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Here's what the Edward Scissorhands suburb looks like 25 years on

The beloved 1990 Tim Burton flick used locations around Tampa, Florida. 

Clarisse Loughrey
Monday 07 December 2015 13:10 GMT
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As Edward Scissorhands celebrates its 25th anniversary, a local resident of the film's original locations has shared some then-and-now photographs. 

Director Tim Burton's suburban fairytale has won over the heart of so many since its 1990 release. Capturing the misfit sentimentality amongst fair-weather, socially rigid Americana, Edward's inconvenient scissors for hands painted a tale both sweet and sweepingly tragic. 

The director was keen to recreate the suburbia of his own childhood, though claimed his hometown of Burbank, California had altered too much for use. So, production shipped out to the Tampa Bay Area of Florida, specifically the town of Lutz; which according to production designer Bo Welch was, "a kind of generic, plain-wrap suburb, which we made even more characterless by painting all the houses in faded pastels, and reducing the window sizes to make it look a little more paranoid."

The production supposedly injected over $4 million into the local economy, with the individual who took the photographs recalling their mother had worked for the doctor who had been placed on call for incidents on set. 

The poster, whose username is 'Voodrew', points out that the biggest difference between then-and-now on the location is the change in trees. At the time, the houses were part of a brand new complex; those bare lawns were a perfect canvas for Burton and his team to erect those famous hedge sculptures conceived by the ever-creative Edward. The other major change, of course, is the sickly sweet, pastel paint job the houses received for the film; though the houses of today still reflect just a little of that false, sterile perfection Burton was attempting to parody with his tale of a scissor-handed misfit. 

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