Death Becomes Her movie storyline. In 1978, in Broadway, the decadent and narcissist actress Madeline Ashton is performing Songbird, based on Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth. Then she receives her rival Helen Sharp, who is an aspiring writer, and her fiancé Ernest Menville, who is a plastic surgeon, in her dressing-room. Soon Menville calls off his commitment with Helen and marries Madeline.
Seven years later, Helen is obese in a psychiatric hospital and obsessed in seeking revenge on Madeline. In 1992, the marriage of Madeline and Menville is finished and he is no longer a surgeon but an alcoholic caretaker. Out of the blue, they are invited to a party where Helen will release her novel Forever Young and Madeline goes to a beauty shop. The owner gives a business card of the specialist in rejuvenation Lisle Von Rhuman to her. When the envious Madeline sees Helen thin in a perfect shape, she decides to seek out Lisle and buys a potion to become young again.
Further, she advises that Madeline must take care of her body. Meanwhile Helen seduces Menville and they plot a scheme to kill Madeline. When Madeline comes home, she has an argument Menville and he pushes her from the staircase. She breaks her neck but becomes a living dead. When Helen arrives at Menville’s house expecting that Madeline is dead, she is murdered by Madeline. But she also becomes a living dead and they conclude they need Menville to help them to maintain their bodies. But Menville wants to leave them.
Death Becomes Her is a 1992 American black comedy fantasy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and scripted by David Koepp and Martin Donovan, starring Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep, Isabella Rossellini, Ian Ogilvy, Adam Storke, Alaina Reed-Hall, Michelle Johnson, Mary Ellen Trainor and Sonia Jackson.
The film focuses on a pair of rivals who drink a magic potion that promises eternal youth. Death Becomes Her won the Academy Award for Visual Effects. The film was a commercial success, grossing $149 million at the box office. The score was composed by American film composer Alan Silvestri, who also composed scores of other films directed by Zemeckis.
Film Review for Death Becomes Her
In the rich field of movies about Hollywood, there has rarely been anything as biting or hilarious as Robert Zemeckis’ “Death Becomes Her.” Zemeckis’ earlier “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” was tempered by its warmth for Old Hollywood and forties Los Angeles, but “Death Becomes Her” is pure bile.
This 1992 dark comedy was a difficult sell to audiences, with ad campaigns using the film’s head-twisting effects as their angle. Tragically, “Death Becomes Her” never found a foothold with viewers in theaters, but has deservedly been building a cult audience ever since. After years of circulating with a pan-and-scan DVD, Zemeckis’ movie is finally on Blu-ray, via a collector’s edition released April 26 through Shout! Factory. The film’s Chuck Jones-meets-“Sunset Boulevard” images have never looked better.
The story concerns two old dear friends who happen to despise each other deeply. Meryl Streep is Madeline, a fading actress who’s taken to paying the bills with ill-advised musical versions of Tennessee Williams plays. Goldie Hawn plays Helen, a tightly-wound writer whose mortal fear that Madeline will steal her latest man hasn’t stopped Helen from bringing him to meet Madeline. The man in question is Bruce Willis’ Ernest, who immediately falls under Madeline’s spell. The two are married soon after, sending Helen into a tailspin of cat hoarding and eating icing right out of the can.
Year later, things have gone sour between Madeline and Ernest. When Madeline and Helen reunite at a party, to Madeline’s horror Helen now cuts a svelte figure and a Rita Hayworth hairdo. It doesn’t take long for Helen to start giving Ernest a case of buyer’s remorse over the choice he made fourteen years ago.
Increasingly desperate, Madeline follows her plastic surgeon’s advice and pays a visit to a strange estate house owned by Isabella Rossellini’s strange Lisle, who is dressed like Theda Bara with Louise Brooks’ haircut. For a price, Lisle sells vials of a glowing pink potion that promises eternal youth. After Madeline downs the potion, Lisle offers a cryptic warning to take care of her body, as she and her body are going to be together for a long, long time. Helen and Madeline soon enter an all-out war, as they learn the unfortunate difference between being immortal and being invulnerable.
For those familiar with Streep, Hawn, and Willis, all three are revelations in “Death Becomes Her.” Streep is hilarious as a diva whose ego is matched only by her screaming insecurity. In the film’s opening, she leads a chorus line in a terrible musical. She puts her back into it, smiling like she’s trying to punch you with her teeth, grimly stomping through the choreography like she doesn’t notice the audience rapidly leaving for the exits.
Goldie Hawn is wonderful too, as her sweetness goes psychotic. Her obsession with Ernest is all the more pitifully funny for what a twerp he is. It’s startling to be reminded of just how good an actor Willis can be when he makes an effort. Doing a complete heel turn from the macho swagger of his action roles, in “Death Becomes Her” he’s a squealing straight man in Streep and Hawn’s battle royale. Gulping down his morning Bloody Mary with supreme self loathing and flinching at every one of Streep’s hurled barbs, he comes close to stealing the movie. Thanks to the sheer heights Streep and Hawn are willing to go, he doesn’t quite get there. It’s a shame they didn’t reunite for a couple more comedies together, they made for a terrific team.
The film looks absurdly gorgeous. Cinematographer Dean Cundey shoots Los Angeles and its mansions to be coldly perfect, marble hard and as full of fake pomp as the characters themselves. It’s a perfect backdrop for the film’s “The Bad and the Beautiful”-meets-EC Comics sensibility. Even Alan Silvestri’s score is just right, his melodramatic sweeping strings right out of David Raskin’s music for studio Hollywood dramas. That all of this top-shelf talent was included in a movie about three very awful people is one of the its funniest and most bitter jokes.
It’s that shot of bracing mean spiritedness running throughout that probably cost the film its audience. It also might explain why Zemeckis’ next film was the morally responsible “Forrest Gump,” a blockbuster hit. But time has been kind to “Death Becomes Her,” and the mordantly funny eye it turns to Hollywood pretense and our cultural inability to forgive women for aging.
With the virtual extinction of Hollywood’s interest in women over thirty, it’s a real pleasure to see a film centered on and held down by two actresses as strong as Streep and Hawn. And much like its protagonists, the film has proven it can survive its lumps and soldier on. There are few bigger monsters, and jokes, than the ones we make of ourselves. “Death Becomes Her”’s enduring appeal is its ingenious recognition of that.
Death Becomes Her (1992)
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep, Isabella Rossellini, Ian Ogilvy, Adam Storke, Alaina Reed-Hall, Michelle Johnson, Mary Ellen Trainor, Sonia Jackson
Screenplay by: Martin Donovan, David Koepp
Production Design by: Rick Carter
Cinematography by: Dean Cundey
Film Editing by: Arthur Schmidt
Costume Design by: Joanna Johnston
Set Decoration by: Jackie Carr
Art Direction by: William James Teegarden
Music by: Alan Silvestri
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some nudity and off-color humor.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: July 31, 1992
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