Death Becomes Her(1992)

Universal Pictures

PG-13
Rated PG-13 for some nudity and off-color humor
1h 44m

Release Date: Jul 31, 1992 | Wide

Two women vie for a man and the secret of eternal beauty.

Releases

Original Release | Jul 31, 1992

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Box Office Results

Updated as of Mar 27, 2026 07:07 PM ET

Results

Opening Weekend US & Canada:
$12,110,355
Total US & Canada:
$58,422,650
Total International
$90,600,000
Total Worldwide:
$149,022,650

Current Showtimes

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(U.S. Only)

Director & Top Cast

Robert Zemeckis
Director

Meryl Streep
Madeline Ashton

Bruce Willis
Ernest Menville

Goldie Hawn
Helen Sharp

Isabella Rossellini
Lisle Von Rhuman

Ian Ogilvy
Chagall

Adam Storke

Dakota

Nancy Fish

Rose

Alaina Reed-Hall

Psychologist

Michelle Johnson

Anna

Mary Ellen Trainor

Vivian Adams

William Frankfather

Mr. Franklin

John Ingle

Eulogist

Clement von Franckenstein

Opening Man

Petrea Burchard

Opening Woman

Jim Jansen

Second Man

Mimi Kennedy

Second Woman

Paulo Tocha

Landlord

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Dolby Stereo

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States

Language: English

Summaries

Plot Summary

The film opens with Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep), performing on Broadway in an elaborate dance number. In attendance in the audience are her childhood friend, Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), and her fiance Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis). Helen shortly after feels that Ernest has fallen for her friend's glamorous charms, and her fears soon prove to be correct, when their engagement falls apart, and Ernest marries Madeline.Dejected, Helen falls into a depressive spiral, in which she gorges on ready-made cans of frosting and becomes obese. Her days generally consist of her watching a film starring Madeline, in which her character is strangled to death, Helen rewinding this scene over and over again. After she is evicted for failing to pay rent, Helen is put into a mental institution. When called on to speak in group therapy sessions, Helen can only talk obsessively about one subject: Madeline. Her psychologist (Alaina Reed Hall) advises Helen that she needs to completely eliminate Madeline from her mind. In a seeming moment of epiphany, Helen takes this advice to heart.In the interim, Madeline's career has slowly waned. She has become obsessed with holding onto her once youthful looks, and is having an affair with a younger man, a fact not unknown to Ernest. Ernest has become an alcoholic mortician and their marriage has long since fallen on the rocks. One day, Madeline receives an invitation for her and Ernest to attend a book release party from Helen. Madeline goes, eager to see Helen as an overweight woman...only to find her old friend now svelte and beautiful.Helen's 'rejuvenation' prompts Madeline to slowly lose her mind. After she angrily chews out her spa technician, who says she can't do much more to preserve Madeline's looks, the owner of the spa gives his client a business card of someone he claims can help her. Madeline at first dismisses his advice, dropping the card in her purse. She goes to see Dakota (Adam Storke), the man she's having the tryst with, and finds that he's not alone, he has another woman with him. Madeline becomes furiousMadeline then looks at the card she was given and goes to see Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini), a lovely and eccentric woman who talks fondly of the power to overcome aging. Lisle resides in a large, Gothic mansion, and reveals to Madeline a potion that will restore her youth and make her live forever. Madeline eagerly takes the potion. Suddenly Lisle gives her a warning, telling her to take care of her body. Before she leaves the mansion, Madeline looks in a mirror, and is amazed to see her wrinkles disappear, and her body become taut and firm again.Meanwhile, Ernest has been visited by Helen, who attempts to seduce Ernest into helping her kill Madeline. Her plan is simple: After drugging Madeline, they'll stage a drunk driving accident that will get Madeline out of both of their lives. Madeline comes home and the two of them argue heavily. While both are perched at the top of their mansion's marble staircase, Madeline cruelly taunts Ernest, calling him "flaccid". In a fury, Ernest ends up pushing Madeline down the stairs, suffering several serious injuries and lands, seemingly dead. Ernest places a call to Helen, revealing their plans as he thinks Madeline dead...only to find Madeline revived, with her head twisted backwards and her spine protruding from her shoulder. After straightening her head, the two then go to the local hospital.While there, the doctor (Sydney Pollack) is surprised when his stethoscope picks up no heartbeat, and no pulse, which would technically mean that Madeline is dead. The doctor leaves the exam room, clearly distraught. Ernest goes out to find another doctor, only to return and find they've taken his wife to the Morgue. After finding her there, Ernest declares that Madeline is some kind of miracle.Returning to the mansion, Ernest notes that Madeline has lost color, and goes to his mortuary where he to pick up the supplies he's uses to embalm corpses including formaldehyde, tubes, spray paints and other things. He then paints her body and does her makeup. However, this process is interrupted by Helen, who has come in regard to Ernest's panicked call to her reporting Madeline's lethal fall down the stairs.As their voices get higher, Madeline overhears Helen's intended death plot for her. Madeline marches in with a shotgun and shoots Helen in the chest, blowing her old friend into the garden pool with a gaping hole in her abdomen. Ernest is freaked about having a another dead body on his hands. As he and Madeline prepare to wrap Helen up and dispose of her body the two are shocked when Helen emerges from the pool, still alive, with a gaping tunnel through her stomach.As Ernest watches, the two women then accuse the other of taking Lisle's potion, and then engage in a shovel battle, at which point Ernest goes back upstairs. During the fight, the two end up hurting each other physically...before finally coming to a reconciliation. Going to Ernest, they say they have made up, and ask him to fix them both up. Ernest agrees, but on the condition that he is allowed to leave them forever once he has finished.After repairing the girls, they are at first overjoyed, but then realize that their bodies require upkeep now; the spray paint Ernest has used peels and cracks. They realize only Ernest can provide the upkeep they'll need. Helen suggests they drug him. However, Ernest refuses and pours it out, saying he drinks too much. The girls hit Ernest over the head, knocking him unconscious.Ernest wakes up in the swimming pool room of Lisle's mansion, dressed in a tux. Lisle is swimming and steps out of the pool naked but for a long scarf and high heels. Since it's the first night of Spring, Lisle is throwing a party for her clients tonight but has taken time to meet with Ernest at Madeline and Helen's request. Lisle shows Ernest the effects of the potion and encourages him to take it as well. However, Ernest is reluctant, seeing a downside to living forever: he thinks he'll become bored and will have to watch all the people around him grow old and die, and most likely end up having to cope with Madeline and Helen forever.Ernest attempts to escape, but first encounters Lisle's party (at which celebrities like Greta Garbo, Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, Elvis, and James Dean have all gathered). Ernest runs away with Helen and Madeline in hot pursuit. Ernest ends up dangling precariously from a bent gutter above the glass windows over the swimming pool, where Helen and Madeline find him. Ernest still has the potion in his possession, and the two at first plead, but then demand that he take the potion. Realizing his 'importance' to them, Ernest drops the potion, and explains to the girls, "You're on your own," before plummeting into the glass and the pool below. Ernest lands safely in the water and finally escapes in James Dean's vintage Porsche.Helen and Madeline, acting on Lisle's orders, attempt to track Ernest down, first returning to Madeline's place, only to find Ernest has already packed and headed for the airport. It is then that they realize that they are now stuck with each other and will have to help each other forever.Thirty-seven years later, Ernest finally dies, and a funeral is held for him. The preacher eulogizes about Ernest's accomplishments in those last 37 years. In the time he had left, Ernest made more of his life than he had previously, becoming a mountain climber, remarrying and having 6 children with his 2nd wife, starting clinics for alcoholics, as well as one to understand and study women. During the sermon, the preacher claims that Ernest has obtained true immortality through his family, and the lives of those he had touched through his generosity and giving nature. The preacher even mentions Ernest the Prankster's long time "jokes" about the living dead in Beverly Hills.In the back of the church, Helen and Madeline, wearing heavy black veils to cover up their faces, are listening, and upon hearing the last part of the eulogy, Madeline mockingly says, "Blah blah blah blah blah blah," and the girls exit the church. Outside, the two women (whose faces look far, far worse due to their constant touch-ups), begin to argue, before Helen accidentally slips on a can of spray paint she dropped. Helen is in danger of falling down the chapel steps, with Madeline just smiling smugly. However, Helen isn't going down alone, and grabs her 'friend.' The two of them tumble down the stairs, before their bodies shatter into various pieces at the bottom.In their shattered state, Helen's decapitated head asks Madeline's head the one thing that is now on her mind: "Do you remember where you parked the car?"

Storyline

When a novelist loses her man to a movie star and former frenemy, she winds up in a psychiatric hospital. Years later, she returns home to confront the now-married couple, looking radiant. Her ex-fiance's wife wants to know her secret, and discovers that she took the same potion which grants eternal life to the person who drinks it as she herself already has taken. — Jwelch5742 Helen, a writer, and Madeline, an actress, have hated each other for years. Madeline is married to Ernest, who was once Helen's fiance. After she recovers from a mental breakdown, Helen vows revenge by stealing back Ernest and plotting to kill Madeline. Both rivals have secretly drunk a miracle cure for aging; they accidentally discover, when each tries to eliminate the other, that they have become immortal and that "life" will never be the same again. — froufrou 14 years after Madeline steals Helens fiancé Ernest, Helen together with the now alcoholic and downtrodden Ernest plots a plan to kill Madeline. Hovewer, due to Madeline having taken an elixir that gives her eternal life just killing her won't suffice. — karemor Death Becomes Her is a story of sabotage and betrayal. Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) and Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) have acted as toxic friends in one another's lives since childhood. Helen Sharp met and married plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), thinking her dreams of a happy life had been fulfilled. Madeline's malicious and competitive spirit becomes apparent when she purposefully breaks apart the marriage and subsequently marries Ernest herself. This tragedy sends Helen into a downward spiral, eventually landing her in a mental institution. Meanwhile, the marriage between Ernest and Madeline becomes more and more miserable as it becomes apparent that Madeline has never even liked him and will never love him. Madeline's misery is manifested into an adulterous affair and thousands of dollars spent on cosmetic surgery. She longs to be young and single again, while resentment grows toward her husband. Madeline is tempted into taking a potion, one that will stop the aging process and send it into reverse. She will soon be at her utmost physical perfection, a state she has missed and longed for for years. Her newly regained youth gives her confidence beyond expectation and she decides to pay a visit to her old friend Helen. She assumes that Helen is still overweight, after gaining weight in the mental institution, but finds her to be younger looking and fitter than ever. The old, long dead competition between the two women is reignited. Both want Ernest and will stop at no cost to have him. The competition becomes presumable deadly, until it is apparent that Helen has taken the same potion. This long time rivalry takes them both to very unexpected places. — Bearika