Sandwiched between his two Batman films, Tim Burton made this thoroughly charming Gothic fairy tale, the first of his many collaborations with Johnny Depp (others would be Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Corpse Bride (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Dark Shadows (2012)) and it remains, along with Ed Wood, their best. Depp plays the eponymous Edward, just one of the many social misfits, outsiders and oddballs that have populated Burton’s films from the start, from the young Victor Frankenstein in Frankenweenie (1984) through unbalanced billionaire vigilante Bruce Wayne in the Batman films and on to Hollywood outsider Wood, Ichabod Crane and many others.

Edward had been created by Burton in his teenagers years in the form of a drawing that reflected his own vision of himself and his young life in suburbia and as such Edward Scissorhands remains his most personal film. Edward is meant to be a manifestation of the creative and introspective teenage Burton, an outsider who spends entire film searching for acceptance, a search any lonely teenager will recall with a mix of sadness and affection.

A tale of prejudice, acceptance, loneliness and self-discovery, the story is told in flashback as an elderly woman tells her granddaughter the story of how Edward (Depp) was found living alone in a run-down Gothic mansion by Avon lady Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest) and taken into her suburban home. The siting of a Gothic pile, beautifully designed by production designer Bo Welch, off a suburban cul-de-sac would be absurd in any other film-maker’s work but makes a sort of weird sense here.

Edward has scissors for hands (though he’s never actually referred to as Edward Scissorhands in the film itself), a sort of benign Freddy Kreuger (Depp had been one of Freddy’s first victims, in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)) and is the creation of ageing and eccentric inventor (Vincent Price) – if the plans seen in the inventor’s lab are anything to go by, he’s some sort of robot. Wallace and Gromit perhaps owe something to the inventor’s lab which are full of the same sorts of arcane machinery and offbeat inventions.

The suburbia Edward is taken to, pastel-shaded and populated by fickle gossips, was never intended as an attack by Burton but as a love letter to the essential weirdness of this sort of commuter belt community and in that respect he succeeds admirably. It’s never explicitly stated where the film is taking place and Burton deliberately fudges the timeframe too – there are elements of the 1950s, the 60s (Tom Jones songs on soundtrack), the 70s (teenage custom van culture) and even the 80s (talk of video recorders) but it could really be taking place in any decade. Which raises the question of when the bookend sequences are supposed to be set…

At first Edward seems to be accepted by Peg’s family – husband Bill (Alan Arkin), son Kevin (Robert Oliveri) and, despite some initial reservations, teenage daughter Kim (Winona Ryder) – and he charms his new neighbours with his skills as a topiarist, dog groomer and hairdresser, though the religious Esmerelda (O-Lan Jones) remains terrified and suspicious of him. Unusually, it’s the adults who accept Edward – at least initially – and the teenagers who have the most problem with him. But things start to unravel when maneater Joyce (Kathy Baker) tries to seduce Edward and frightens him, and his own attraction to Kim aggravates her bullying jock boyfriend Jim who persuades him to help his steal from his own wealthy parents. Arrested by the police, Edward finds the trust he built up in the community evaporating and is soon being shunned. And when he accidentally injures Kim while carving an ice sculpture, causing an unusual snowfall across the neighbourhood (things take a Christmassy turn in this final act), Edward returns to the mansion pursued by Kim and Jim for the tragic finale.

A moving and often quite haunting film (the ending is one of the saddest in any 90s mainstream Hollywood film), it’s part Frankenstein, part Coppelia, part silent horror homage (in the final act, Edward begins to look more and more like Cesare from Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and part suburban fairy story, it remains one of Burton’s very best. He’s aided enormously by a top notch cast who are mostly playing at their best. Ryder is a bit muted in the least well written role in the film (the film was written by a woman, Caroline Thompson, but still gives its young female lead little personality and not much room to develop one), Wiest and Arkin in particular are excellent. Price, in his last big screen appearance (he would turn up on television in The Heart of Justice (1992) and his voice would be heard in the much-delayed animated feature The Thief and the Cobbler (1992)), is as marvellous as you’d expect and although he’s only in two flashback scenes he brings real charm to a tiny but vital role.

But this is Depp’s film and he’s fantastic throughout. He was trying to find a way out of the teen idol ghetto that threatened to imprison him after the success of his turn in the television series 21 Jump Street (1987-1991) and he allegedly wept when he read the script, connecting with its multi-layered themes. Producers twentieth Century Fox had originally wanted Tom Cruise for the role (they also considered Tom hanks and Gary Oldman) but Burton was unconvinced, particularly when Cruise insisted on a happy ending to the film. The decision to cast Depp was inspired and it helped to open the door for the actor to find the quirkier and more interesting roles that would dominate much of his subsequent career.

Edward Scissorhands was a deserved box office hit for Burton and the critics mostly fell over themselves to pour praise on the film. The Academy nominated Stan Winston and Ve Neill for Oscars for their excellent make-up work while Bo Welch picked up a thoroughly deserved BAFTA for his eye-popping design work. Still much loved, it’s legacy has included such diverse tributes as a ballet version choreographed by Matthew Bourne that toured the UK and the States in 2005 and 2006 after debuting at Sadler’s Wells, a stage adaptation that opened in June 2010 at The Brooklyn Studio Lab and, most bizarrely, Paul Norman’s Edward Penishands (1991), a pornographic version of the story that features Nikki Sixx as the title character…

Crew
Directed by: Tim Burton; © 1990 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Produced and released by Twentieth Century Fox; Twentieth Century Fox presents a Tim Burton film; Executive Producer: Richard Hashimoto; Produced by: Denise Di Novi, Tim Burton; Associate Producer: Caroline Thompson; Screenplay by: Caroline Thompson; Story by: Tim Burton, Caroline Thompson; Director of Photography: Stefan Czapsky; Edited by: Richard Halsey; Film Editor: Colleen Halsey; Music by: Danny Elfman; Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood; Department Head Makeup: Ve Neill; Hair Designed by: Yolanda Toussieng; Special Makeup and Scissorhands Effects Produced by: Stan Winston; Special Effects Supervisor: Michael Wood; Mechanical Department Coordinator: Richard J. Landon; Visual Effects: VCE, Peter Kurlan; Miniature Effects Provided by: Stetson Visual Services Inc, Robert Spurlock, Mark Stetson; Production Designer: Bo Welch

Cast
Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands); Winona Ryder (Kim); Dianne Wiest (Peg); Anthony Michael Hall (Jim); Kathy Baker (Joyce); Robert Oliveri (Kevin); Conchata Ferrell (Helen); Caroline Aaron (Marge); Dick Anthony Williams (Officer Allen); O-Lan Jones (Esmeralda); Vincent Price (The Inventor); Alan Arkin (Bill); Susan J. Blommaert (Tinka); Linda Perri (Cissy); John Davidson (host – TV); Biff Yeager (George); Marti Greenberg (Suzanne); Bryan Larkin (Max); John McMahon (Denny); Victoria Price (TV newswoman)

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