgeous and briskly paced, balancing shock, heart, action and mystery with his trademark quirky style. Revisions to the classic Irving story abound, but its key elements remain. The first 50 attendees received a complimentary copy of Issue #80 of Cinefex detailing the making of the classic chiller.

200^th Anniversary of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and the 70^th Anniversary of Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Disney’s Hollow-Een Treat, featuring the 70^th anniversary of Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow followed at 2:30 pm at the Tarrytown Music Hall, presented by D23 and SHIFF. As the town of Sleepy Hollow itself celebrates the 200th Anniversary of Washington Irving’s original frightening tale, Walt Disney Archives Director Becky Cline and voice actor Bret Iwan treated the audience to a special selection of Disney’s spookiest shorts before a screening of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, complete with a behind-the-scenes look at each film.

The Bride of Frankenstein

At 5:30, La-La Land Records presented a special screening at the Music Hall of the 1935 classic feature film The Bride of Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, and directed by James Whale. An undisputed classic of its genre, the sequel to the 1931 Frankenstein continues to enthrall audiences. Part of the film’s enduring cinematic power is from the music score by legendary composer Franz Waxman (Rebecca, Sunset Blvd., Suspicion, A Place In the Sun). This screening celebrated the world premiere release (in any format) of the original Bride score recording, which has been re-discovered and meticulously restored. The official, limited edition The Bride of Frankenstein CD was available for purchase exclusively, ahead of its release date, in the Music Hall lobby.

Following the screening, the audience was treated to a Q&A with John Waxman, son of the composer, Alexia Baum, chief executive of the Universal Pictures Film Music Heritage Collection, and film music restoration producer Mike Matessino, who took the audience behind the scenes of the classic film and its score.

The closing night feature was the East Coast premiere of director Brett Pierce and Drew T. Pierce‘s The Wretched,  a genre gem that deftly weaves tense horror with insightful drama, wit and even a touch of Hitchc*ck—but most importantly, is also an entertaining monster movie. A defiant teenage boy, struggling with his parent’s imminent divorce, faces off with a thousand year-old witch, who is living beneath the skin of (and posing as) the woman next door. Starring John-Paul Howard (Hell and High Water), The Wretched was also nominated for Best Picture at the 2019 Fantasia Film Festival.

“And The Winners Are…”

 After nearly non-stop screenings, the Festival gave awards to new films in a number of categories. Those winners were:

Best Picture & Best Director: The Wretched—Brett and Drew Pierce

Best Screenplay & Best Score: Driven—Writer, Casey Dillard, Composer, Matthew Steed

Best Documentary: Phantom of Winnipeg—Directors Malcolm Ingram & Sean Stanley

Best Short: “The Spirit Seam”—Director, Ashley Gerst

Best Unproduced Original Screenplay

 Awards were handed out to:

1st Place “Vulture” by Tyler Christensen.

2nd Place “Sunshine State: Duende” by Kai Thorup.

3rd Place “Egghead” by Andrew Pelosi.

Honorable mentions went to “Sherlock Holmes & The Case of the Sussex Skull” by Staton Rabin, and “The Crimson Legacy” by Adam Lapallo and “Wildman” by Dan Bruno.

Conclusion

The organizers of the Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival hope to make it an annual event, and based on both the quality of their first festival, and the enthusiastic audience response, there’s no reason to think they won’t be able to. After all, what better place for a Halloween-themed film festival than Sleepy Hollow?