Other Titles • Edward Scissorhands • Edward mit den Scherenhänden (1991)
Synopses for Edward Scissorhands (1990)
1.
Once upon a time an a castle high on a hill lived an inventor whose greatest creation was named Edward. Although Edward had an irresistible charm, he wasn't quite perfect. The inventor's sudden death left him unfinished, with sharp spears of metal hands. Edward lived alone in the darkness until one day a kind Avon lady took him home to live with her family. And so began Edward's fantastical adventures in a pastel paradise known as Suburbia.
(20 votes)
2.
Edward Scissorhands achieves the nearly impossible feat of capturing the delicate flavour of a fable or fairy tale in a live-action movie. The story follows a young man named Edward (Johnny Depp), who was created by an inventor (Vincent Price, in one of his last roles) who died before he could give the poor creature a pair of human hands. Edward lives alone in a ruined Gothic castle that just happens to be perched above a pastel-coloured suburb inhabited by breadwinning husbands and frustrated housewives straight out of the 1950s. One day, Peg (Dianne Wiest), the local Avon lady, comes calling. Finding Edward alone, she kindly invites him to come home with her, where she hopes to help him with his pasty complexion and those nasty nicks he's given himself with his razor-sharp fingers. Soon Edward's skill with topiary sculpture and hair design make him popular in the neighbourhood--but the mood turns just as swiftly against the outsider when he starts to feel his own desires, particularly for Peg's daughter Kim (Winona Ryder). Most of director Tim Burton's movies (such as Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Batman) are visual spectacles with elements of fantasy but Edward Scissorhands is more tender and personal than the others. Edward's wild black hair is much like Burton's, suggesting that the character represents the director's own feelings of estrangement and co-option. Johnny Depp, making his first successful leap from TV to film, captures Edward's child-like vulnerability even while his physical posture evokes horror icons like the vampire in Nosferatu and the sleepwalker in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Classic horror films, at their heart, feel a deep sympathy for the monsters they portray; simply and affectingly, Edward Scissorhands lays that heart bare. --Bret Fetzer
On the DVD: Tim Burton is famed for his visual style not his ability as a raconteur, so it's no surprise to find that his directorial commentary is a little sparse. When he does open up it is to confirm that Edward Scissorhands remains his most personal and deeply felt project. The second audio commentary is by composer and regular Burton collaborator Danny Elfman, whose enchanting, balletic score gets an isolated music track all to itself with his remarks in-between cues. Again, for Elfman this movie remains one of his most cherished works, and it is a real musical treat to hear the entire score uninterrupted by dialogue and sound effects but illuminated by Elfman's lucid interstitial remarks. Also on the disc are some brief interview clips, a "making of" featurette and a gallery of conceptual artwork. The anamorphic widescreen print looks simply gorgeous. --Mark Walker
(20 votes)
3.
In Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, a suburban fairy tale with incredibly imaginative sets, an Avon lady, Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), discovers the half-finished experiment--a man/monster named Edward (Johnny Depp)--of a mad scientist (played magically by Vincent Price) living in the neighborhood's old abandoned castle. The scientist died before replacing the shy man's large shears with real hands. When Peg attempts to bring Edward into her suburban world, to live among her skeptical family (husband Alan Arkin and daughter Winona Ryder) and gossipy neighbors, his hands--dangerous yet capable of creating things of great beauty--make for some awkward, funny, and poignant situations: Edward as a topiary gardener, Edward as a cutting-edge hair stylist. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a story about tolerance, difference, and creativity as much as it is a story of a young man's coming of age (the young man in question is, of course, a monster). In the ironically surreal world of Edward's suburban community, he must try to find his place in it, and in the world at large.
(17 votes)
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