Death Becomes Her

Somebody one this week's Thursday Movie Picks blogathon picked Death Becomes Her for the Comedy Horror theme. I had recorded it as part of the three free months of Showtime channels that DirecTV is giving me. Since it's scheduled to be on Showtime Beyond tomorrow at 11:30 AM, I had been planning to watch it anyway to do a review on it. And yes, "Comedy horror" is an apt term for the movie.

The movie was released in 1992 but starts off in 1978, so 14 years before the present day. Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) is a successful stage actress, currently doing a musical version of Sweet Bird of Youth. After the performance, she's visited by an old classmate from years back, Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn). Helen is now engaged to be married to plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis). She's always envied Madeline and is worried that Madeline might want to steal another boyfriend away from her, which is why Helen is introducing Ernest to Madline. If he can resist temptation, then he'll be a good husband.

Sure enough, Madeline winds up taking Ernest away from Helen. Seven years later, Madeline has moved on to Hollywood and has become a successful actress, at least successful enough to have her movies available on VHS. Ernest is undertaker to the stars, making them look peaceful in death as upposed to whatever scandal-inducing way they actually died. As for Helen, well, she's gone insane, living with dozens of cats, watching Madeline's movies on tape and thinking up a way to get revenge, and not paying her rent, which gets her evicted and put into the state mental hospital.

Another seven years pass, and Helen has gotten out of the hospital and written a book which has become a huge success. She also looks like she hasn't aged a bit since we previously saw her seven years earlier; indeed, she looks younger than she did when she was in that mental hospital. She's doing a book tour which is now taking her to Beverly Hills, so she sends tickets to Madeline and Ernest. Madeline is in a panic since her marriage to Ernest has turned loveless, and worse, she doesn't look half as good as Helen does.

So Madeline goes to her favorite spa to try to get more treatments, even though some of them are a twice-a-year treatments and she had the last one three weeks ago. But one of the women at the spa tells Madeline about a woman who may have a good treatment, the mysterious Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini). When Madeline goes there, she's shocked, as Lisle looks 29, but claims to be 71. Obviously, she's proffering some sort of nonsense that she could bill as the fountain of youth, and gives and example of it by pricking Madeline's finger and then putting a drop of the potion on it. That's enough to convince Madeline to drink the rest of the potion.

Meanwhile, Helen has been visiting Ernest; seeing how unhappy he seems to be, she finds him possibly receptive to her plans for revenge. This would have him push Madeline down the stairs, killing her and making it look like an accident, after which Ernest and Helen would be free to marry.

Ernest does so, or at least doesn't do anything to rescue Madeline when she's about to fall down the stairs. She's dead, all right. But Ernest's first move thereafter is to call Helen, not 911. And during the phone call, we can see Madeline in the background getting up, although she's got a badly broken neck that's basically rotated 180 degrees. A second opinion at the emergency room confirms that Madeline is dead by normal vital sign standards, even though she can talk and walk and all that other stuff. It's obviously Lisle's potion that kept Madeline alive.

And as you might have figured out long before the movie shows us, Helen has taken the potion too. Ernest has no idea what's going on, but Madeline figures it out when she shoots Helen point blank and Helen comes back to life too. Thankfully, they've got Ernest who can do a make-up job on them to make them both look presentably alive. But what are they going to do when Ernest dies?

Death Becomes Her is a movie that's fairly slow going at first, until we get to the point when Madeline "dies", at which point it switches from slowish to a really fun premise that's got a lot of wacky comedy. The climax is unrealistic, but then the premise is unrealistic. Still, the movie winds up becoming pretty darn fun.