Edward Scissorhands
Directed by Tim Burton

Music by Danny Elfman
Screenplay by Caroline Thompson
Director of Photography Stefan Czapsky

Cast:
Johnny Depp
Winona Ryder
Diane West
Vincent Price

The story begins with an old lady telling her granddaughter the story of snow, and why it snows.

Edward Scissorhands lives in a gothic mansion at the top of a hill, below him a suburban town looking very much like a nightmarish vision from the 1960's, where pink and yellow houses nest, neatly grouped together each looking as identical as the inhabitants that live and breathe beneath the roofs.

A very old gentle inventor, played by the renowned actor Vincent Price famous for his performances in Classic horror movies, has created Edward but he sadly dies before he is able to give Edward his hands. Edward is left with only scissors for hands.

In a very comical scene we see Peggy, played by Dianne West, working as an Avon representative visit the mansion on a hopeless task to sell her make up. She is however kinder than most of the residents in the town below and takes it upon herself to give Edward a home, bringing him to the town below to live with her and her family, although with good intentions she lacks the wisdom in her actions.

The film is filled with humorous scenes yet within the humour there is always darker overtones.

The neighbourhood soon accepts Edward in a perverse and freakish way, the people seeing him as a curiosity. He soon becomes popular for his gift of cutting hedges into pieces of beautiful art and arousing the dormant passions of spiteful housewives.

From the beginning of the film we see scenes depicting how it feels if you are different and are amongst people who fit neatly into societies accepted roles. In a horrible dinner scene Peggy's husband reminds Edward that in society money is all that matters if one cannot earn money than one is not acceptable, and he pushes Edward to go to the bank for a loan, obviously they will not give him one without the proper official papers that go with being a member of the social order.

Edward himself has never asked to be created in the manner he was, he is an innocent young man, gentle and greatly gifted, he has a beauty and heart that is found rarely in life. He worships and adores Peggy's daughter Kaye, who from the beginning acts as most teenagers would if they came home and found a strange young man with scissors as hands sleeping in their bed. She makes fun of Edward and soon uses him unwillingly to break into her obnoxious boyfriends house.

Soon after this event Kaye begins to see Edwards beauty and uniqueness in comparison to the people she is surrounded by every day. She reaches out to him with her love holding him close to her.

The people residing in the neighbourhood attack Edward and chase after him through the streets in a similar vein to an early Frankenstein movie directed by James Whale. Kaye saves his life, telling everyone he has been killed she leaves him to be happy on his own the only true way he can live away from people, but with the knowledge that he is loved.

Edward Swissorhands depicts in both humourous ways and dark ones, how life can be if you are different, with Edward on the far end of the scale. Edward is looking for love and understanding something that becomes difficult if you are unusual and something that you long for. It is also a story about someone who cannot physically touch anything or anyone without destroying the thing itself through no fault of his own.

The film is truly wonderful modern fairytale, the gothic mansion is hauntingly beautiful and scenes with Kaye dancing in the snow from Edwards Ice Sculpture's is mesmerising. The story of snow is a rare jewel in filmmaking.