The Headless Horseman (1922 film)

The Headless Horseman
Film poster
Directed byEdward D. Venturini
Written byCarl Stearns Clancy
Based onThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving
Produced byCarl Stearns Clancy
StarringWill Rogers
Lois Meredith
Ben Hendricks Jr.
CinematographyNed Van Buren
Production
company
Sleepy Hollow Corporation
Distributed byW. W. Hodkinson Corporation
Release date
  • November 5, 1922 (1922-11-05)
Running time
68 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent (English intertitles)
Film still with Will Rogers and Lois Meredith

The Headless Horseman is a 1922 American silent film adaptation of Washington Irving's 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" directed by Edward D. Venturini. It stars Will Rogers, Lois Meredith (in her last major on-screen appearance) and Ben Hendricks Jr.[1] It was the first panchromatic black-and-white feature film.[2]

There were three silent film adaptations of the story, but this 1922 version is the longest of the three, as well as the only one that survives today.[3] Film critic Christopher Workman states: "The obvious day-for-night shooting foreshadows the work of Edward D. Wood Jr. [The film] is a motion picture that wavers between irritating and flat-out dull." He says the Headless Horseman only appears in two all-too-brief sequences in the film, once at the beginning and again in the finale.[4]

  1. ^ "The Headless Horseman (1922)". IMDB.
  2. ^ Koszarski, Richard (1994). An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. University of California Press. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-520-08535-0.
  3. ^ Workman, Christopher; Howarth, Troy (2016). "Tome of Terror: Horror Films of the Silent Era". Midnight Marquee Press. p. 251.ISBN 978-1936168-68-2.
  4. ^ Workman, Christopher; Howarth, Troy (2016). "Tome of Terror: Horror Films of the Silent Era". Midnight Marquee Press. p. 250.ISBN 978-1936168-68-2.