Death Becomes Her (1992) Death Becomes Her (1992)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (Death Becomes Her) | Backbeats (Death Becomes Her)

Quick Facts

• Director: Robert Zemeckis
• Screenplay: Martin Donovan and David Koepp
• Starring: Meryl Streep (Madeline Ashton), Goldie Hawn (Helen Sharp), Bruce Willis (Dr. Ernest Menville), Isabella Rossellini (Lisle Von Rhuman), Ian Ogilvy (Chagall)
• Producer: Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey
• Cinematography: Dean Cundey
• Editor: Arthur Schmidt
• Music: Alan Silvestri
• Visual Effects: Industrial Light & Magic
• Runtime: 104 minutes
• Release Date: July 31, 1992 (US)
• MPAA Rating: PG-13
• Distributor: Universal Pictures

Overview

A fading Broadway star steals her best friend's plastic-surgeon fiancé, marries him, fades into vain middle age, and is then re-confronted by the friend — transformed, gorgeous, rich, and out for revenge. Both women turn out to have drunk the same magical potion from a Beverly Hills sorceress who guarantees eternal youth at a price the small print spells out only after the fact: once you start to break, only a mortician can keep you together, and the only mortician who knows the truth is the same plastic surgeon they have been fighting over for a quarter-century. Robert Zemeckis's black-comic horror is the worse-tools/insufficient quadrant played as a 1990s Beverly Hills cartoon: the immortality the protagonists secured works exactly as advertised, and is the trap.