"Mad!" "Hel!" That's how bookish Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) and diva Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) greet each other within the first minutes of Robert Zemeckis' brilliantly campy Death Becomes Her, and this sets the tone for the dark comedy's message of doom and gloom.

The special effects-laden classic is 30 years old this month, but it remains as fresh, hilarious, and technically dazzling today as it did when gas cost less than two dollars a gallon. And while on the surface, the movie seems to poke fun at the prospect (and consequences) of eternal life, it's actually much more than that – a study in the ugliness of envy and revenge and a bleak indictment of the pointlessness of existence. This shouldn't come as a surprise to Zemeckis fans, since his films frequently examine themes associated with the grim outcomes of tempting the cosmic fates. In Back to the Future, the lovable Doc (Christopher Lloyd) is gunned down by terrorists for building a time machine. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, cartoon characters that get in the way of humans suffer grisly deaths in a vat of lethal chemicals, and in Contact, Tom Skerritt gets blown sky-high for trying to pilot a space capsule to the Lyra constellation. Who knows what frightening events will await the little boy made of wood when he gets to Pleasure Island in Zemeckis' much anticipated take on Pinocchio that's scheduled for release this fall.

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Meryl Streep as Madeline Ashton Menville singing in Death Becomes Her (1992)
Image via Universal Pictures

In Death Becomes Her, Zemeckis' exploration of the dreary and downcast is more subtle, but visible nonetheless. It may also be his most pessimistic film about the human condition. The movie opens on a gothic-looking Manhattan, blanketed in rain, thunder, and darkness. In fact, the majority of the film takes place under the cover of night and rarely do we see the characters venture into the daylight. As the camera zooms into a half-empty Broadway theater, there's Streep's Madeline onstage, desperately trying to revive a dying career in a musical version of Sweet Bird of Youth. As Madeline flits and twirls in her "I See Me" musical tribute to herself, even the white boa she wears is dying, shedding feathers with her every move. Everything on that stage is expiring, yet Zemeckis' genius lies in making the audience laugh out loud at the sad spectacle. Zemeckis can't even help but remind us of the death of disco with the sampling of "The Hustle" and Madeline's "hoo-ah! hoo-ah!" riff during her hilariously painful song-and-dance number.

Madeline, insecure about her fading fame and youth, steals Helen's fiancée, renowned cosmetic surgeon Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis in a solidly underplayed comic performance), which drives Helen deep into psychosis. The next time we see Helen, she's a 200-pound cat lady living in a filthy apartment, eating frosting out of the can, and watching an old movie in which her nemesis Madeline is strangled to death. Helen knows her existence has become meaningless, and her one remaining comfort is to watch Madeline's existence become meaningless, too, even if it's just on celluloid, so she plays that death scene over and over again. Zemeckis delivers a gut-wrenching indictment of life's sinister cruelty in this scene, but he does it in such a hysterical manner, viewers can't see the horror of it all through their tears of laughter.

Helen winds up in a psychiatric facility, making her fellow mental patients go even more mental with her inability to rid herself of her obsession with exacting revenge on Madeline. Helen's life seems to be over, at least in the spiritual sense. Meanwhile, Madeline has married Ernest, but instead of living happily ever after, the couple has spiraled into a Technicolor version of George and Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Madeline's bitterness has deepened because she can't stop time from trouncing all over her face. Ernest is now a non-recoverable alcoholic unable to practice surgery, reduced to spray-painting corpses so they look presentable in their open caskets. It's a disturbing representation of the disintegration of the American dream, but there's still something genuinely funny about seeing Madeline wake up in the morning, literally held together with masking tape and bandages and insisting the housekeeper tell her how young she looks.

Within the first 30 minutes of the film, Zemeckis has presented a tragedy of epic proportions - three once-successful characters who have swirled into a vortex of agony and despair. The film could end here as a morality tale about the destructive forces of narcissism, greed, and envy, but instead, Zemeckis gives the players a chance at redemption in the prospect of eternal life. It could be argued that this is the point where the movie becomes a cautionary tale about getting what you wish for, but in the hands of Zemeckis, it goes deeper into examining the futility of existence.

death becomes her
Image via Universal

Both Helen and Madeline are introduced to the mysterious Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini in arguably one her best performances), a kind of female Dr. Frankenstein who lives in a cold, sprawling Frankenstein's castle of her own. Lisle has a potion that halts the aging process for anyone who drinks it. It comes, of course, at a great cost, and not just monetarily. In Lisle, Zemeckis presents a sexy version of the mad scientist, seductively coaxing her visitors to partake of the elixir that will rejuvenate their tissue and bring their deteriorating bodies back to life. While persuading Madeline to drink the magic potion, Lisle utters the words that encapsulate Zemeckis' despairing take on existence: "This is life's ultimate cruelty; it offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then makes us witness our own decay." With the magnificent comic chemistry of Streep and Rossellini, what should be the saddest scene in the movie is the funniest. The moment when Rossellini calmly says to Streep, "Now...a warning," after Strep has downed the potion, followed by Streep shrieking, "Now a warning?!" is worth the price of admission alone.

Newly svelte, stunning, and wrinkle-free after imbibing the magic Kool-Aid, Madeline and Helen set out to destroy each other. In Zemeckis' world, a new lease on life - eternal life at that - doesn't soften his lead characters. Instead, it accentuates their worst inner qualities. Zemeckis is having none of that tried and true theme of loathsome people turning over a new leaf when given a second chance. Oh, and about that warning from Lisle. It seems you'll live forever when you drink the potion, but you can still have traumatic accidents that will maim your body. Madeline somersaults down about 30 marble stairs and breaks her neck. She's still alive, but now her head faces backward. Helen survives a rifle shot through the abdomen by Madeline, but now Helen's got a gaping hole in her midsection. While the visuals are priceless, the message is dire - when you're awful on the inside, it'll eventually catch up to you on the outside, too. "Mad" and "Hel" end up so battered that they're forced to call a truce just so they can recruit poor drunken Ernest to repair them. They have no use for Ernest other than as a helpful handyman who keeps them somewhat human-looking. This is another dark theme the movie explores - that at their core, humans are venal beings who form relationships only for self-preservation purposes.

Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, and Meryl Streep in a poster for Death Becomes Her.
Image via Universal

The only character who experiences a redemption of sorts is Ernest. He long ago lost his soul, but when faced with a life or death situation, life being possible only if he drinks the mystical potion, Ernest refuses to let it past his lips. Instead, he takes a fall from a great height and lands in Lisle's swimming pool, narrowly escaping death. Eagle-eyed viewers will note the irony of Ernest crashing through a stained-glass window version of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" on his way down. Ernest then skedaddles, never to be seen again.

Fast-forward 37 years. Ernest has died and is being eulogized at a memorial service where the minister remembers him as a philanthropist and humanitarian who wanted to make the world "a better place than he found it." Just when the audience thinks a happy ending is coming, the camera closes in on two figures heavily shrouded in black and tucked away in the rear recesses of the church, cackling like two Faustian witches at what they're reading about Ernest in the service's program. Of course, it's "Mad" and "Hel," and they've clearly not been heeding Lisle's warning to take care of themselves. Without Ernest on hand to spray paint the damage and knock out the dents, the pair have finally earned the faces they deserve. They are, as the minister says, "the living dead of Beverly Hills." As they hobble out of the church with their broken bodies and faces that look like rained on Picassos, the anger and bitterness enveloping them for so long is now even more pronounced. They take one final tumble down the concrete stairs of the church and literally shatter into pieces when they hit the bottom, an arm over here, a leg over there, their heads upside down and spinning in circles. Again, while hilarious to watch, especially with Goldie Hawn's final line, "Do you remember where you parked the car?" the grim symbolism of this scene is pronounced. Here are two soulless human beings, cursed to exist in eternity as broken fragments at the foot of the house of God. Lives become scattered crumbles that even a higher power can't put back together. The message can't get much more unpleasant than this, but Zemeckis has ingeniously packaged it all into a nonstop laugh fest.

And that may be exactly the point Zemeckis is trying to make in Death Becomes Her. People are heartless, life is pointless, and we're all destined to end up broken and shattered, so maybe we should just laugh it up as much as we can as we go through it. As Lisle says, "Sempre vive!" Just make sure you're smiling when you do.