SYNOPSIS: In "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow" Icabod Crane doesn't necessarily die. He vanishes, leaving behind a pommeled cap. This story postulates that he fell into a time tunnel and came out in modern-day Tarrytown, New York. Now he must make his way back to his own time and place with the aid of two costumed children out trick-or-treating on Halloween night. A script aimed at the pre-teen audience, but all adults were once children..

In the original “Legend Of Sleepy Hollow,” Icabod Crane’s supposedly dead body is never found. All that remains from his encounter with the Headless Horseman is his double-pommel riding cap. So I take that as my jumping-off point and begin the story 200 years ago in Tarrytown, New York. Icabod is being rejected by the fair Katrina Van Tassel. He mounts up and leaves, boasting that he is not afraid of the dreaded Headless Horseman. We all know what happens then.

Cut from that to today in Tarrytown, New York. It’s Halloween night and the town puts on its usual big production of the night’s festivities. Kids out trick-or-treating, adults preparing for the big downtown parade later in the evening. 12-year-old Joe McMillan and his 10-year-old sister, Sarah, are in full costume and out with everyone else, but they decide to take a shortcut through the old bridge Icabod Crane supposedly rode across during his encounter with the Horseman.

Both kids know there is really nothing to be afraid of, even on Halloween night, but this time they find Icabod there, injured and in pain. They offer to help him, which he doesn’t seem to understand until Sarah sees pumpkin seeds stuck in the pigtail at the back of his head. That can only mean he’s been “pumpkined” by rowdy teenage boys who drive along country roads at night and splatter small hand-held pumpkins against mailboxes. They realize the odd-looking, foreign-sounding man has lost his memory from the blow to his head, so they decide to take him home to get their parents to help him.

They have quite an adventure just getting home, being forced to make an escape from the rowdy teenagers. By the time they get the amnesiac stranger home, he has recovered considerably. But he knows nothing about anything he sees. He’s in awe of what they take for granted: cars, paved roads, junkyards, streetlights. But then, in their home, the stranger watches the famous cartoon version of his own infamous ride, with the gross caricature of Icabod and his horse.

Suddenly it all comes back to him and he leaps to his feet, outraged by this portrayal of him as an oafish buffoon. (Remember, his outsized ego got him into trouble in the first place.) Naturally, Joe and Sarah’s parents are nonplussed by this sudden claim to be THE Icabod Crane, though his costume and unusual manner of speaking provides the most authentic portrayal of Icabod either of them have ever seen—and they’ve seen many. Nonetheless, they decide he must be an escaped lunatic, so they gingerly slip away to call the police.

Joe and Sarah understand what’s going on. As soon as their parents slip away, they “escape” with their charge in tow. Because Sarah is a voracious reader of science fiction comic books, she convinces Joe and Icabod that Icabod has somehow slipped into a “time tunnel,” and they must now find a horse he can ride into the tunnel from the opposite direction with the hope that the time tunnel he rode into will return and carry him to his own time and place.

Joe and Icabod buy her arguments, leading to another series of misadventures as they try to execute the plan. Meanwhile, their parents are frantic, thinking the “lunatic” stranger has kidnapped their children. They go to the parade and find the Sheriff, who is dressed as—you guessed it—the Headless Horseman. Once the hunt for Icabod is fully underway, the Sheriff spots him just as he is saying goodbye to Joe and Sarah and mounting the horse they have found for him. (A friend of Joe’s was going to ride the horse in the parade).

The Sheriff takes off after Icabod, and soon we see the cartoon was wrong—Icabod is an expert horseman able to give the Sheriff the ride of his life jumping over hedgerows and across backyard pools as they both race for the bridge. Will Icabod make it in time? What will happen if he does? Will the time tunnel actually be there? Will anybody else see it? There is only one way to find out.  Back