Death Becomes Her

In 1978, aging and fading actress Madeline Ashton performs in a poorly received Broadway musical. She invites long-time friend and rival, meek aspiring writer Helen Sharp, backstage along with Helen's fiancé, plastic surgeon Ernest Menville. Smitten with Madeline, Ernest breaks off his engagement with Helen to marry Madeline. Seven years later, Helen—now obese, depressed, and impoverished—is committed to a psychiatric hospital where she swears revenge on Madeline. Another seven years later, Madeline and Ernest live an opulent but miserable life in Beverly Hills: Madeline is depressed about her withering beauty and career, and Ernest has become an alcoholic, reduced to working as a reconstructive mortician. After receiving an invitation to a party celebrating Helen's new book, Madeline rushes for beauty treatments. Desperate to look younger, she is given the business card of Lisle Von Rhuman, a mysterious socialite who specializes in rejuvenation. At the party, Madeline and Ernest discover that Helen is now slim, glamorous, and youthful, despite being 50. Overcome with envy, Madeline visits her younger lover but discovers he is with a woman his own age. Despondent, she visits Lisle's mansion. The youthful Lisle claims to be 71 and offers Madeline a potion that promises eternal life and youth. Madeline drinks the potion, which restores her to her physical prime. Meanwhile, Helen seduces Ernest and persuades him to kill Madeline. After returning home, Madeline belittles Ernest, who snaps and pushes her down the stairs, breaking her neck. However, she inexplicably survives and Ernest takes her to the hospital, where she is deemed to be clinically dead. Ernest considers her reanimation to be a miracle and repairs her body at home. When Helen arrives and secretly tries to discuss her plan with Ernest to murder Madeline, Madeline shoots Helen with a shotgun. The blast leaves a large hole in Helen's torso but she remains alive, revealing that she has also taken Lisle's potion. Helen and Madeline fight before reconciling. Depressed at the reality of their situation, Ernest prepares to leave, but Helen and Madeline persuade him to repair their bodies first. Realizing they will need regular maintenance, they scheme to have Ernest drink the potion to ensure his permanent availability. The pair forcibly bring him to Lisle, who offers him the potion in exchange for his surgical skills. Ernest rejects immortality, afraid of being forced to spend eternity with Madeline and Helen and enduring the same physical damage the pair has already suffered. He flees with the potion but becomes trapped on the roof. Helen and Madeline implore Ernest to drink the potion to survive an impending fall, but he throws it away before surviving the fall by landing in Lisle's pool and escaping, leaving the pair in despair as they realize they must depend on each other for companionship and maintenance—forever. Thirty-seven years later, Madeline and Helen attend Ernest's funeral, where he is eulogized as having achieved true immortality by living an adventurous and fulfilling life and ending up with a large family after meeting his second wife, Claire, at age 50. Now grotesque parodies of their former selves, with peeling paint and putty covering most of their grey, cadaverous flesh, Helen and Madeline mock the eulogy and leave. Outside, Helen trips and falls down a flight of steps, dragging Madeline with her. Their bodies break apart, leaving them as disembodied heads, and Helen sardonically asks Madeline if she remembers where they parked their car.

Plot from Death Becomes HerCC BY-SA 4.0