DEATH BECOMES HER: Blu-ray (Universal 1992) Shout!/Scream Factory
I have always
wondered about Robert Zemeckis’ Death
Becomes Her (1992); the ground-breaking/effects-laden Grand Guignol;
ostensibly, another minor masterpiece from Zemeckis - this one about sex,
betrayal, lust, jealousy, death, immortality and murder…well, sort of, though
decidedly not in that order - since the movie I saw in 1992 bore no earthly
resemblance to the one being peddled in the trailer used to promote it. Granted,
trailers are made months in advance of any theatrical release and often contain
outtakes never used in the final cut. But Death’s
trailer incorporates snippets of whole subplots and glib social commentaries
about fading youth and stardom, never again to materialize on the movie screen.
For decades thereafter, the lore surrounding the prevue cut of Death Becomes Her grew to near mythic
proportions; some attesting to the greatness of an unseen ‘classic’ screened
before these revisions were made; others, hinting to be in possession of these
missing pieces that even Universal Studios was unable to locate in their
vaults. After a 2008 fire decimated a sizable portion of the studio’s back lot
the rumor surfaced all of this excised footage had been among its casualties. In
hindsight - always 20/20 - the reality seems less opaque; Death Becomes Her was ill-received during its sneak peaks. Heavily edited by Zemeckis, it was to evolve
into a more tightly paced, often witty, if jovially macabre variation on the
old ‘fountain of youth’ tall tale;
updated and relocated to – where else?
– Hollywood, where such cravenly mad obsessions to stay eternally firm and
fabulous seem more a syndrome than symptomatic of our natural fear of death,
thus creating a Mecca (some would say, a mockery) from the cottage industry of
plastic surgery.
Two major plot
devises were ultimately lost in Zemekis’ revamp: first, the original ending,
but even more egregiously, Tracy Ullman’s entire performance as the empathetic
bartender who befriends and eventually marries a befuddled and frantic Dr.
Ernest Menville (the character played by Bruce Willis). She believes his story
– that the socially affluent are populated by a cloistered sect of perennially ageless
pseudo-zombies, given eternal life by a slinky - if slightly demonic sorceress,
Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini). Zemeckis’ original intent was to create
a parable exposing the destructiveness of our youth-absorbed culture. According
this premise, Ernest’s first wife, screen queen, Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep)
and her fair-weather friend, Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) were to be inadvertently
reunited with Ernest and Ullman’s second Mrs. Menville in Switzerland near the
end of our story; these two bitches left to contemplate eternal happiness in
stark contrast to the happily aging marrieds while they, although as luminous
as ever on the outside, had allowed personal jealousy and bitterness to add a
layer of moral/intellectual decay to their character from the inside.
Evidently,
prevue audiences did not appreciate this highbrow subtlety; Zemeckis also
believing he had somehow sidestepped the insidiously wormy venom permeating the
first two-thirds of this never-to-die rivalry between girlfriends. Thus, a new
vision emerged; darker, more aberrant and apocalyptic, and, with more sequences
scattered throughout the movie falling prey to the cutting room floor, including
an elaborate prelude to the mummification yet to follow. Here, Ernest – driven
half-crazy in his Dr. Frankenstein-ish pursuit to mask Madeline’s ravages of
bodily decay, and having transgressed from one-time gifted plastic surgeon into
the perverse custodial care of his decomposing wife and her ongoing ‘repairs’ –
keeps Madeline in the kitchen freezer to delay her inevitable rot; occasionally
taking her out of this deep freeze to test new theories; desperate to keep her
externally sound for decades, possibly even centuries. Hmmm….perhaps, eternal
life is a death sentence after all. Arguably, Zemeckis embraced these changes,
though in the final analysis they altered both the premise and tone of his
film. Aside: I had sincerely forgotten how ominously grotesque this comedy is; the
Oscar-winning visual effects pioneered by Ken Ralston, Doug Chiang, Douglas
Smythe and Tom Woodruff Jr., truly at the forefront of the CGI revolution that
has since taken over and all but obscured Hollywood’s present storytelling age.
Whatever the
reasons for Zemeckis’ alterations, the results arguably proved worth the
effort. Despite overwhelming negativity from all but a handful of critics, Death Becomes Her opened at #1 with a
respectable gross of $12,110,355.00. It would go on to earn an even more
impressive $149 million; along the way, rewriting the technical know-how in then
state-of-the-art visual effects. As with
other films made by Zemeckis, the focus herein is not on the barrage of
mind-bending/body-contorting SFX, but rather an intricately plotted story,
co-written by Martin Donovan and David Koepp; high-powered by obviously
relished performances from Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. Interestingly, Streep
would famously decry making the movie as a ‘tedious
exercise’, hampered in her acting prowess by being forced to emote in front
of a green screen rather than intimately relate to a real life costar in many
of her key scenes. Death Becomes Her
was a transitional piece for Streep – revered as a ‘serious’ actress. However,
at the age of 42, she had fast become the victim of Hollywood’s insipid and
unoriginal ambition to prematurely brand every actress over forty as ‘over the
hill’ has-been. Film critic Gene Siskel infamously suggested, Streep’s
endeavors to “lighten her (screen) image”
had severely “clouded her ability” to
choose good scripts. I disagree. While no one could confuse Death Becomes Her as another Out of Africa (1985), despite the
fleeting appearance of that latter movie’s director (the late Sidney Pollack)
in a cameo as a very nervous doctor who suffers his own fatal heart attack
after examining the ill-fated (and already quite dead) Madeline, Streep’s
performance in Death Becomes Her is
a superb departure from the sort of forthright, if suffering, grand dames she
had played, imbued with the same caliber of dedication to the part, ingeniously
tweaked to accommodate the precepts of screwball comedy.
And let us
never mistake that at its core, Death
Becomes Her is a comedy; a
ghoulish and repulsive one at that, but playing into the time-honored
traditions of adult silliness found in such iconic masterpieces as Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940). The screenplay,
while hardly perfect, is far more imaginatively structured than its initially vapid
fashion-conscious parody about imploding Hollywood-types, nursing very fragile
egos, would suggest; pumped full of a rare vintage of richly rewarding/darkly
conceived philosophies about life, the ethereal, and, the hereafter. Yes, we
get the point about these two insidiously competitive gal pals, too far gone
down the proverbial rabbit hole of cosmetic frontiers in collagen shots and
chemical peels. Madeline and Helen would rather be reincarnated as that ancient
flower of false youth – even after death – than sincerely face the reality they
were born mortal. How cruel is Mother Nature with her promise of youth stolen
away by the natural law, replaced with decades of slow, steady and very sad
decline? The film asks us to reconsider
both sides to its Rip Van Winkle-esque fantasy; pro and con and not only from
the perspective of our feuding female protagonists, already irreversibly
afflicted by the gift…or is it curse...of spending eternity in a limbo consciousness
as two rapidly putrefying corpses. Conversely,
having chosen the uninterrupted path of life, Ernest Menville will learn how to
maximize the potential of whatever years he has been afforded – making the most
of life while it lasts, unlike his ex and her best friend, who never even first
consider the true meaning of Lisle’s declaration, ‘sempre viva’ before swallowing this ‘touch of magic in a world obsessed with science’ that will
ultimately make them both miserable for all time without end.
Death Becomes Her opens on a rainy eve in 1978;
Madeline Ashton, a one-time shimmering movie star, already considered something
of a has-been by her dwindling fan base, is staging her big comeback on
Broadway in ‘Songbird’; a musicalization of Tennessee Williams’ famed play, Sweet
Bird of Youth. Most of the audience finds Madeline’s disco-tech
cavorting with a male ensemble utterly distasteful and void of virtually all
artistic merit. Not so for Dr. Ernest
Menville, seated in the audience next to his plain-Jane fiancée, Helen Sharp. After
the performance, Helen reluctantly indulges Ernest’s desire to go backstage and
congratulate Madeline. She is an incurable flirt, more so after discovering
Ernest is a gifted plastic surgeon; just the sort of guy she could wrap around
her little finger to get some free cosmetic work done to shore up the first
signs of crow’s feet and a few wrinkles in her forehead. Ernest tries to assure
Helen, who is desperately tugging at her handkerchief, that he has absolutely
zero interest in Madeline. But a jump cut later and we are at Madeline and
Ernest’s wedding, Helen suffering a complete nervous breakdown from this
betrayal and abandonment as she clutches her scarf so tightly that her hands
begin to bleed. Flash forward seven years: Helen, grown obscenely obese, and, barricaded
in her apartment full of cats, is hauled off to an asylum where she drives both
her psychiatrist (Alaina Reed-Hall) and the other patients into fits of wild
distraction with her chronic need to blame Madeline for her unhappy life.
Jolted from her cyclical contemplation by the analyst’s suggestion she needs
to eradicate Madeline from her mind Helen instead takes the advice literally. Let
the games begin!
Flash ahead
again – another seven years. We learn married life has not been kind to Ernest
and Madeline, she indulging her sexual desires in a series of meaningless
affairs while henpecking her husband’s self-respect into tatters. He begrudgingly tolerates her whoring around. The
couple is united in their mutual desire to see what has become of Helen in the
interim, having received an invitation to her book launch party. While Ernest
is sincerely set to embrace the new Helen, Madeline is insidiously hoping she
has aged more obviously. Thus, when both Madeline and Ernest catch a glimpse of
a heavy-set creature in a trench coat from the back, each assumes this must be
Helen; the woman stepping aside to reveal a svelte and remarkably youthful
Helen instead, surrounded by a slew of sycophantic admirers. Time has stood
still for Helen – or so it would seem; actually, improved upon her looks and demeanor.
She is accomplished and sexy and Ernest quite simply cannot take his eyes off
her for a moment.
Naturally,
this drives Madeline to wild distraction. Her pursuit of a more rigorous
regiment of pills, lotions and injections at her local spa to stave off the
specter of Father Time is met with a rather cryptic referral to an imposing
Gothic-styled Beverly Hills mansion presided over by the sultry and half-naked
vamp, Lisle Von Rhuman. Who is this woman, flanked by a pair of Dobermans and
as equally impressive set of muscle-bound male companions (John Enos III and
Fabio)? Lisle introduces Madeline to a mysterious pink potion that harbors the
secrets of eternal life. At first, Madeline does not believe her hostess.
However, after a brief demonstration of its potency, Madeline agrees to pay a
shocking one million dollars in return for a small flask of this elixir she
drinks before considering a warning: that in achieving eternal youth and
vitality Madeline has incurred an everlasting responsibility to be kind to her
body; to nurture and look after it; also, to agree to disappear from public
view after a period of ten short years – either, by faking her own death or
simply moving somewhere remote, to stave off suspicions bound to grow about her
perennial youthfulness. Madeline wholeheartedly agrees to these provisos but
almost immediately becomes a victim of her own vanity, eager to test her new
body on some old lovers sure to find her even more desirable now.
Meanwhile, Helen
has arrived at the mansion Ernest and Madeline share, seducing Ernest with
visions of murdering his philandering wife so Helen and he can take up right
where they left off so many years ago. As Helen has obviously taken better care
of herself in these intervening decades, and Ernest is, as a plastic surgeon,
superficially drawn to firm bodies, he entertains Helen’s ambitious plot; to
taint all the wine glasses with a strong narcotic, knocking Madeline out and
carrying her lifeless body to the edge of a steep ravine; staging everything as
a drunken incident. Alas, this plan goes awry when Madeline, returning home
later that same evening, is confronted by an angry Ernest on the spiral
staircase leading upstairs. Ernest tells Madeline he knows all about her various
trysts and she berates him yet again about his inadequacies as a lover; a
miscalculation that causes Ernest to fly into an unanticipated rage; first
attempting to strangle Madeline, then push her down the flight of stairs,
presumably to her death; Madeline breaking virtually every bone in her body on
her epic descend to the bottom.
Ernest is at
first elated by the realization Madeline is no more, telephoning Helen with the
good news, only to discover Madeline risen from the dead and angrier than ever
at him. She is, however, in need of his help – to reset her twisted limbs.
Ernest takes Madeline to the local emergency. There, the attending doctor is
both perplexed, and then utterly horrified to learn the extent of Madeline’s
injuries seem to indicate she is no longer among the living. Though she is
still quite able to talk, her heart has stopped beating and her body is slowly
returning to room temperature. Unable to
explain this phenomenon, the good doctor suffers a fatal heart attack and dies;
Ernest hurrying to rescue his wife from the morgue and stealing away with her
remains for further consideration and study. Meanwhile, Helen has followed
Ernest and Madeline home. She confronts Ernest with their plan having gone awry
and Madeline, now realizing her husband and best friend intended for her to
die, instead exacts revenge on Helen by shooting her in the gut with Ernest’s
hunting rifle; the blast propelling Helen into the terrace lily pond where she
momentarily lays lifeless in a watery pool of blood.
It does not
take long for Helen to stir. Madeline realizes what has occurred. Helen drank
Lisle’s potion too. Though murdered, she cannot die. Alas, both women begin to
realize that although they are unable to expire, they have, in fact, destroyed
their bodies beyond any form of natural repair. Ernest attempts to shore up the
damage by applying layers of airbrushed flesh tone paint to their graying
cadavers, but it is no use. The paint gradually begins to peel, revealing the
ravages of their mutually destructive jealousy lurking just beneath. The girls
reconcile their differences and agree to bond together. However, when Ernest
informs both Madeline and Helen he has kept true to his promise to remain at
their sides ‘until death did them part’, the girls plot to kidnap Ernest to
Lisle’s and force him to drink the same potion; thus making him their eternal
slave. Ernest resists Lisle’s invitation to partake of this secret elixir;
escaping her Dobermans and security personnel into a vast ballroom where
assorted celebrities, including the likes of James Dean (Eric Clark), Elvis,
Andy Warhol (Bob Swain), Jim Morrison (Dave Brock) and Marilyn Monroe (Stephanie
Anderson) (apparently, all having escaped their fates by similar circumstances)
are indulging in something of a reunion. Unable to make it beyond the bolted
front doors, Ernest scales the rooftop instead. This ends badly when he loses
his footing, becomes entangled on a dislocating eaves trough, then plummets
through the glass ceiling of Lisle’s atrium and into her pool. The splash
breaks his fall and spares his life. Ernest escapes into the night.
Flash forward
for the last time: 37 years into the future. Ernest Menville is no more. Having
eluded Madeline and Helen all these years, he remarried, and lived a fruitful
second life that enriched not only his own prospects but also those who knew
and loved him best. The eulogy is interrupted by a pair of dissenting cackles
from the cheap seats; Madeline and Helen hidden beneath their mourning attire,
later revealing the grotesque ravages of their earthly bodily decay; skin
creped, rotted and peeling (I can only imagine the stench); the pair still
bitter/still fighting over the last can of spackle Helen has misplaced.
Tripping on the discarded can on the steps of the chapel, Helen and Madeline
take a severe tumble to street level. In their advanced state of decomposition
their bodies break apart from the strain; dismembered arms, legs, torsos and heads
lying on the pavement with Madeline’s upside down visage idiotically inquiring
as to where they have parked the car.
Death Becomes Her is so wickedly appealing as a
cautionary ‘be careful what you wish for’
parable that it lingers in the mind long after the houselights have come up. If
it were ever to be remade, in all likelihood it would acquire the trappings of
a B-budgeted horror flick instead of a perverted screwball comedy. The cache in
hiring three major stars and an award-winning director to helm this piece
ensured considerably more effort put forth to achieve even more unsettling
results. Deliciously, the film stands
its ‘fountain of youth’ premise on
end; the serum sealing the fate of these two highly unworthy custodians of
eternal life. Madeline and Helen have destroyed themselves. Now, they have
forever to reconsider the illegitimacy in this exercise. Unabashedly, Zemeckis
and his writers present us with even more contemplation along the way; Ernest’s
confrontational inquiry to Lisle – “then
what?” followed by a laundry list of ‘things
to consider’ before swallowing the potion. What if he gets into an accident
or is physically damaged in some other irreparable way? How does one live
comfortably forevermore without say an eye, or a finger or a foot? And what of
the loved ones who have not partaken in this nightmare. To watch the world
known best to us all grow old, wither and die while we remain perennially
trapped in a time capsule of our own design.
This is not
the template for eternal happiness but rather an everlasting purgatory from
which no amounts in ageless beauty can offer sufficient compensation. Topically,
if not philosophically, Death Becomes
Her challenges the audience to briefly reconsider this crisis in living
beyond the natural order. As written by Martin Donovan and David Koepp, Death Becomes Her may not be
existentially deep. It is however, wildly entertaining with some truly ‘gross
out’ moments and cringe-worthy special effects cleverly timed along the way, though
always to make a point against the argument that life eternal is preferable to
our present state of aging toward the inevitable end game. Moreover, Death Becomes Her just feels like a
Robert Zemeckis movie, imbued with the director’s trademarked jauntiness and energy,
his verve for acid good humor counterbalanced by these queasy and ghoulish moments.
We are, after all, watching two dead bodies fight to preserve at least the
appearance of life. The superb audio-animatronic technological wizardry and
tech-savvy dawning of computer-generated SFX still hold up remarkably well,
perhaps because Zemeckis never allows them to take over and dictate the action
of his narrative.
Even the
gaping hole in Helen’s abdomen gets a perverse hearty chuckle when, during a
subsequent confrontation, Madeline thrusts a shovel handle like a javelin through
this gaping hole, missing her mark but achieving an astonished gasp from the
audience as a weary Helen sits down with one end of the implement stuck between
the pillows of the couch directly behind her, the other protruding like a stiff
phallus from her middle. Again, no one
could confuse Death Becomes Her with
high art. It is palpably pulpy and downright farcical to the point of absurdity.
But its principles play its highly implausible narrative with an air of
conviction that is pretty hard to top; especially Isabella Rossellini’s
frequently nude, though artfully photographed demigod who adds unexpected girth
to her declarations “Sempre viva” and
“screw the natural order!” with
wild-eyed and sadistic abandonment. In
the final analysis, Death Becomes Her
is a healthily balanced SFX extravaganza with a compelling story to tell; far
more than the sum of its monstrous head-twisting, gut-exposing, fantastical age-defying
dark ride effects into the great unknown: a satirical comedy elevated by its
Hollywood trickery instead of slavishly devoted to it, unabashedly hostile,
occasionally sexy, and thoroughly hilarious with oodles of sass to spare.
Were that we
could champion Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray release. For almost a decade, Death Becomes Her has been available in
Europe in a Region B locked disc from Universal Home Video proper. It appears
Shout!’s ‘new’ Blu-ray is sourced from these identical digital files. Last
year, I was trumpeting the ‘new’ Universal edict that seemed to suggest their
tight-fisted old ways had had their day and the studio had since turned a
corner in its preservation philosophy; wholeheartedly invested to release complete
restorations in hi-def of some of their deeper catalog titles. Heck, last year’s
Spartacus (1960) seemed to hint as
much. Alas, my mistake. We have seen too many less than stellar efforts put
forth this year from The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas, Xanadu and
other catalog titles, either released via Universal Home Video or via third
party distributors like Shout! Worse, at least for Shout!, they seem to have
cut out providing a host of extra features to augment their ‘collector’s
edition’ series. What we get here is a truncated – if newly produced – ‘making
of’ – scant on sound bites from Zemeckis, and others who worked on the film
behind the scenes. No discussion about the sneak peek that necessitated cuts
and changes; no mention of Tracy Ullman’s deleted scenes, no audio commentary
to accompany the movie, and most regrettable of all, no deleted scenes to
showcase the missing footage that fans had sincerely hoped would add to their
viewing enjoyment. The only other extra included herein is a badly worn vintage
‘making of’ – even shorter on insight, depth and fruitful conversations than
the aforementioned featurette.
Death Becomes Her isn’t a washout entirely on
Blu-ray. Indeed, there is much to admire; certain scenes illustrating some
impressive clarity and considerable amounts of fine detail. Colors are robust.
But flesh tones veer to either extreme pink or orange, depending on the scene.
There are also more than a handful of scenes that suffer from a residual
softness. The main titles are plagued by edge effects, while certain scenes also
appear as though some artificial sharpening has been applied to unnaturally
enhance their visuals. Film grain is rarely natural or appealing; a few scenes
looking very thick and unattractive indeed. The audio is DTS 5.1 and fairly
aggressive. It supports the movie’s action without providing any standout
moments. Overall, factoring in Shout! does not do its own transfers, Death Becomes Her on Blu-ray looks
about as good – or as lackluster – as almost Universal releases put forth
during Blu-ray’s infancy. By now, we ought to have expected a lot more from
Universal. This is a middling effort – passable, but just that. Pass or stay…you
decide.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
1
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