In 1978,narcissistic fading actress Madeline Ashton performs in a poorly receivedBroadway musical. She invites long-time friend and rival, meek aspiring writer Helen Sharp, backstage along with Helen's fiancé, plastic surgeon Ernest Menville. Smitten with Madeline, Ernest breaks off his engagement with Helen to marry her. Seven years later, Helen—now obese, depressed, and impoverished—is committed to a psychiatric hospital where she swears revenge on Madeline.
Another seven years later, Madeline and Ernest live an opulent but miserable life in Beverly Hills: Madeline is depressed about her withering beauty and career, and Ernest has become an alcoholic, reduced to working as areconstructive mortician. After receiving an invitation to a party celebrating Helen's new book, Madeline rushes for beauty treatments. Desperate to look younger, she is given the business card of Lisle Von Rhuman, a mysterious socialite who specializes in rejuvenation.
At Helen's party, Madeline and Ernest discover that she is now slim, glamorous, and youthful, despite being 50. Overcome with envy, Madeline visits her younger lover but discovers he is with a woman his own age. Despondent, she visits Lisle's mansion. The youthful Lisle claims to be 71 and offers Madeline apotion that promises eternal life and youth. Madeline drinks the potion, which restores her to her physical prime. Meanwhile, Helen seduces Ernest and persuades him to kill Madeline.
After returning home, Madeline belittles Ernest, who snaps and pushes her down the stairs, breaking her neck. However, she inexplicably survives and Ernest takes her to the hospital, where she is deemed to be clinically dead. Ernest considers her reanimation to be a miracle and repairs her body at home. When Helen arrives and secretly discusses her plan to murder Madeline, Madeline shoots her with a shotgun. The blast leaves a large hole in Helen's torso, but she remains alive, revealing that she has also taken Lisle's potion. Helen and Madeline fight before reconciling. Depressed at the reality of their situation, Ernest prepares to leave, but Helen and Madeline persuade him to repair their bodies first. Realizing they will need regular maintenance, they scheme to have Ernest drink the potion to ensure his permanent availability.
The pair forcibly bring him to Lisle, who offers him the potion in exchange for his surgical skills. Ernest rejects immortality, afraid of being forced to spend eternity with Madeline and Helen and enduring the same physical damage the pair have already suffered. He flees with the potion but becomes trapped on the roof. Helen and Madeline implore Ernest to drink the potion to survive an impending fall, but he throws it away, before surviving the fall by landing in Lisle's pool and escaping, leaving the pair in despair as they realize they must depend on each other for companionship and maintenance—forever.
Thirty-seven years later, Madeline and Helen attend Ernest's funeral, where he is eulogized as having achieved true immortality by living an adventurous and fulfilling life and growing a large family. Now grotesque parodies of their former selves, Helen and Madeline mock the eulogy and leave. Outside, Helen trips and falls down a flight of steps, dragging Madeline with her. Their bodies break apart, and Helen sardonically asks Madeline if she remembers where they parked their car.
Kevin Kline was the first choice to play Dr. Ernest Menville, but he fell out of the project due to a pay dispute with the studio.Jeff Bridges andNick Nolte were both considered before Bruce Willis was eventually cast.[1]
Principal photography forDeath Becomes Her began on December 9, 1991, and wrapped up on April 7, 1992.[1] The film was shot entirely in Los Angeles, and featured several locations frequently used in film and television, including theGreystone Mansion (Ernest's funeral home) and theEbell of Los Angeles (Helen's book party).[6] The exterior of Madeline and Ernest's mansion is located at 1125 Oak Grove Avenue inSan Marino, but the interior was a set built on a soundstage.[1] The ending scene where Helen and Madeline tumble down a set of stairs outside a chapel was filmed atMount St. Mary's University inBrentwood.[7][8]
Death Becomes Her was a technologically complex film to make, and represented a major advancement in the use ofcomputer generated imagery (CGI) effects, under the direction ofIndustrial Light and Magic.[9][10] It was the first film where CGI skin texture was used, in the shot where Madeline resets her neck after her head is smashed with a shovel by Helen.[9] Creating the sequences where Madeline's head is dislocated and facing the wrong way around involved a combination ofchroma key, ananimatronic model created byAmalgamated Dynamics, and prosthetic make-up effects on Meryl Streep to create the look of a twisted neck.[11][12]
The digital advancements pioneered onDeath Becomes Her were incorporated into Industrial Light and Magic's next project,Jurassic Park, released by Universal only a year later. The two films also shared cinematographerDean Cundey and production designerRick Carter.[13]
The production had a fair number of mishaps. In the scene where Helen and Madeline are battling with shovels,Meryl Streep accidentally cutGoldie Hawn's face, leaving a faint scar. Streep admitted that she disliked working on a project that focused so heavily on special effects, and vowed never to work on another film with heavy special effects again, saying:
My first, my last, my only. I think it's tedious. Whatever concentration you can apply to that kind of comedy is just shredded. You stand there like a piece of machinery—they should get machinery to do it. I loved how it turned out. But it's not fun to act to a lampstand. "Pretend this is Goldie, right here! Uh, no, I'm sorry, Bob, she went off the mark by five centimeters, and now her head won't match her neck!" It was like being at the dentist.[14]
Several scenes were filmed but omitted from the film's final cut.[15][1] DirectorRobert Zemeckis decided on cutting the scenes to accelerate the film's pacing and to eliminate extraneous jokes. Most dramatically, the original ending was entirely redone after test audiences reacted unfavorably to it.[16] That ending featured Ernest, after he has fled Lisle's party, meeting a bartender named Toni (Tracey Ullman) who helps him fake his death to evade Madeline and Helen. The two women encounter Ernest and the bartender 27 years later, living happily as a retired couple, while Madeline and Helen give no sign that they are enjoying their eternal existence.[15] Zemeckis thought the ending was too happy, so opted for the darker ending featured in the final cut.[15] Ullman was one of five actors with speaking roles in the film to be eliminated.[15] Other scenes that were eliminated included one in which Madeline talks to her agent (Jonathan Silverman) and one in which Ernest removes a frozen Madeline from the kitchen freezer where he has stored her.[15] Some of the scenes can be viewed in the original theatrical trailer.[17]
Death Becomes Her was a box-office success, and opened at number one at the box office with $12,110,355, the same weekend asBuffy the Vampire Slayer andBebe's Kids.[18][19] It went on to earn over $58.4 million domestically and $90.6 million internationally.[2] InTaipei,Death Becomes Her set a box-office record by earning $269,310 in two days, marking it the "biggest opening ever" for overseas distributorUnited International Pictures.[1]
The film's release onDVD was called "appallingly bad" due to the quality of its transfer, which has been said to suffer from excessive grain, blur, and muted colors.[20] A BBC review described it as "horrible" and "sloppy".[21]Death Becomes Her was initially distributed in anopen matte fullscreen (1.33:1) edition in the U.S., while a widescreen version with its theatrical aspect ratio (1.85:1) was released worldwide. The latter version has also been mistakenly labelledanamorphic.[22] It was later released in North America onBlu-ray fromShout! Factory in 2016.[23][24]
Death Becomes Her received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its special effects and lead performances, but some found it lacking depth and substance.[1][25][26][27] Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 58% based on 59 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Hawn and Streep are as fabulous asDeath Becomes Her's innovative special effects; Zemeckis's satire, on the other hand, is as hollow as the world it mocks."[28] OnMetacritic, the film has aweighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[29] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[30]
TheChicago Tribune'sDave Kehr wrote, "Instantly grotesque, relentless misanthropic and spectacularly tasteless, 'Death Becomes Her' isn't a film designed to win the hearts of the mass moviegoing public. But it is diabolically inventive and very, very funny."[31][32]Todd McCarthy ofVariety said, "While the fountain of youth theme has often come up in films, it has never been given anything like this treatment before."[33]People praised the film's "flashes of originality, brilliant special effects and terrific performances—Willis as a curdled Milquetoast and Hawn as a woman who is finally feeling her own power. Streep makes a fine untamed shrew, by turns shrill, whiny and cooing".[34] Willis was also singled out for hisagainst type comedic performance.[35][34]
Negative reviews criticized the script and pacing, noting that its satire feels scattershot and that the plot is pushed aside for the special effects.[36][37]Gene Siskel andRoger Ebert both gaveDeath Becomes Her a 'thumbs down', commenting that while the film has great special effects, it lacks any real substance or character depth.[38]People said "screenwriters David Koepp and Martin Donovan would have done well to keep their skewed, scabrous vision in sharper focus and to display satire that rises to the level of a scene in which Rossellini is throwing a party for her myriad clients".[34]Owen Gleiberman ofEntertainment Weekly said, "The trouble withDeath Becomes Her isn't that its comic vision is too dark but that it has no shadings, no acerbic glee. Zemeckis gives nastiness such a hard sell he forgets to take any delight in it."[39]
Rita Kempley ofThe Washington Post gave an overall positive review in which she praised the script's "offbeat lines and unexpected laughs", but noted there is still an "underlying high-and-mighty moral tone, which might have come straight from the pen ofHawthorne -- a puritannical posture wholly deserving of Madeline's retort: 'Blah, blah, blah, blah.' Really, fellas, what's a little cucumber mask going to hurt?"[40]
InNewsweek,David Ansen wrote, "Oddly, the more fantastical and grotesque this comedy becomes, the more conventional it seems-and the less it has to say. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, the characters take a back seat to the pyrotechnics, reality is replaced by cliffhangers and Gothic claptrap, and the laughs start to dry up. Satire needs a social context, but the filmmakers have little to say about the culture that created these age-obsessed women. Still, even when 'Death Becomes Her' wanders off course, it remains worth rooting for."[41]
Death Becomes Her has acquired a significant cult following, especially in theLGBT community.[45][46][47] InRogerEbert.com, Jessica Ritchey wrote, "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."[48] An article inVanity Fair titled "The Gloriously Queer Afterlife of 'Death Becomes Her'" called the film a "gay cult classic" and "a touchstone of the queer community".[5] The movie is screened in bars duringPride Month, while the characters of Madeline and Helen are favorites of drag performers. In this vein, the movie inspired aDeath Becomes Her-themed runway show onseason 7 ofRuPaul's Drag Race.[45] The winner of season 5,Jinkx Monsoon, has cited the movie as an inspiration to become a drag queen. Jinkx has participated inDeath Becomes Her-themed photoshoots,[49] and in 2018 she played Madeline in a drag stage show parody called "Drag Becomes Her" alongsideseason 6 contestantBenDeLaCreme.[50] Tom Campbell, an executive producer ofRuPaul's Drag Race, reflected on the appeal of the movie to gay audiences:
They're fighting for beauty. They're against the system. They're also villains, but we understand their complexity. We root for the undead divas because they're trying to win a game that's rigged against them, and—to borrow an apocryphal quote fromGinger Rogers—they sort of have to do it 'backwards and in high heels.'[5]
