Random 'Death Becomes Her' Is Way Weirder Than You Rememb (13 items)

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  (#1) The Movie Covers More Than 50 Years

  For a movie about age and immortality, it makes sense that the film would span over 50 years from start to finish. The opening scene in the theatre takes place in 1978, Helen appears in the hospital in 1985, Madeline attends Helen's book release party in 1992, and the final scene depicting Ernest's funeral takes place 37 years later, which would presumably be in 2029-2030.

  The shifting appearances of the characters in tandem with the frequent time skips create an intentionally disorienting experience, where the viewer is taken out of time, almost as if it weren’t relevant. In the case of Madeline and Helen, it truly isn’t. 
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  (#2) The Musical At The Beginning Of The Movie Is An Adaptation Of Tennessee Williams’s ‘Sweet Bird Of Youth’

  In the opening scene of the film, Madeline Ashton (played by Meryl Streep) is performing a dreadful musical rendition of Tennessee Williams's 1959 play Sweet Bird of Youth.  

  The plot of Sweet Bird of Youth mirrors the major thematic elements of Death Becomes Her - an aging movie star grappling with desirability, men, and the illusions of youth. The story follows mediocre actor and hustler Chance Wayne through his various foibles and missteps trying to get into "the business" as he attempts to use disgraced film star Alexandra del Lago to make industry contacts. 

  All the while, he is trying to woo his old lover from his homework, Heavenly Finley, not knowing that he had disfigured her with an STI the last time they met. Needless to say, it all ends tragically.

  In this intertextual interpretation, Ashton resembles Alexandra del Lago from the Tennessee Williams play, and it is possible that Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis) is represented by Chance Wayne, with his ex-wife, Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), standing in for Heavenly Finley. 

  Rather than being part of the performance, Helen is seated in the audience, fuming about her frenemy’s perceived success.
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  (#3) Helen Seduces Ernest By Repeating The Same Word

  One of the most head-scratching moments of this already chaotic film is the scene where Helen shows up unannounced to Madeline and Ernest’s mansion after taking the immortal beauty potion. 

  She embraces Ernest, trying to seduce him to snatch him back from Madeline, but the way she does it is confounding. She holds him close and whispers those alluring words that every man wants to hear: "You're a powerful sexual being, Ernest... Sexual. Sensual. Sexy. Sex. Sex. Sex!"

  It works.
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  (#4) The Costumes Are A Bizarre Array Of Early '90s Erotica

  There is a comical maudlin element to the way that the characters are dressed throughout the film. Every dress shows skin, emphasizes chest, and often utilizes lace and jewels to keep the film PG-13, which is impressive in its own right.  

  The most borderline-pornographic, however, is the scantily clad Lisle Von Rhuman. The face of immortal beauty herself does not wear a shirt for most of the film, instead opting for a series of carefully placed necklaces. The pants situation is also minimal, as she is typically shown wearing a sheer red sarong that shows quite a bit of leg.
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  (#5) Helen Has A Gaping Hole In Her Stomach

  Tensions are high when Helen realizes that Madeline has foiled her plan to be the youngest and most glamorous of the two, so she decides to take action.

  As Helen and Ernest discuss their plan to stage Madeline's end, Madeline steps in and shoots Helen through the stomach, just to realize that she too has become immortal. 
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  (#6) Famous Departed Celebrities Pop Up At The Climax Of The Movie

  When Lisle accosts Ernest by the poolside, she offers him her potion of eternal life. Though he is unsure and frightened by the prospect, Lisle invites him to the party upstairs where “all of her clients” are in attendance. 

  Some notable clientele include Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, Elvis, James Dean, and Greta Garbo, all of whom had passed by the time the film premiered in 1992. This suggests that in the Death Becomes Her universe, they were all kept alive and in their physical prime by the potion. 
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  (#7) Helen And Madeline End Up Completely Mutilated

  The final scene in the film takes place at Ernest’s funeral. At this point, Ernest has long since escaped the unhinged immortal women, and his life is celebrated as though he had a normal and fulfilling one with family and friends.  

  During the ceremony, Helen and Madeline's faces are fully obscured by long black veils to hide how cracked and deformed their faces have become without Ernest's plastic surgery services. They hobble when they walk, they are missing extremities, and they ultimately lose their heads falling down the stairs in the final scene of the film.
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  (#8) Madeline Takes So Many Men From Helen That It Drives Her Insane

  In Helen's final scene where she is still married to Ernest, she tells him, "I just had to see if you could pass the Madeline Ashton test." He chides her for sounding silly and jealous - and the next scene pans to Madeline and Ernest's wedding, and it becomes clear to the audience that Helen is about to fly off the rails. 

  Sure enough, the following scene shows a dazed and overweight Helen getting evicted from her home and placed in a psychiatric hospital, where she is singularly obsessed with Madeline to the great chagrin and frustration of her caretakers and fellow patients.

  During a confrontation with her therapist, the therapist implores Helen to "eliminate" thoughts of Madeline, but Helen interprets this as "eliminating" Madeline entirely. 
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  (#9) The Camera Gets Up Close And Personal With The Rear End Of Goldie Hawn's Fat Suit

  To emphasize how far gone Helen is after Madeline took her man - yet again - the scene where she is shaking and crying at the wedding immediately pans to a rather intimate and rather offensive shot of Helen’s rear. 

  Goldie Hawn had been transformed into a nearly unrecognizable version of her former self with the aid of prosthetics, makeup, and a fat suit. Honestly, the general idea probably would have been just as clear without the perverse camera placement. 
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  (#10) The Magical Potion Alludes To Egyptian Magic

  Fourteen years after taking Helen's husband, Madeline receives an invitation to Helen's release party for her new book, Forever Young. She is horrified to find that Helen has become slender, beautiful, and curiously younger in appearance. Madeline seeks the company of her younger lover and is mortified to find that he has chosen to date someone his own age.

  Out of desperation, Madeline seeks the services of mysterious and wealthy socialite Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabelle Rossellini), who offers "youth rejuvenation" services. The glamorous and lasciviously dressed Lisle claims to be 71 but appears much younger. Lisle offers Madeline a bottle of potion that promises her an everlasting youthful appearance.    

  While the magic of the potion is not inherently part of any Egyptian mythos, the potion's container is marked with an ankh, an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph that symbolizes life, suggesting that there is a deeper mythological meaning behind the film's concept of "everlasting beauty" and immortality.
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  (#11) The Dress Colors May Signify Morality

  For most of the film, Madeline is shown wearing white, while Helen is typically seen in red. This subverts the typical narrative assumptions about those color schemes, as Madeline starts off as the crueler and more manipulative of the two, with Helen the hapless one always in her shadow. 

  During Helen's dream sequence, she dreams of ending Madeline as she explains her plot to Ernest. For the duration of the brief fantasy, Helen is wearing the red dress while Madeline wears the white, a sign that Helen has gotten onto Madeline’s cruel level. 

  In the final scene, they are both wearing all black. 
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  (#12) It Won An Oscar For Special Effects

  For a movie so campy and downright bizarre, it may come as a surprise that it won any Oscars at all. The star-studded cast may not have won anything from their performances, but the visual effects team won over Batman Returns and Alien 3 for their groundbreaking mixture of practical effects and CGI. 

  The win was well-deserved. The studio responsible, Industrial Light & Magic, essentially pioneered the medium of CGI, and Death Becomes Her was one of their great successes that would pave the way for Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump in the years to follow.
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  (#13) It's The Movie Robert Zemeckis Made Between 'Back To The Future Part 3' And 'Forrest Gump'

  One potential cause for the fever dream vibe of Death Becomes Her was the thematic whiplash felt by its director, Robert Zemeckis. This film’s release in 1992 fell between two of his massively successful films, Back to the Future Part 3 and Forrest Gump. 

  The bizarro Western theme of the final Back to the Future film drove its franchise to its logical conclusion, to the point where Zemeckis said, "There will never ever be a Return to the Future in the most absolute way. There will be no more Back to the Future.” It was time for something new, and something new meant bitter undead female rivalry with comical slapstick and gore. 

  The 1994 release of Forrest Gump may have been a response to Death Becomes Her. Rather than backstabbing and constant rivalry, Zemeckis decided to focus on a painstakingly earnest character like Forrest Gump, who only wants to do the right thing.

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