Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1111 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-11-27
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Video Description
DVD Special Features

1.85:1 ratio enhanced for 16:9 widescreen TVs
Dolby Digital 4.0 Surround
Subtitles: English for the hearing impaired

Synopsis
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.

Customer Reviews

Predictable
His skills and outcome are utterly predictable, but I'll say no more so as not to spoil it.

cutting through fairytale convention is Burton's creation
Edward (Depp), born with scissors for hands, is brought into the local village and becomes the talk of the town.

God bless Tim Burton. Who in their right minds would take a fairy tale and include a man with scissors for hands? Burton's sheer strangeness continues after his beautiful Beetlejuice and Batman in this darkly colourful fantasy drama and throws the fairytale convention out of the window. Burton is an inspiration to the film industry, a man who does everything differently and there is no one else out there like him, and his finally cut creation, inspired by one of his own drawings, is a sentimental spark in his collection, his most touching to date.

For those fairytale lovers out there don't worry. This 1990 picture follows the convention of an outsider trying to make it in a land of troubles and difference, also including a beautiful girl and a touching if slightly obvious love story.

Like many Burton films he gives us a wonderful imaginative other world.

The oppositions encoded into this drama are fantastic. From the cold hearted dark home of Edward's to the unbelievably organised and colourful suburban town below, Burton's imagination allows viewers to see two opposite worlds living next door to each other.

These settings are exquisite in establishing the characters. The similar styled houses are those tidy and sophisticated homes you expect the rich and posh to live and sure enough all the middle aged gossip loving women live next door to one another. Their tidiness and appearances create that stereotypical shallow middle aged woman that shapes the story in so many ways.

The darkness of Edward's home is brought to life through the cold machinery. The inventor's house is a dark walled, miserable and negative creation and marks the quietness and shyness of central character Edward.

Who would believable Captain Jack Sparrow and Edward are portrayed by the same actor? You see Jack's cockiness provoking Elizabeth Swan with his quiet ruthlessness, and then you see Edward hiding his face from Kim with his Scissorhands. How Depp was never nominated for as Oscar for this performance will rage on until the end of time. Words cannot describe how he makes this character.

Good support is given by Ryder, West, hall and beautiful protagonist Joyce is created by Kathy Baker's ultimate fake charm.

Burton has waved his wand again to cast a dark and imaginative spell over the conventional fairytale and turned it into a bubbling dark and touching fantasy

9/10

One of those films you'll be thinking about for days afterwards
This film is odd. Think of Desperate Housewives. Think of Pinnochio. Think lame love triangle. Think tortured genious. Then mix in Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, and you've got yourself an incrediby moving film you just won't be able to get out of your head for days afterwards. I don't know enough about this film to give it full justice in a review, but I will say that I put off watching this film for many years, and probably would have for many years more had my friend not leant me the DVD, and that's a choice I highly regret. A must see film for everybody, yes it's odd, quirky + off-beat but it's humour and heart and also undeniable. Excellent.