Edward Scissorhands

One snowy evening, an elderly woman tells her granddaughter the story of a young man named Edward, who has scissor blades for hands.

Many years earlier, Peg Boggs, a door-to-door Avon saleswoman, drives to the decrepit Gothic mansion where Edward lives. The creation of an old inventor, Edward is an ageless humanoid. The inventor homeschooled Edward but died from a heart attack before giving Edward hands, leaving him unfinished. Peg finds Edward alone and offers to take him to her home. She introduces Edward to her husband Bill, their young son Kevin, and their teenage daughter Kim. Edward falls in love with Kim. As their neighbors are curious about the new houseguest, the Boggs throw a neighborhood barbecue welcoming him. Most of the neighbors are fascinated by Edward and befriend him, except for the eccentric religious fanatic Esmeralda and Kim’s supercilious boyfriend Jim.

Edward repays the neighborhood for their kindness by trimming their hedges into topiaries, progressing to grooming dogs and later styling the hair of the neighborhood women. One of the neighbors, Joyce, offers to help Edward open a hair salon. While scouting a location, Joyce attempts to seduce him but scares him away. Joyce lies to the neighborhood women that Edward forced himself on her, reducing their trust in him. Edward’s dream of opening the salon is ruined when the bank refuses him a loan.

Jealous of Kim’s attraction to Edward, Jim takes advantage of his naivety by asking him to pick the lock on his parents’ home so he can steal his father’s electronic goods and sell them to buy a van. Edward agrees, but when he picks the lock and enters the house, a burglar alarm is triggered and walls come down, trapping him inside. Jim flees, and Edward is arrested. The police determine that a lifetime of isolation has left Edward without any common sense or morality; thus, he cannot be criminally charged. Edward nevertheless takes responsibility for the robbery, telling Kim that he did it because she asked him to. Consequently, he is shunned by the entire neighborhood except for the Boggs family.

At Christmas, Edward carves an ice sculpture modeled after Kim; the ice shavings are thrown into the air and fall like snow, something that has never happened before in the town. Kim dances in the snowfall. Jim arrives suddenly, calling out to Edward, surprising him and causing him to accidentally cut Kim’s hand. Jim accuses Edward of intentionally harming her, but Kim, fed up with Jim’s jealous behavior towards Edward, breaks up with him. Meanwhile, Edward flees.

Kim’s parents go to find Edward while she stays behind in case he returns. Edward returns, finding Kim there. She asks him to hold her and arranges his scissor hands so they can embrace. Jim’s drunken friend drives to Kim’s house and nearly runs over Kevin, but Edward pushes Kevin to safety while inadvertently cutting him. Witnesses accuse Edward of attacking Kevin. When Jim assaults him, Edward defends himself and injures Jim’s arm before fleeing back to the inventor’s mansion.

Kim goes to find Edward. Jim obtains a gun, follows her, and shoots at Edward before grabbing a fire poker and beating him. Edward refuses to fight back until he sees Jim strike Kim as she attempts to intervene. Enraged, Edward stabs Jim in the stomach and pushes him from a window of the mansion to his death. Kim confesses her love to Edward and kisses him as they accept that their love can never be fulfilled. As the neighbors gather, Kim convinces them that Jim and Edward killed each other.

The elderly woman, revealing herself to be Kim, finishes telling her granddaughter the story and says that she never saw Edward again, hoping that by staying away he would remember her as she was in her youth. She believes he is still alive because it would not be snowing without him. Edward is then seen carving ice sculptures of his experiences with Kim, with the bits of ice floating as snow in the wind. The elderly Kim, commenting on the snow, concludes, “Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it.”

Last Updated: August 20, 2025 at 12:59