Featured Creature: The one with Bruce Willis

Title: Death Becomes Her

What Year?: 1992

Classification: Parody/ Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m continuing with certain plans related to features I’ve retired, especially The Revenant Review. In the process, I realized that I have in fact gone through a decent lineup of zombie movies in this feature with The Mummy Returns and Pet Sematary 2. That finally convinced me that this was the place for one more leftover, a movie that I had very solidly planned to cover in another format, right until I watched it. That was enough to convince me that I needed to do a full review, whatever else I did with it. As it happens, it was also once upon a time a genuine favorite of mine, which as often happens has made me all the more apprehensive about looking it up again. I present Death Becomes Her, a film that’s a big-budget romantic comedy and a zombie movie, and this is one time the tag is every bit as good as it sounds.

Our story begins with an insecure lady named Helen taking her fiancé Dr. Ernest Menville to a failing off-Broadway show by her old frienemy Madeline, by Helen’s account to test her man’s faithfulness in the face of a temptress who already broke up several of her relationships. In short order, the guy is married to the already fading starlet, leaving the abandoned damsel to slide into poverty, obesity and mental illness. At her lowest point, she sets out to eliminate her rival. Fast forward further, and we find that the starlet is even more of a has-been and meaner for it, while Ernest has gone from respected surgeon to admittedly talented undertaker. Suddenly, Helen reappears, slim, shapely and more beautiful than before. That ramps up Madeline’s insecurities enough to seek out a mysterious character mentioned by her plastic surgeon. This miracle-worker proves to be a sorceress with a potion for restored youth and eternal life. Unknown to her, Helen is not only well on her way to stealing back Ernest but is trying to talk him into murder. What they all soon learn is that those who drink the potion can still die- but their mind and soul will remain in the undead corpse forever!

Death Becomes Her was a 1992 horror comedy directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on a script by Martin Donovan and David Koepp. The film starred Bruce Willis as Ernest Menville, Meryl Streep as Madeline and Goldie Hawn as Helen, with Isabella Rosellini as the sorceress Lisle. Zemeckis openly described the film as a zombie movie. Extensive effects were used to portray the undead Madeline and Helen, including CGI by ILM and animatronics by David Gillis (see Leviathan, Tremors 2) and Tom Woodruff (see… Terminator???). The soundtrack was composed by Alan Silvestri (see… Mac And Me?), who had previously scored the Back to the Future trilogy for Zemeckis. Significant changes and cuts were made to the film, including the removal of scenes featuring Tracy Ullman. The film was commercially successful, earning $149 million against a $55M budget., and received mixed to positive reviews.  It has remained popular on home video, though a full-frame DVD release was heavily criticized. In 2016, the film was released on Blu Ray. No deleted scenes have been included with home video releases of the film.

For my experiences, I saw this one right around 1999, after seeing parts of it (of course including almost all the plot twists) in the course obsessively tracking 1980s-‘90s effects guys. What really stands out is that I really didn’t have a way to put this movie in context when I first watched it. Just for example, the casting of Bruce Willis would definitely have seemed as strange to anyone my age when it came out as it did when I got to it. However, I can now see that the studio decision-makers were probably just as likely to view Die Hard as the anomaly (see also my Lethal Weapon review/ rant).  At any rate, it was clear that this was something quite different than the usual effects showcase. This wasn’t non-human monsters and/ or over-the-top action sequences, but believable characters subjecting each other to absolutely horrible things, and yet, it still easily passed as comedy. I looked it up, I loved it, and then I let it go for a very long time.

Moving forward, what I find worth talking about is how devious the movie feels in the ways our sympathies are directed. If anything, Madeline is the most relatable character on paper. Sure, she’s vain, unfaithful and a willful boyfriend stealer. But she presumably has or had some kind of feelings for Ernest to stay married to him; she isn’t normally violent or even particularly dishonest; and if it comes to that, it’s quite clear that her peers and the public are judging her on age and looks even more harshly than she does herself. The misdirection is that the story arc keeps offering adversaries to cheer for, only to demonstrate unequivocally that they have even fewer redeeming qualities. Ernest makes a quite credible attempt to kill Madeline before she dies mostly by accident, and could easily have killed or maimed many more in descending to his current state of disgrace. Helen is, if possible, the worst of the lot. She is the one character to consider murder in absolutely cold blood, and she never treats Ernest as anything but a means to that end. Then the strangest tangent is the wild card Lisle, by far the most attractive and engaging character. Yet, even she has ulterior motives that are not made clear, particularly toward Ernest, and she says a number of things that we have good reason to believe are incomplete or untrue. My own “fan theory” is that she’s actually much older than she claims to be (apparently already varied in different versions of the script), which in turn would mean that she already knows things about immortality which she isn’t revealing to prospective clients.

And that leaves the special effects, which leave me stuck between saying too much or too little. In full hindsight, the effects are surprisingly limited both in running time and extent. The flip side is that they are so well-integrated with fine performances and top-notch storyboarding that many of the most difficult details are easy to overlook entirely. The most egregious example is Madeline’s first revival, shown entirely in the background while Ernest hastily consults with Helen. All we see is a blurred figure in the near distance (really, none of this would have happened without the outlandish proportions of the mansion), slowly going through a series of motions that look almost natural yet not quite. Even more noteworthy are undead Helen/ Hawn’s completely unnerving eyes, I’m sure done with some kind of special contact lens and a bit of trick lighting. I must editorialize further that this is how they looked on the much-maligned “square-screen” DVD, so I really don’t see what the fuss was about. The overall tone is at face value pure “splatstick”, complete with literally cartoonish injuries. (Helen in particular really shouldn’t be as damaged as she looks, but if she was, she would not be in one piece.) On another level, however, this is a horrifyingly intimate vision of Hell. These are characters whose minds and souls were warped and broken long before their bodies. The best one can muster for them is a cringey sort of pity as the undead women continue to fight over a man who could not be clearer about his intent to leave them both.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with one that is the most direct link to the zombie genre. Well into the second half of the film, Ernest rushes Madeline to the hospital with what he diagnoses as a “dislocated neck”. They manage to get far enough to see a doctor without any questions being asked, played by the late Sydney Pollack (d. 2008), an actor/ director/ producer/ demigod whose credits included Tootsie and Out Of Africa. Here, he turns in a subdued performance as a competent if unenthusiastic professional. The comic understatement starts as Madeline says, “I fell down the stairs,” drawing only a casual comment from the doctor. The doctor proceeds with the examination, showing his first sign of shock when he examines her neck. In a setup that will be familiar to genre fans, he looks for a heartbeat with his stethoscope, then quite casually throws it out when he gets no result. After trying out several instruments, he explains that Madeline has no heartbeat, room-temperature body heat and two shattered vertebrae. When Ernest presses him for an explanation, the fumbling doctor excuses himself with the comment, “I must get a second opinion.” After a few awkward minutes, Ernest steps out, to find that the staff are rushing to deal with a medical emergency. He finds the staff tending to a patient already flatlining, and then sees the face. It’s a fine follow-up to a great scene, and I will admit it took me a while to figure it out.

In closing, what I come back to is whether the movie holds up today. I have to say, my answer is a qualified “no”. It was a good movie for its time that marked a breakthrough not only in special effects technology but also how such effects are used. It also proved that a zombie/ zombie-adjacent movie could reach “mainstream” audiences as well as “respectable” horror movies. Finally, I can personally attest that it can still make me laugh, which was more than I necessarily expected after the last time I looked it up. The problem is that it remains not just a part of its own time but subtly “retro” even then, the kind of 1990s movie that feels more like an ‘80s movie that arrived just a little late. If that sounds appealing, it should be a rewarding watch. If not, you will do just as well to move on. I for one can end this with no regrets.

Image credit IMDB.