If they initially disagreed about the makeup, Burton and Depp were always on the same page when it comes to basic horror mythology. Both were fans of the genre from an early age. Some might even say they were obsessive.

"I think there are similarities in our upbringings," Depp says. "We both grew up suburbia (Burton in Burbank and Depp in Florida). And we both had a fascination with horror films and horror characters when we were very, very young. We were both exposed to the dark side at a very young age.

"I can remember being totally fascinated with Bela Lugosi and the Dracula films when I was five years old and I can remember sitting in class in first grade and drawing pictures of Dracula and Frankenstein. I remember it like it was yesterday," Depp says. "And when I was a kid, in about 1968, I was completely utterly obsessed with a television show called Dark Shadows."

That gothic soap opera featured ghosts and werewolves. Its central character was a vampire named Barnabas Collins.

"I wanted to be Barnabas Collins," Depp laughs. "And I wanted the cane with the wolf's head on it. For my parents, that must have been a very scary thing. 'Where did we go wrong?' "

Burton turned on to the specific cinematic output of a British studio specializing in gothic horror. More than any of his previous films, Sleepy Hollow is informed by the lurid aesthetics of the films known collectively as "Hammer Horrors."

"Growing up on monster movies, you're struck by the very strong imagery (in) a lot of Hammer horror films," Burton says. "In those films, the images burn in your consciousness and when I read the script (for Sleepy Hollow), I said 'Oh yeah, the windmill and the tree and the Headless Horseman!' Some of the images were a real opportunity to try for that type of Hammer imagery."

Depp was likewise obsessed with Hammer and was most impressed at the opportunity to do a scene with Hammer star Christopher Lee, in the role of the magistrate who sends Crane to Sleepy Hollow.

"What a presence!" Depp says. "When you're doing a scene with this guy and he's staring down at you and just about to jump down your throat, screaming at you, it's frightening because you're thinking, my God, that's Dracula!" he laughs. "You're looking at the eyes of Dracula, and there's no way to escape that. He's amazing."

Bearing in mind the strength of Hammer's product, Burton says he had no choice but to make Sleepy Hollow a strong, R-rated horror movie.

"What the Hammers did, and the Grimm Fairy Tales, they sort of go for it, and there's a purity to them that I think is great," he says.

"A lot of those early fairy tales are quite shocking and scary and do things that are really worse than in this," Burton says. "So what we tried to do was ... Here's a Headless Horseman and he's not an Avon Lady, let's go for it."

That said, Burton remains upset that the film was awarded an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America.

"I wanted it to be a PG-13," Burton says. "I wanted to make a movie that I wanted to see at that time. So I was quite upset but I've had trouble with the ratings board since (his first film) Frankenweenie.

"I would have no trouble showing this movie to some kids," he says. "Kids are like adults, some kids can take it and some kids can't. And everybody has a choice.

"If I was to do the exact same thing and do it really badly, with no impact whatsoever, we probably would have got a PG-13," he says. "But you know, if you do something and you try to give it some power, you get penalized for it."

What's especially ironic, Burton says, is that the atmosphere is more conservative now than it was when he was a kid.

"I look at my own upbringing, I look at the fact that I could watch a Hammer horror film on the TV on a Saturday afternoon, and now you can't," he says. "They wouldn't allow it."


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