a TV guide preview the week this aired

The following was a short TV guide preview the week TLOSH aired in October of 1980. It doesn't sound like the person writing it had any idea the movie might become a holiday classic.

"Presumably the family-film offering, with Halloween in mind, is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a pedestrian adaptation of the Washington Irving classic dulled down by sluggish direction. Filmed in Park City, Utah, the movie provides small hint of Irving's Catskill settings, let alone a sense of day or night. Jeff Goldblum is pleasing as the gawky Ichabod Crane, Dick Butkus is bearish (Chicago Bears, that is) as his romantic rival and Paul Sand is wasted as Butkus's sidekick. The rest of the cast is barely adequate, the Headless Horseman is peculiarly unscary and the simple-minded production will be best enjoyed by the little ones while their parents ponder whether Iriving's 1819 folk really said "OK" and "Be seein ya."


A good example of seeing a movie and judging for yourself. (: