Edward Scissorhands DVD

A fairy tale, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a brilliant story of a man-made experiment: a monster with long shears for hands. Edward lives in the dark and forbidding castle, overlooking a brightly colored suburb, until the Avon lady comes calling one day. Her motherly instincts tell her to take this poor, lonely creature home to live with her family. There, Edward goes through a series of growing experiences, some of them funny, some of them frightening, while trying to find his place in the world.

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.

The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles December 7, 1990, and was released nationwide December 14, 1990. Filmed in the Land O'Lakes housing settlement, located north of Tampa, Florida. Forty-four of the fifty houses in this area were painted in pastel shades like pink, green, blue, and yellow to give the "previously subdued neighborhood a timeless, classic suburban look." Huge topiary statues consisting of chicken wire and metal frameworks with plastic greens attached and animal-shaped shrubs, meant to be examples of Edward's work, were later added to their front yards. The character of Edward is said by film critics and historians to be a reflection of how director Tim Burton sees himself. The role of The Inventor was actor Vincent Price's last screen role; he died of lung cancer in Hollywood Hills, California on October 25, 1993 at the age of 82. In a film career than spanned 55 years, he appeared in over 100 films, only a fraction of which were either as villains or sinister protagonists in horror thrillers for which he was famous, such as THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961), THE RAVEN (1963), and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964), all of which were based on macabre E.A. Poe stories.

Edward Scissorhands Reviews:

"...The year's most comic, romantic and haunting film fantasy....Burton is a true movie visionary with uncommon insights into hearts in torment..." -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"...Eye-catching, ingenious..." -- Philip Strick, Sight and Sound

"...The whole film has a tender underlining and a marvelous fun-house look and pace....Gentleness is a nice quality to have back in movies. Along with some fairy-tale pain, longing and hilarity, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS has it..." -- Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times

"...A fairytale with an edge....Just as affecting a decade on..." -- Paul Tonks, Total Film

"Depp's oddball hero transforms cute, quirky sentimentality into emotional palatability..." -- Kevin Harley, Total Film

"[T]he best part of Tim Burton's sweet-tempered fantasy is that the hero is played by the ever-surprising Johnny Depp..."Wall Street Journal

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