Death Becomes Her

Death Becomes Her centres on Madeline Ashton and Helen Sharp, two women whose rivalry stretches back years. Madeline married Ernest Menville, a plastic surgeon Helen had once hoped to marry herself. After a long stay in a psychiatric hospital, Helen returns determined to win Ernest back and do away with her old friend. A magic potion promising eternal youth enters the picture, and the two women's schemes to eliminate each other take on strange and grotesque dimensions.

Robert Zemeckis directed the film, the eighth of twenty-three features in his directing career, following Back to the Future Part III and preceding Two-Fisted Tales. David Koepp and Martin Donovan wrote the screenplay, with Zemeckis and Steve Starkey producing. Meryl Streep plays Madeline, Goldie Hawn plays Helen, Bruce Willis plays Ernest, and Isabella Rossellini appears as Lisle von Rhuman. The cast runs to seventy-eight credited performers and the crew to 152.

Released in the summer of 1992, the film cost 55 million dollars and returned roughly 149 million worldwide, a solid commercial result. On IMDb it holds 6.7 out of 10 from about 150,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.8 from around 3,100 votes, indicating a generally favourable audience response. A critics' rating of 5.9 out of 10 from fifty-nine reviews places it somewhat below those audience figures.