Edward Scissorhands (Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B+     Sound: B-     Extras: B-     Film: B+

 

 

Tim Burton is one director that I seldom like, but when he’s good…he’s good.  More often than not he is hit or miss with me.  For every Ed Wood there is The Planet of the Apes remake.  He’s an ambitious filmmaker who is constantly trying to be more creative than sometimes he can handle.  Edward Scissorhands marks the point where Burton is at his most creative and probably most competent unlike his previous film Beetlejuice, which was more creative than it could handle and the result was a bizarre mess.

 

Burton also knew the talent at this point that was within a young Johnny Depp and it’s amazing that it took over a decade for something like Pirates of the Caribbean (see our Blu-ray coverage elsewhere on the site) to elevate him to the status that he is now.  Although, because of this newfound status Depp again worked with Burton on the insanely bad remake of Willy Wonka and I hope that both get their careers back on track soon before too many bombs go off.  That brings us back to 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, which was a bigger hit than most may have expected and has gone on to become an evergreen title in any format it’s released in.

 

What works well for this film is the world that Burton imaginatively creates, which seems to break any time barriers and while it seems to be set in the 1950s there are other elements from different decades that suggest differently.  In Burton’s fairly tale he takes away any sense of what year it may be in an attempt to make the film timeless and to some degree he achieves that.  Burton’s did a few other things right with this film as well, including putting one of his idols in the film: Vincent Price, who plays the inventor of our title character.  Price brings charm to the film as well as wisdom, likeability, believability, and most of all he is a reputable actor who elevates the film to a new level, even in his brief portions in the film; they are the highlights of the film.  This would be Price’s last performance and he goes down admirably.  Oddly enough his last on-screen performance before his own death is an on-screen death and to some degree it’s fitting.

 

So long story short the film involves an inventor who creates a ‘man’ out of various pieces over the course of time and it’s the Pinocchio theme all over again, but the inventor dies before he can finish Edward leaving him with scissors as hands.  Edward is incomplete and has no identity and lives in isolation in the inventor’s home.  In a nearby town a door-to-door saleswoman (Dianne Wiest) stumbles across Edward and brings him into her family, which causes controversy in the entire town, the family, and most of all in her daughters (Winona Ryder) life.

 

On DVD the film was issued a few times and mostly in anniversary editions, one of which was a tin, but the transfer seemed similar in all DVD releases.  The film was shot in 1.85 X 1 and even received 70mm blowup prints to some theaters.  I was never impressed with the DVD transfer, but the Blu-ray alleviates some of the problems that ensued with the DVD.

 

This Blu-ray disc is a 25GB single-layer disc, which presents the film in 1.85 X 1 in 1080p glory as well as a DTS-HD 4.0 master lossless audio track and finally brings the film some of the depth and life that it never had in both audio and video on the DVD format.  The cinematography here shows off and one color that was always problematic on the DVD was green, which has been restored to a more vibrant, less smeary presentation on the Blu-ray.  There is more depth to the picture making it feel more film-like and the audio also has more overall presence.  This film has not been issued with a 5.1 soundtrack, but rather 4.0, which dependant on your receiver can attempt to do a 5.1 mix, but I have found that a stereo down-mix tends to work better for this film.  The surrounds are not nearly as active as most true 5.1 mixes anyway and with the exception of the music, the majority of the soundtrack is front-heavy anyway.

 

Extras are the same from the previous DVD editions, which include a commentary from Burton, Danny Elfman (composer), and a short featurette on the film, which are decent, but nothing to get too excited about if you haven’t already seen/heard these extras.  Overall, this is a very good title for Blu-ray and should garner some worthwhile and long-overdue attention for a favorite film that might be forgotten otherwise.

 

 

-   Nate Goss