Rating: ***.5 ( 3 and a half out of 5)
Year: 1980

Plot: Icabod Crane comes to the teensy, snowy town of Sleepy Hollow to try out the job of schoolmaster. He discovers that the last 3 or 4 schoolmasters had all ‘gone strange’, but this fact doesn’t sway his empiricist’s attitude towards the town’s odd goings-on. He fancies Katrina Van Tassel, but Brom Bones is going to do everything in his power to prevent their union.

Review: This low-budget, made-for-tv version far surpasses Burton’s blockbuster. Jeff Goldblum is perfectly cast as the gangly, eccentric Icabod. Dick Butkus hams it up as the villain; it’s bad, but works well for the part. Despite a virtually non-existent budget, the writing is decent, some scenes are rather spooky, and the viewer is treated to fuller, more complex version of the story than he or she might be accustomed to.

Rating: ****.5 ( 4 and a half out of 5)
Year: 1982

Plot: Daddy is a premiere real estate salesmen for Cuesta Verde development; so good, in fact, that he and his family get to live in one of the units. Problem is, when the community was built, the devs didn’t think it necessary to respect the dead people in the cemetery by not building houses on top of them. The ghoulies are pissed, and are salivating at the opportunity to take out their hostilities on the home’s current residents.

Review: Do you remember the good ol’ days when mom and dad smoked pot before going to bed, t.v. stations played the national anthem at the end of the day’s broadcast, and Stephen Speilburg had skill and integrity? Seems like a long time ago. Speilburg and director Tobe Hooper manage to take this 15 cent plot line and turn it into one of the most dynamic, intriguing, and terrifying horror flicks of all time. The completeness of the family’s backstory and the genuine nature of their interactions bring you in close to the action, giving you reason to care whether or not they are pulled into a hell dimension. With ahead-of-its-time special effects and a really creepy ghost hunter, you’ll find yourself holding your breath time and again. Craig T. Nelson also brings some acting chops that he must have left on the set before going on to star in “Coach”.

Rating: ***.5 ( 3 and a half out of 5)
Year: 1980

Review: Creepy. Weird. Bizarre. The movie opens on this horrifying milieu of pre-teen, incestuous voyeurism and and bondage. As any young lady with a head on her shoulders would do, the little daughter stabs daddy to death. It’s the kind of unsettling thing that makes the viewer think, “Jesus Christ! Where is this going next?” It’s a good thing too, because the next half hour is slow enough to be just boring without that added edgyness. Keep your guard up though! You’ll have to navigate through a HEAVILY EMPHASIZED mirrors theme, a killer glass slippers, a haunted eye-patch, and an exorcism. Good watch – gritty and nostalgic.

Rating: * (generously, 1 out of 5)
Year: 2006

Review: To answer the titular question: no (unless you’re talking about the prospect of a forced second viewing). With each word that angrily dribbles out of my fingers, the portion of my life wasted on this movie painfully increases. As a derivative Saw clone with the production budget that street-sweepers would scoff at, this piece of rubbish manages to fail on every measurable facet of movie making. Piss-poor acting, laughable writing, and back-yard sets moor this junker to the dock permanently. If the B storyline of the cop were a football, then it got fumbled early on and was intercepted and returned for a touchdown in the closing minutes.