2. Death Becomes Her (1992)

Kate’s Post:

The year is 1978. Madeline Ashton (the inimitable Meryl Streep) is a washed-up actress starring in an over-the-top, self-indulgent Broadway musical called ‘Songbird’. Madeline performs a Marilyn Monroe meets ‘Hello Dolly’ meets disco number, and the audience begins to leave in droves. One audience member snipes, ‘Can you believe Madeline Ashton? Talk about ‘waking the dead’!”

However, Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), a plastic surgeon and the fiancee of Madeline’s rival Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), remains in his seat, captivated by her performance. [Side note: I’m 90% sure Stanley Tucci modeled his look in ‘The Lovely Bones’ on Bruce Willis here.] Helen brings Ernest backstage to meet Madeline, which she refers to as ‘The Madeline Ashton Test’ – we learn that Madeline has stolen away several of Helen’s love interests in the past. Though Ernest assures Helen that there is no attraction, he breaks off their engagement in order to marry Madeline. [Another side note: we JUST watched a Poirot episode with this plot.]

Seven years later, we find that Helen has become a cat lady living in a filthy apartment and weighing in at a deuce, deuce and a half. She ignores her final eviction notice in order to gleefully watch a scene of Madeline dying over and over – even as she’s read her Miranda Rights, she struggles with the police in order to watch. She’s sent to a mental institution, where she tortures her fellow inmates and psychiatrist with stories of Madeline.

Finally, we catch up to 1992; it has been 14 years since Ernest and Madeline were married. Madeline awakes and forces her maid to say ‘Oh Madeline, you look younger every day’. Ernest wakes up in his office (he no longer sleeps in the bedroom) and drinks a Bloody Mary. He calls her ‘It’, and she calls him ‘Ghoul’, referring to the fact that he now performs reconstructive surgery on corpses.

Madeline ventures out to a terrifying laboratory-type spa, with procedures reminiscent of those in Terry Gilliam’s dystopian epic ‘Brazil’. The mysterious Dr. Chegaul suddenly appears and though he tells her that he is ‘restricted by the laws of nature’, he gives her a business card of Lisle von Rohman, who specializes in youth rejuvenation.

Meanwhile, Helen invites Madeline and Ernest to the launch of her new book Forever Young. Helen has lost weight and look glamorous and empowered, which incites extreme jealousy in Madeline. Depressed, Madeline visits her much younger boyfriend, whom she catches with a younger woman. He angrily tells her, ‘Go find someone your own age!’

Madeline flees to the mansion (castle/church, more like) of the beautiful and mysterious Lisle von Rohman, played by Isabella Rosselini, who claims to be 71 years old. Lisle gives Madeline a potion which grants immortality and eternal youth, on the condition that Madeline may only spend ten more years in public and then must retire or stage her own death. Madeline’s body and face are rejuvenated, but as she leaves, Lisle warns her to take care of her body.

Ernest and Madeline have a fight, during which she calls him a ‘boozy, flaccid clown’ – perhaps the male version of her own feelings of inadequacy due to aging. She begins to fall backwards down the stairs, but as he goes to help her, she calls him a wimp, and he pushes her. She hits every stair on the way down, twisting her neck all the way around. Thinking that she’s dead, Ernest calls Helen, who has seduced him as a part of her revenge plot against Madeline. Helen gets up and walks backwards towards him; he panics and brings her to the ER, where the exasperated doctor declares that she is technically dead. While she is napping, she is brought to the morgue, but Ernest discovers her in a drawer. He brings her home and fixes her body employing the same techniques he uses as a reconstructive mortician (lots of spray paint).

However, Helen appears and a fight between her and Madeline ensues. Madeline shoots a gigantic hole in Helen’s stomach but she survives, and so Madeline discovers that Helen has taken Lisle’s potion, too. While fighting each other with shovels (during which Meryl Streep actually sliced Goldie Hawn’s face), they realize that fighting is pointless as they can’t inflict pain or death on each other, and they begin to work through their issues: it turns out that Madeline stole Helen’s boyfriends on purpose because Helen was snobby and made Madeline feel inadequate. Helen and Madeline both own up to their behavior, and they reconcile. Their shared immortality provides the equality and commonality that they never had before. Together, they make Ernest fix their bodies with spray paint and spackle.

However, the implications of immortality finally hit them: ‘What if it fades? What if it chips? What if it rains?’ ‘What if I get bored?’ They hatch a scheme to trick Ernest into taking the potion so that he can keep fixing their bodies forever. The rest of the movie deals with his inner struggle over whether or not to take the potion – as well as his external struggle against Madeline and Helen.

This movie is a classic chick-flick horror because it’s wicked gruesome but also deals with anxieties about beauty and aging that (especially) women face every day. It’s 2015, so I don’t think that I have to go into the whole ‘magazines/media/airbrushing/Photoshop/plastic surgery/Kardashians/unrealistic expectations of beauty/finally we have an appropriately-aged Bond Girl’ spiel. It’s been said a million times before. If you’re unaware of it, go read a Jezebel article.

I’m more interested in the idea of immortality (one of my favorite books growing up was Tuck Everlasting). The question that the movie poses is: is it better to live one lifetime to the fullest or to live for eternity alone and afraid to peel?

Even the concept of immortality is qualified by the fact that in the movie, eternal life does not necessarily equal eternal beauty. Though the potion promises eternal youth, it can really only promise the potential for eternal youth. Lisle specifically tells Madeline to take care of herself, and the necessary upkeep is so extreme that they need a professional mortician to patch them back together (this is made very clear when maintenance falls to Madeline and Helen themselves.)

The absence of beauty from eternal life is an ancient concept particularly expressed in the myth of Tithonus. The Trojan Tithonus was a mortal lover of Eos, the goddess of the dawn. Eos begged Zeus to make Tithonus immortal, but forgot to ask that he be eternally youthful. So, Tithonus lives forever, but he also ages forever. Eos shut him up in a locked room but can hear him speaking as he ages for eternity.

This dynamic is clearly at work in ‘Death Becomes Her’, where we see Madeline and Helen slowly decay over time, lacking the necessary resources to keep themselves beautiful (and in one piece). This is similar to the nature of plastic surgery (it’s no coincidence that Madeline’s character is an actress), which requires money and constant maintenance throughout one’s life. However, the sad truth is that everyone dies, and no amount of plastic surgery or anti-aging potions can stop that. We just have to wait for the day that our brains can be hooked up to the Internet, and then there will be no appearances about which to worry.

I love this movie, so the rating was always going to be: 0/5 nights on the couch for the eternally young Nicholas

Nick’s Post:

“Death Becomes Her” is an interesting movie. How’s that for an opening line? But it’s true! I’m not even talking about just the movie itself, which I will get to after my introductory ramblings. You see, what makes this movie interesting is where it fits on the timeline for the principal actors of the film as well as the director. Indulge me, if you will.

Goldie Hawn.  Always a favorite with the public, Goldie was somehow never much of a box office draw. In fact, excepting “Private Benjamin” her career entering the 90’s was full of box office bombs, break-even’s, and moderate hits (Two of her most popular films at the box office, “Foul Play” and “Seems Like Old Times” saw her team up with Chevy Chase in what looked like the new screwball comedy duo destined to make numerous films in the 80’s, 90’s, and beyond. But then the 80’s actually happened. Chevy Chase will be dealt with later on in the life of this blog).

For Hawn the early 90’s were a great time in terms of box office success, but it was a lousy time for critical praise. Three films (“Bird on a Wire”, “Housesitter” and our very own “Death Becomes Her”) were the highest grossing of her career. 1996’s “First Wives Club” would also prove enormously successful, though, like the previous three films, did not wow the critics. Sadly, her next two films were hugely underwhelming money sieves (“The Out-of-Towners” and “Town & Country”). To date, Hawn’s last film was the decently received, yet unfortunately named 2002 film “The Banger Sisters”.

Bruce Willis. As we know, the late 80’s/early 90’s were very good to everyone’s favorite actor who looks like an apricot with scruff. The TV show “Moonlighting” (I’m told it was good…or at least popular), “Die Hard” (F’in right!), “Die Hard 2” (F’in wrong!), “Look Who’s Talking”, and “Bonfire of theLOOK WHO’S TALKING TOO”!!!! Worried that he would be type-cast as just another action star who also does voices for babies, Willis tried his hand at a melodrama (“In Country”), an infamous bomb (“The Bonfire of the Vanities”), an even more infamous bomb (“Hudson Hawk”), and “The Last Boy Scout”, which happened to be his most successful film since sharing top billing with Baby Roseanne.

Willis was two years away from “Pulp Fiction” and seven years away from “The Sixth Sense”, arguably his two most popular films outside of the Die Hard franchise (He was also eleven years away from “Tears of the Sun”…but who the hell cares?). “Death Becomes Her” represents his most against-type role even to this day, a role that didn’t have to have him star as “squinty, mumbly tough guy”.

Meryl Streep.  MERYL STREEP HAS NEVER HIT A SNAG IN HER CAREER. SHE IS INFALLIBLE (but please, if you have a chance, watch “She-Devil”. Can I not stop mentioning Roseanne-related things?).

Robert Zemeckis.   I’ve already mentioned Baby Roseanne, now it’s time to talk about Baby Spielberg. There really is no other director of our time that has reached the level of success that Spielberg has in the three big categories (financially, critically, and with the audience in the long term) like Zemeckis. Going into 1992, Zemeckis was on a run of directing five movies that satisfied all three areas of success (“Romancing the Stone”, the “Back to the Future” trilogy, and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”) and looked to keep the streak going with “Death Becomes Her”.

Much like Spielberg’s “Hook” released the previous year, “Death Becomes Her” met with success at the box office, with fans, but was PANned by critics (please stab me directly in the ear for making that horrible pun). Luckily, critical disdain does not keep the money from rolling in (Fucking “PIXELS”), but I can’t help but think that “Death Becomes Her” hasn’t really gotten its due.

Since Kate has already provided all of the key plot points, I’ll jump into my thoughts about the movie as a whole. I really like this movie. I have liked it ever since the first time I watched it, renting it from the now defunct but never forgotten Canal Street Video in downtown Rumford in 1992.

It never really hit me until my most recent viewing, but I think I know what made this movie so appealing to me: This is essentially a feature-length episode of “Tales From the Crypt”. And I’m not just saying this because Zemeckis was a producer on the show and this was when the show was in its heyday. It turns out that this actually was intended to be a “Tales From the Crypt” movie (they even used TV theme music in the movie trailer), but they decided against it, leaving the TFTC name to be used for rather un-Crypt-y movies like “Demon Knight” and “Bordello of Blood”.

“Death Becomes Her” has all of the elements of the classic comics/show: A morality tale with a twist, hilariously ridiculous dialogue, butts, Isabella Rossellini’s Barry White-esque deep voice, etc. The acting is spot on for a film with this kind of wacky, macabre atmosphere. Got to give props to Sydney Pollack’s cameo as the emergency room doctor, one of the best moments in the film.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around why this film garnered such a tepid response from critics, but I shouldn’t be surprised. This is the kind of movie critics usually hate, and I don’t think it’s really their fault. When it was released, the film seemed to hide behind two things while it was being promoted: Star power and special effects. Yes, the special effects do indeed play a big part in the film and are still pretty good by today’s standards, but they really don’t take over the show entirely, even during the longish fight scene (Zemeckis WOULD begin to temporarily lose his mind in the 2000’s, getting so hung up on effects that he wrapped entire movies in a gross motion capture blanket. See: “The Polar Express”, “A Christmas Carol” and the light-hearted teen comedy “Beowulf”).

As far as the stars go, it’s great to see the three leads in a movie this over-the-top. Not surprisingly, Meryl Streep is the highpoint of the film. The character of Madeline Ashton, with her self-absorbedness and random outbursts, seems to be a rehearsal for her later role as Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada” (Which I have not seen, and if you tell people otherwise I will slice your face with a broke Lincoln Log).

Please give this film a good watch. I think it deserves a reappraisal, if not from the critics, then definitely from the public who can increase the awareness of this film for future generations. Kids these days don’t have enough cartoonish morality tales that include strangulation, poisonings, and assault with a shovel. Not to mention Bruce’s Ned Flanders mustache.

If I saw “Death Becomes Her” for $8.99 you’d better believe I’d scoop it up. I’d also look for Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell”, a bit of a darker film, but one that I think pairs well with a showing of DBH .

Watch the trailer here!