31 Days of Halloween: Tim Burton Night: Edward Scissorhands – A Classic if You Can Stomach Johnny Depp's Bullshit

Edward Scissorhands – Tim Burton - 1990

★★★-Day 2 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Tim Burton night. Went with Edward Scissorhands, which I haven’t seen in 30 years. Gist is an artificial man with scissors for hands struggles to find acceptance in a suburban community while navigating love, isolation, and prejudice. Blah, blah, blah.

Gonna start with this… I’m pretty over Johnny Depp’s shit, and this is Johnny Depp at his most Johnny Deppiest. This is a glimpse into how insufferable he would become, with his sort of whiny, shuffling shtick. Get the feeling he is the type of guy that believes he knows what it is like to be a black man getting hounded by the cops because it happened to his character in this movie. 
 
But this film has a lot to like, of course. Casting is dope. Alan Arkan is fantastic in everything. Ditto on Winona Ryder. Dianne Wiest really steals the show though. She is kind of the Gen X surrogate mother, always playing a kind somewhat out of her depth mother in flicks like The Lost Boys, Footloose, and Parenthood. Also features Anthony Michael Hall and Kathy Baker, whom I’ve always had a bit of a thing for since seeing her in The Right Stuff. Even get the legend Vincent Price in his final film role.
 
Quick anecdote about Price that I love, John Waters said he used to pretend Vincent Price was his dad growing up, which makes sense. 
 
Style is top tier. A random still at any point in the film and you can 100% tell it is a Tim Burton movie. Plus it is completely original. Not anything I’d seen up to that point. The ending is lame though. Ryder is old, Depp is young and in a world of shit, and then it is over. Cool. 
 
But the film did give birth to the drinking game “Edward 40hands.” You can do this with pretty much any item, sure, but this is the inevitable most hilarious iteration. 

31 Days of Halloween: Horror Anthology: Tales from the Hood, an Urban Horror Classic

Tales from the Hood - Rusty Cundieff - 1995

★★★★★-Day 1 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. It has become an October ritual for me (and by extension my partner). Starting things off with an anthology, one I have seen many times in Tales from the Hood.
 
Directed by Rusty Cundieff, he also did Fear of the Black Hat and Sprung, it stars Corbin Bernsen, Rosalind Cash, Rusty Cundieff, David Alan Grier, Anthony Griffith, Wings Hauser, Paula Jai Parker, Joe Torry, and Clarence Williams III.
 
A bunch of urban-themed horror stories that tackle issues like police corruption, domestic abuse, racism, and gang violence, all set within a framing narrative of three drug dealers meeting an eccentric funeral director to purchase "found" drugs while he shares eerie tales. Packaged in a slick narrative with solid filmmaking and acting. Doesn’t get much better than that.  
 
First time I saw this was in an all-black theater in 1995. It totally killed. Especially everything with the segment "KKK Comeuppance." Everyone laughed like crazy at everything the racist Southern senator who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan running for governor. He is setting up his campaign headquarters at an old plantation once owned by a slave-holding ancestor that is supposedly haunted by dolls possessed by the souls of the tortured slaves that used to live there. The hilarity had to do with his colorful racist language. It’s nice when he gets his comeuppance. 
 
I totally thought this movie was amazing then and can confirm it holds up now. This is a near annual watch for me. All of the segments knock it out of the park, and the framing story is phenomenal.