Movie About Potion That Will Mke You Young Again and Two Women

Imagine, for a moment, that 1 beverage of a unproblematic elixir could make yous immortal. You would never need to worry about crumbling or dying; the elixir would make you immature and beautiful forever, which would put you in some very adept visitor. This only has one catch: After ten years, you must "disappear" to make sure no i figures out you lot've get immortal. It'southward a no-brainer.

Just imagine that your biggest romantic rival — the person from whom you might have stolen the love of her life, years ago — has already become immortal, and is trying to steal your man dorsum. Neither of you know most the other's immortality, but both of you desire to kill each other.

Well, turns out that maybe information technology's non a expert idea to fifty-fifty try that. Considering at that place was actually some other take hold of. If y'all don't take adept care of your trunk, you'll have to deal with the consequences for a very long time...

Death Becomes Her, a 1992 comedic Gothic Horror story directed by Robert Zemeckis for Universal Pictures, stars the trio of Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, and Bruce Willis every bit three people trapped in a love triangle that somewhen turns murderous — if the people existence murdered could really die, anyway. The movie is best known for its special furnishings, including uses of CGI that were highly ambitious for the early on 90's. It won an University Honour for Best Visual Effects.

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Death Becomes Her contains examples of the following tropes:

• Absurdly Sharp Claws: In 1 scene, Madeline leaves scratch-marks on a wooden cavalcade.
• An Aesop:
  • Ii are delivered towards the stop. The first lesson: At the end, the priest giving the eulogy remarks that nobody knew who Ernest Menville was before he turned fifty. He became famous, accomplished success, institute true love and started a family after l. This drives home a point that you lot're never as well sometime to truly first living. The second lesson: Ernest may have passed on, but he also found "eternal youth" past carrying on a legacy through his children, grandchildren and through the memories of the lives he touched. That is the true fashion to alive forever.
  • Take responsibility for your actions, and don't permit other ride roughshod over you but for an easier life. Ernest is initially merely as bad every bit Madeline and Helen due to his weak volition and wallowing in his own misery, only when he realises what they've become he takes the initiative and decides to go out and quit drinking, and is able to build a new and far better life.
• The Alcoholic:
  • In the present twenty-four hour period, Ernest tin no longer use his cosmetic surgery skills on living patients as a result of his drinking. Information technology'southward implied his bad marriage is to blame.
  • Helen'south programme to kill Madeline hinges on making it look similar a drunk driving accident.
• All Musicals Are Adaptations: The picture show opens with Madeline actualization in an awful musical version of Sweet Bird of Youth that bombs.
• Alpha Bitch: Implied with Madeline, not then much when she's a White-Dwarf Starlet.
• Amusing Injuries: This film has the most disturbing catalogue of such injuries this side of a Tex Avery cartoon.
• And Then What?: Ernest wonders this when offered immortality. Even if he'due south doesn't accept any 'accidents' what'southward he supposed to practice for the rest of eternity? What if he gets bored? And why would he desire to be stuck with Madeline and Helen forever?
• Answers to the Proper name of God: "My god!" "Thank you."
• Anything but That!: "I want to talk virtually... Madeline Ashton." Cue cries of anguish from Helen'south psychotherapy group members, who start moaning in fear when Helen is asked to talk nearly something. Even the psychotherapist knows what'south coming.
• Armor-Piercing Question: It doesn't alter Lisle's thinking in either the short or the long run, but Ernest still manages to stop her ecstatic bluster nearly the potion expressionless in its tracks when he asks what's so slap-up nearly immortality.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Helen has plenty of unkind words about Madeline.

    Helen Abrupt: She was a homewrecker. She was a man-eater. And she was a bad actress.

  • This is doubly hilarious when you watch the flick and discover out that Meryl Streep —popularly cited every bit one of the world'due south finest actresses— plays Madeline Ashtoninvoked.
  • It's also the merely insult that really pisses Madeline off.
• Artistic License – Biology: There'southward some Squick if you think about information technologyinvoked. Helen no longer has a spine to hold her upright where the hole was diddled in her - but she continues to move as if she does. If the writers considered this the style they did Madeline's caput, it would throw off the balance of the story ^annotation non to mention, create a budget-killing FX nightmare at the time, then it'southward just better to leave information technology exist as presented in the picture show.
• Artistic License – Physics: The Brick Joke regarding stairs. When Madeline (and then later, Helen) is about to tumble downwards the steps, she seems to barely keep balance using the lesser of her heels even though the bulk of her weight was leaning toward the stairwell. In reality, it wouldn't necessarily take a Mythbusters episode to conclude that someone would automatically fall in that situation. This possibly was just a pocket-sized Slapstick gag Played for Laughs given the tone of the story.
• Attractive Zombie: The female leads may non technically be zombies, merely they're pretty close: they've taken an immortality potion and and then suffered a mortal wound. Their bodies are no longer living (and so they tin can't heal from any damage they take), merely the potion won't allow them actually die. At least initially they're still reasonably attractive, though by the cease of the pic they've had to resort to all-encompassing use of cosmetics and despite having had a long time to practise they're not very good at it.
• Audible Gleam: Of sorts. When restored to their peak condition, Madeline's breasts lift and set with audible pops.
• Batman Gambit: Helen's circuitous programme to murder Madeline also relies on the unlikely event of Madeline inviting her over for dinner. This becomes a moot bespeak thanks to Ernest.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Totally subverted per the anti-vanity bulletin as the injuries Madeline and Helen sustain after taking the potion kill their bodies and starting time a procedure of rotting after their deaths.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Marc Chagall (the bound commemoration emcee), Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, James Dean, and Jim Morrison are among several noted "dead" celebrities seen in the gathering of immortals. Greta Garbo is besides mentioned as being among their ranks.
• Berserk Button:
  • For Ernest: "Flaccid!"
  • For Madeline: "Inexpensive!" Madeline had already had the upper hand on Ernest — had she ignored his "Cheap!" remark, she'd have never fallen down the stairs.
• Betty and Veronica: Helen (a shy, timid Betty in the beginning of the motion picture) is desperately afraid her fiancé, Ernest, volition autumn for Madeline (Helen'due south babyhood friend, a flashy actress, and a definite Veronica). Depending on how you lot define the roles, though, they become less singled-out after the showtime fifteen minutes of the movie. Helen becomes more like Madeline and and then Madeline, too, becomes more like Madeline.
• Bittersweet Ending: Ernest grows former and dies but he leads a very happy and fulfilling life with a loving wife and family unit, a thriving career, many enjoyable passions and hobbies, numerous philanthropic achievements and he dies peacefully, fondly remembered at his funeral by many and with a legacy that will live on long after him. Helen and Madeline meanwhile are still live simply stuck with each other in deformed, rotting bodies they tin can barely walk around in, forgotten past everyone, close away from the earth and left with only one another for eternity.
• Black Comedy:
  • Damn directly — and poor Helen gets the worst of it. She loses men to Madeline, becomes so depressed and downtrodden that she is institutionalized and obsessed with revenge on a adult female for shit that started during high schoolhouse, and gets murdered by having a hole blown through virtually of her trunk... and for what? So she can spend eternity as a disembodied head. Someone give that girl a fourth dimension machine so she tin can erase her own birth from ever happening.
  • The medico who takes Madeline'south vital signs after her tumble down the stairs, who'due south initially skeptical about her "revival", ends up needing to exist revived himself and dies shortly subsequently.
• Apathetic, Blah, Apathetic: Madeline's response to the preacher at Ernest Menville'due south funeral service when he tells the gathered about how Ernest has found eternal life and that he was a man who would live forever.
• Blest with Suck: Shortly after finding out well-nigh each other'due south immortality, Helen and Madeline endeavor to kill each other. They are stuck in their broken, battered corpses for (it is implied) eternity. They utilise undertakers' techniques just to keep themselves looking and moving similar existent people — but their bodies eventually autumn autonomously. And they have to alive with each other, each the person the other hates most.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: See picture. Raven-haired Lisle could as well count as the brunette, if the trio is composed of the meaning women in the motion picture.
• Blown Across the Room: Madeline does this to Helen.
• Body Horror: Many of the Amusing Injuries throughout the flick fall nether this. Though by and large it'due south Played for Laughs, when you call back about living with all of those injuries, artificially masked, forever. Past the time of the movie's catastrophe, nigh xl years after the climax, both Mad and Hel are reduced to rotting corpses patching themselves upwards with paint and glue.
• Bookends:
  • The picture show opens on Madeline's head on the comprehend of a playbill laying on the ground at the entrance to a theater. The motion-picture show ends with Madeline'south actual head on the footing at the entrance of a church.
  • Whereas Madeline's first downfall was her existence pushed down a flight of stairs past Ernest, her last downfall was the result of being pulled down with Helen on her final flight of stairs after refusing to help Helen every bit she is about to tumble down said stairs first.
• Brick Joke: Ernest mentions that since makeup doesn't properly attach to dead skin, he has to use flesh-colored spray paint on cadavers. After existence physically dead for 37 years, Mad and Hel need to carry some around to cover their decaying mankind. One of them drops some, which Hel trips on and takes Mad with her down a flight of stairs. Falling downwardly a flight of stairs is another brick joke equally well, with one party deciding not to help the other from taking a tumble.
• Came Back Wrong: Inhuman Human. Technically, Helen and Madeline die, every bit they are clinically expressionless (no pulse, cold temperature) after being shot with a shotgun and pushed down the stairs, respectively. They are likewise subjected to decay now that they take been killed.
• The Cameo: Sydney Pollack is the first doc Madeline sees after her stairs accident.
• Cassandra Truth: At his funeral, the pastor talks of how one thing everyone loved well-nigh Ernest were his jokes such equally his "alpine tales of the living expressionless of Beverly Hills."
• Central Theme: Who Wants to Alive Forever? and the toxicity of vanity and competition are explored, showing the dangers of the latter and the drawbacks of the former.
• Character Tics: Helen tends to wring something between her hands when she's upset.
• Chekhov's Gun: The gun cabinet in Ernest and Madeline'due south business firm is a literal case. We run across an occasional shot of it throughout the moving picture. Madeline later takes a shotgun from the chiffonier and uses it to blow a hole in Helen.
• Chekhov'due south Skill: Ernest is seen trying to throw scalpels at a dartboard early in the film. He does poorly, presumably due to the years of alcoholism giving him shaky easily. Afterwards on, after having one of his hands rejuvenated to brandish the powers of the potion, he throws a knife with perfect accuracy only when he needs to.
• Chewing the Scenery: From 3 actors yous'd to the lowest degree expect to: Streep, Willis and Hawn. Of the three, Streep is not merely chewing the scenery, but she'southward having a scenery feast; this was after she'd done She-Devil, then had embraced the manicness of comedy at that point.
• Classical Antihero: Ernest is an extremely flawed man, a once-brilliant surgeon plagued past failure, alcoholism, and cocky-doubt, and very hands led around via his penis by Madeline and Helen. He achieves a more heroic status by being the one to realize the possible horrors involved in taking the potion, and the merely one of the three who confronts his bug with crumbling, accepts them, and emerges a better person. He also is a meek nerd who fears confrontation, merely ends upwardly saving himself from the undead women'south clutches.
• Comically Missing the Point: More than "dark comedy" but the end has Helen and Madeline gloating on how they're still live when Ernest is dead...ignoring that their "lives" are now every bit grotesque creatures who no doubt take to hide their truthful identities while Ernest lived a long and happy life with a family and legacy to retrieve him. And that's before they terminate upwards in pieces at bottom of the steps.
• Crazy Cat Lady: Helen in her obese phase has several cats in her messy apartment.
• Creator In-Joke: Helen says she drank the potion on October 26th 1985. This is the appointment that Marty McFly travelled back in fourth dimension to 1955 in Back to the Hereafter, which was of grade directed by Robert Zemeckis.
• Creepy Blueish Eyes: Helen's furious eyes afterward being shotgunned into the pool. Also a case of Monochromatic Eyes since the whites of her eyes appear bluish likewise.
• Death by Cameo: The doctor played by Sydney Pollack apparently suffers a a middle set on when trying to get a 2nd opinion almost Madeline'due south status, but realizing that the walking, talking Madeline is truly clinically dead.
• Decease by Falling Over: Madeline. To exist off-white, there was a long flight of marble stairs involved...
• Expiry Glare:
  • Madeline and Helen when Ernest deliberately drops the potion.
  • Lisle gives Madeline one when she guesses her age as 38; Mad speedily guesses 28 and 23 afterward. ^notation For the record, Rossellini was 39 at fourth dimension of filming.
• Deconstruction: The film manifestly focuses on the flaws of 'immortality' when you're clinically dead...simply immortality that goes to plan isn't that slap-up either; all Lisle's clients accept to fake their deaths and go into hiding x years after taking the potion, and Ernest points out that there'due south very piffling recourse if y'all go bored, lonely or merely tired of watching anybody effectually you grow onetime and die. Plus you lot have to be immensely conscientious of your health or any physical accidents...because you will 'survive'.
• Decoy Protagonist: A rare third-deed switch, from Mad and Hel's feud and becoming immortal to Ernest trying desperately to get away from them both.
• Description Cut: Helen's plan to kill Madeline is shown this way.
• Diamonds in the Buff: Lisle's enormous chest-covering necklace.
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: Played straight. After Madeline drinks the immortality potion and significantly de-ages, her husband Ernest asks, "Alter your hair?"
• Didn't See That Coming: Lisle's puzzled reaction when Ernest refuses the potion makes it clear that in all the years she's been making this offering, Ernest is the only person to openly consider just how horrible eternal life truly is.
• Distant Epilogue: The final scene is prepare 37 years later on the rest of the flick, placing it in 2029.
• Double-Pregnant Championship; The title tin mean "death suits her" similar "it makes her attractive", or "death suits her" as in "she's amend off dead". It can too mean "decease manifests in her" or "death takes her shape". All of these tin employ to this story of two murderous vanity-corrupted women who cling to their dazzler past the betoken of their own deaths.
• Double Take: Ernest has a particularly fast (and funny) one when he sees Madeline has taken a shotgun from his gun cabinet.
• Dramatic Thunder: "Siempre viva! Live forever!" and "It's a phenomenon!"
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Later Ernest escaped, he managed to discover happiness in the following 37 years and truly atoned for his misdeeds. He plant love, had children, developed fulfilling hobbies and devoted his time to helping people realize that getting older was not the end of the globe — and he opened an AA chapter and two clinics, to boot. When he does die, Madeline and Helen arrive at his funeral dressed all in black and mock virtually of the eulogy, fifty-fifty though they're pretty much badly-painted, barely-holding-together corpses.
• Elvis Lives: The King is one of several famous people who took the immortality potion and faked his own death. He makes appearances from time to time to take hold of a few headlines — Marc Chagall calls him out on this.

  Elvis: (sotto vocce to two women) Hey, I was only having some fun.

• Evil Cannot Encompass Adept: Lisle and company are genuinely puzzled when Ernest refuses the potion. They are too self-centered and shallow to care about the reasons he has for non wanting to be immortal. They similarly mock the eulogy a his funeral which says that while Ernest has died, his legacy would live on and it was through his family, friends and practiced deeds that he had achieved immortality.
• Facial Horror: Madeline and Helen by the end due to peeling and rotting, as well as one of Ernest's celebrity clients and his Cheshire True cat Smiling.
• Face up Death with Dignity: While hanging onto dear life with the clear option to have the immortality serum, (simply that would hateful he'd be stuck serving Madeline and Helen), Ernest drops the vial and accepts his impending death. Subverted when it turns out he survives the autumn and goes on to live a much more fulfilling life earlier dying in his eighties with the implication that this was his philosophy towards the end of his life.
• Fanservice:
  • Lisle. And her boyfriends/bodyguards. "Go on your ass handy."
  • Michelle Johnson in i scene, before her boss shows up to refer Mad to Lisle.

    Madeline: Yous stand up there with your 22-year-old skin and your tits like rocks and laugh at me...

• Fate Worse than Death: A major theme of the film, with the ii ladies finding themselves trapped in immortal rotting bodies thanks to their toxic personalities. Ernest realizes that becoming immortal to spend eternity alongside them would exist his own fate worse than death, and indeed, chooses decease in favor of it. He survives to alive a happy life free of them, though only as a result of rejecting them.
• Fat Conform: Hawn donned one for a segment of the pic. She never let her children run into her wearing it, reportedly because it scared them.
• Femme Fatale: Both Madeline and Helen, but Helen actually plays information technology upward, perchance across eroticism.

  Helen: You're a powerful sexual beingness, Ernest.
  Ernest: I am?
  Helen: Yes, y'all are. If I never told you lot before, it was because I wasn't the sort of girl who could say the word "sexual" without blushing. Well, I tin can now. Sexual... sensual... sexy... sex... sex... sex activity...

• Finger Poke of Doom: Maddy go down the hollllle. More like Maddy become down the long flight of stairs.
• Fingore: At some point in the 37 years before the epilogue, Madeline lost 1 of her fingers due to her apparent knuckle-cracking habit.
• Foreshadowing:
  • We encounter from Madeline's meeting with Lisle that clients are given a piece of Lisle'due south necklace every bit a pin for their habiliment, presumably as a sign of the secret gild they have now joined. And in the subsequent scene where Helen visits Ernest to talk over killing Madeline, precipitous-eyed viewers will run into that she's been wearing a pivot in the same place as Madeline, since the volume party. Information technology's presently revealed she took the potion as well.
  • Lisle's warning:

    Lisle: Accept care of yourself. You lot and your torso are going to exist together a long time, exist expert to it.

• For the Evulz: Mad revels in having (apparently) killed Helen with a point blank shotgun smash.

  Ernest: She's expressionless!
  Madeline: [mock gasp] She is? [gleeful] Oh. These are the moments that brand life worth living.
  [subsequently]
  Ernest: Life in prison? Know what that means to a person in your condition?
  Madeline: So negative. [eyes glittering] Can't you merely let me enjoy the moment?

• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Merely earlier Madeline drinks the potion, the bust of a man is visible rise in the canteen. Only distinctly visible in 1080 HD versions as in lower resolution the effigy blends into the swirl upshot. Visible beginning at five:09 in this prune.
• Genre Shift: The first ii-thirds are a nighttime supernatural comedy about Helen and Madeleine's rivalry. Then it switches moods... and protagonists.
• Ghostly Glide: Creepy nuns float past Ernest downward the hallway leading to the morgue.
• Giftedly Bad: Madeline's interim career never goes anywhere due to this, considering while she's pretty, she's just not that proficient. Equally a result, when she begins to age and her looks fade, her career fizzles out, equally she has no actual talent to fall back on. (In a meta sense, the viewer may notice some comedy in this casting, since Streep is one of the well-nigh lauded actresses in the industry.)
• Gilligan Cutting: Ernest tells Helen, "I have absolutely no interest in Madeline Ashton!" Cue the wedding of Ernest and Madeline.
• Giving Them the Strip: Ernest sheds his jacket to get loose when one of Lisle'southward baby-sit dogs grabs his coattails.
• Good Eyes, Evil Optics: When Helen's torso is killed, her irises become a colorless white, giving her gaze a haunting, piercing quality that signifies her physical and moral loss of humanity.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Lots of it, given the three leads and Lisle seem to savor one-upping each other. Literal "combat" as Mad and Hel shout insults at each other during a shovel fight.
• Head Turned Backwards: Later Madeline falls downward the stairs, her cervix is broken, twisting her caput 180 degrees. Of grade, she's still "alive" due to the potion.

  Madeline: My ass! I can see my donkey!

• Heartbreak and Water ice Cream: Helen Precipitous has her cupboards stocked with cake frosting several years after the heartbreak of watching her fiancé marry Madeline Ashton.
• Heel Realization: Ernest is a pretty awful person regardless of how bad Madeline and Helen are, being weak willed and rather spineless. He callously dumped Helen to marry Madeline and and then agreed to Helen's elaborate plan to murder Madeline. His realization comes from seeing what Madeline and Helen have go thanks to the potion and their hatred for each other, and subsequently repairing their bodies he decides to leave. He truly cements it when he turns downward the immortality serum, having personally witnessed two cases of its enormous downside, and not wanting to be trapped with Helen and Madeline for eternity.
• Henpecked Husband: Ernest. So much. He would rather suffer a potentially fatal autumn than bargain with his horrible wife for the residual of his life. Although to be fair, if she'd gotten her manner it would have been an unbearably long life.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Helen, subsequently her life falls into the gutter when Madeline takes Ernest from her. She spends a long duration of her life wallowing before getting back on rail, motivated by getting murderous revenge. By the finish of the film, both her and Madeline are most interchangeable with each other, and ironically the just friends each other have.
• Hidden Depths: Ernest, beaten down past years of his horrible marriage, at first seems weak-willed and buffoonish. For half the motion-picture show there are shades of What Does She See in Him? as both women vie for possession of him. ^note Madeline, at least, for two reasons. One, he's a famous plastic surgeon. Also, he'due south Helen's fiance. Past the end he comes beyond as the strongest and wisest character in the moving-picture show.
• Hollywood Mid-Life Crisis: All three main characters suffer this. Ernest learns to cope and capeesh what he'southward got at the end, and starts his life afresh at 50, ending upwards much happier and more accomplished than before as a result.
• Hot Witch: Lisle. With added skimpy outfits for audition delight!
• Humans Are Bastards: Everybody is pretty much a Jerkass, with the sole exception of Ernest.
• Humiliation Conga: Madeline undergoes i of these the day earlier she's offerd the serum. Non only has Helen resurfaced, she's now somehow far more vibrant and beautiful than she ever was before, while Madeline's looks have faded with age. Depressed, she visits her younger lover, only to find that he's lost interest in her and is dating a girl his own age.
• Ignored Epiphany: After hearing the touching eulogy nearly Ernest "living forever" (by being remembered by his loved ones), Helen and Madeline... completely miss the point, and chortle as they walk out of the service, assertive he hasn't really achieved "true" immortality, even though their own is a nightmare.
• Immediate Cocky-Contradiction: Lislie asks Mad to guess her age, saying she won't be offended — then gives her a nasty Death Glare at her guess of 38.
• Immortality: Helen and Madeline attain actual immortality. Ernest achieves a more Aesop-ish grade of immortality by the film'south end by being remembered after decease for his accomplishments in life.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Played with. The serum restores you to your prime and sets its immortality at that. Of course, if you kill your body similar Mad and Hel, you end upwardly looking like rotting crones from constant repair, as the potion does not stop clinical expiry or decay.
• Immortality Hurts: Averted. Neither Madeline nor Helen feels her injuries.
• Immunity Disability: The ii women proceeds immortality just before one suffers a cleaved neck and the other has a hole diddled through her stomach. They're immortal, certain, merely from then on, their bodies are falling to pieces, literally. The very finish of the movie has their bodies breaking into bits after rolling downwards the stairs and their heads snapping off.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: The doctor is so taken aback by Madeline he asks for a swig of Ernest's flask.
• Informed Flaw: Songbird! is quite catchy, fifty-fifty with the shoehorned disco bit. Which is probably what's pissed off the audition: the musical deviates so wildly from its source material well-nigh a pathetic White-Dwarf Starlet that one gets the impression Madeline altered the original musical's intent to glorify herself. invoked
• Irony: Madeline and Helen, who wish nothing more than than seeing the other dead, are stuck having to accept care of each other for eternity. Likewise, Madeline at least was primarily motivated by the desire to stop aging. But at present they're trapped in a far worse form of crumbling, which they can never escape— decay.
  • This happens to Ernest likewise, though in the opposite manner. With the tolls of his alcoholism behind him and his skill equally a surgeon restored (both implied to be the result of the small dose of immortality serum he was given), he runs away and ends up an accomplished philanthropist dedicated to fixing the mistakes of his ain youth, helping others and starting a family unit... all after the age of 50.
• I Take Offense to That Last One!: When Helen withal believes Madeline to have been murdered, she lectures Ernest, insulting her while the immortal-and-dead Madeline eavesdrops. Helen calls Madeline a "homewrecker, a human-eater, and a bad actress", and this final insult causes Mad to dig her nails into a cavalcade with rage.
• It'south All About Me: Madeline's biggest mistake. She even sings about it.
• Jerkass Has a Signal: While Helen's dr. could've been more tactful about it, she was absolutely right that Helen needed to forget well-nigh Madeline. Example in bespeak; Helen took the potion in 1985 and got to enjoy vii years of youth and dazzler, wherein she got her life back together and managed to write a best-selling volume. All that immediately went down the drain the moment Madeline and Ernest re-entered her life, and if she hadn't invited them to the premier party for "Forever Immature," she'd take continued to have a beautiful body, a career, and at to the lowest degree some semblance of life.
• Karma Houdini: Not but does Ernest receive no real penalisation for technically murdering Madeline, his life really turns out for the improve considering of what he does. Granted he goes through a lot of crap to get there beginning. One might fifty-fifty argue that the horrible life he had with Madeline was his Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation-Guided Karma for abandoning Helen given how miserable and unhappy he was.
• Lady in Red: Helen, in contrast to Madeline, who wears white and blue. Their color-schemes are switched in Helen's fantasy of killing Madeline (and in the pic), and from Lisle's (who wears both colors; a dark ruby shawl and a white "bathrobe") party onwards they're both women in black.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre: Madeline is able to figuratively "run across through" Helen. Afterward on, she'south able to do so literally.
• Large Ham: Both Lisle and Madeline fall nether this trope. Helen and Ernest also have their moments.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Helen and Madeline feud and take the immortality potion to i-up each other and besides achieve eternal youth. Their resentments ultimately terminate up killing their bodies, consigning them to eternal decay, and they are stuck with each other forever because of their actions.
• A Lighter Shade of Blackness: What information technology boils down to between Ernest and the two women. All three of them have done some horrible stuff, withal Ernest'due south sins don't seem nearly as bad as Helen and Madeline's. Ernest is somewhen the but one of them to have a Heel Realization and after escaping from Helen and Madeline and the whole toxic relationship, goes on to detect truthful happiness while also devoting his time to atoning for his by behavior.
• Lipstick Mark: A newly thin and young Helen leaves one on Madeline'southward cheek at the book political party, virtually certainly every bit a taunt.
• The Loins Slumber This evening: Madeline accuses Ernest of this. He doesn't deny it. He does later on remarry and have children, then it's probably cured by quitting drinking and getting out of an unhappy matrimony.
• Losing Your Head: Madeline and Helen at the finish, after another autumn down a flight of stairs causes their already decaying bodies to go direct to pieces.
• Lost in Translation: Whoever wrote the Russian dub, misheard Lisle'southward impression of Greta Garbo's famous quote "I vont to be lonely-ya" every bit "I vont to be a lawyer."
• Made of Iron: Ernest takes a horrific multi-story fall during the climax. If the affect with the glass far, FAR beneath wouldn't outright kill a lesser homo, it would surely accept stunned him long plenty to drown in the puddle Ernest lands in, just he gets right dorsum upwardly with little more a bloody cut on his arm. And he never fifty-fifty drank the potion.
• Major Injury Underreaction: This is a natural result of the potion removing someone'south ability to feel hurting afterward their trunk has died.
• Make It Look Similar an Blow: How Helen wants to kill Madeline - putting her in a car with a dozen empty liquor bottles and having it drive off a cliff.
• Manipulative Bitch: Lisle, and both Madeline and Helen to a lesser extent, fall under this trope.
• May–Dec Romance: The priest delivering the eulogy at Ernest's funeral mentions that he met his (second) wife when he was l. Since they had vi children together, she must take been considerably younger than him.
• The Masquerade: No one must know of the potion. The plastic surgeon fifty-fifty turns off his security photographic camera before he tells Madeline about Lisle.
• Meaningful Background Event: As Ernest speaks on the phone to Helen you can run across the twisted trunk of Madeline, out of focus, getting up off the floor behind him.
• Meaningful Name: All over the place. For one, Ashton fears growing old. Sharp is what Helen becomes. Both women go Mad as Hel. And, of form, Ernest Menville. Word of Godinvoked says that the names of the three main characters were deliberately chosen so that their shortened forms read Mad Ern Hel — Madder 'north Hell.
• Modest Injury Overreaction: This has stretched back to Mad and Hel'due south common girlhood.
• Motif: Mirrors appear all over the film, highlighting the looming importance of vanity in the story, and possibly inviting the idea of reflections existence inaccurate.
• Ms. Fanservice: Isabella Rossellini as Lisle von Rhoman. Holy crap, that dress. ^annotation Rossellini'due south body double during her nude scene, Catherine Bell, likewise qualifies.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Helen wants to kill Madeline, concocting an elaborate program with Ernest'due south help.
• The Musical: Songbird! is a Stylistic Suck adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth.
• Mutilation Conga: Oh boy.
• Neck Snap: An understandable outcome of existence pushed down a long flight of marble stairs. It'south not technically lethal, nevertheless, because the victim has consumed an immortality potion.
• Never My Fault: Neither Madeline nor Helen are willing to take any responsibility for the bad things that happen in their lives, endlessly blaming each other and whatsoever other alibi they can come up up with.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Or "Fixing It, Villain" depending on how you lot view Madeline and Helen. But either mode, while dangling over his (seemingly) sure doom, Ernest was clearly on the verge of really drinking the potion until they revealed that they only wanted him to do so in guild for him to keep maintaining them throughout eternity.
• No More for Me: Ernest's substitution after refusing Madeline and Helen'south drugged scotch drink. They clobber him with some vases instead.

  Ernest: Y'all know something, I drink too much.

• "Not So Different" Remark: Madeline and Helen come to the epiphany that they shared something in common:

  Helen: You take no idea what it was like, hating and envying yous at the same time!
  Madeline: You envied me? I envied you!

• Not Using the "Z" Discussion. No 1 in the motion-picture show mentions zombies, only managing director Robert Zemeckis openly admits in interviews information technology's a zombie motion picture — albeit with glamorous Hollywood zombies.
• At present You lot Tell Me: The downside of immortality is brought up a chip tardily.

  Madeline Ashton: Bottoms up! [drinks potion]
  Lisle von Rhoman: Now, a warning...
  Madeline Ashton: Now a warning?!

• Nuns Are Spooky: Ernest meets three of them coming out of the morgue. They glide.
• Older Than They Look: Duh. Lampshaded past Lisle, who has Madeline guess her age (71). Madeline commencement guesses what she thinks is a generous 38, which earns her a Decease Glare from Lisle, and apace re-guesses 28 and 23.
• Merely Ane Finds It Fun: Ernest is the only one in the audience who loves Madeline's performance, as the rest of the audience leaves. He fifty-fifty gives her an ecstatic standing ovation, calling out "Woo!"
• Our Zombies Are Different: Robert Zemeckis'south take on said undead. These are fully-witting people, but the bodies are injured and decaying.
• Parting-from-Consciousness Words: Ernest's distracted, irritable "What?" later on getting clobbered in the head with a vase.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Helen badly wants Madeline dead, but when Ernest calls her and tells her that he pushed Madeline to her (temporary) death rather than going through with Helen'due south more than elaborate plan, she isn't happy nigh it since Ernest's recklessness has put them in dandy jeopardy of existence blamed for the crime. For ane, he called Helen first, rather than the police.
• Pull The Trigger Provocation: During a tense confrontation at the top of the stairs with a rejuvenated Madeline, Ernest snaps when she insults him and most strangles her, before leaving her tottering on the acme step. She begs Ernest to pull her upward and he begins to... Until she shouts "Bustle up, you lot wimp!" Ernest responds by poking her shoulder and sending Madeline down the marble stairs in a bone-shattering tumble.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Helen afterward she resurrects from getting a shotgun blast through the stomach, courtesy of Madeline.
• Rasputinian Death: Madeline and Helen endure a lot of punishment once their bodies have been killed, only they don't really dice.
• Resurrected Romance: When Madeline first comes dorsum to life, afterward she and Ernest realize she's expressionless, it starts looking similar this until Ernest remembers how toxic their relationship was.
• The Reveal: Mad and Hel show up at Ernest's funeral wearing thick black veils. At kickoff it seems like they're just trying to hibernate the fact that they're nevertheless physically 20-somethings despite being in their 80s, but when the veils come up off, we encounter that their faces have been desperately painted and expect more agonizing than if they'd aged naturally.
• Rewind, Replay, Echo: Helen Sharp, during her Heartbreak and Ice Foam point in her life following the marriage of her fiancé to her rival Madeline Ashton, constantly replays a scene in a movie she's watching of Madeline's character being strangled to death, all while the landlord has the law suspension into her apartment and drag her away.
• Riddle for the Ages: But how much did that potion toll?!
  • According to the script: One million dollars.
• Room Total of Crazy: Helen's vanity mirror is covered with contradistinct pictures of Madeline that makes her look like Heath Ledger's Joker.
• Rule of Funny: The life-ending injuries that Helen and Madeline inflicted on each other are more slapstick than realistic/scary. If there's fifty-fifty any effort to wait realistic, Helen shouldn't even be able to walk upright without a spine and the repeated impacts to Madeline'south neck and head would likely look more gory than the rubber-like appearance we go in the bodily movie.
• Rule of Pool: Helen is blown into a pond thanks to a shotgun smash in the stomach, and Ernest falls into a pool at Lisle's estate.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Ernest has them for a moment when Helen finishes outlining her plot to kill Madeline.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!:
  • Ernest'south attitude towards the end. He successfully escapes, taking the aforementioned dartboard with him.
  • Madeline upon seeing the newly restored Helen, who'due south stunning in a sexy red dress.
• The '70s: Painfully so during the opening scene, specially when Songbird! incorporates "Do The Hustle" in its big number.
• Sexless Marriage: Madeline and Ernest, because The Loins Sleep Tonight. Madeline calls him out on information technology, request when the final time he had sex activity with her ("a existent man") so calls him "flaccid".
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: One scene has Lisle stepping out of the pool nude salvage for high heels and a long scarf.
• Shout-Out:
  • "She's not resting, she's Dead!"
  • "I vant to exist alone!"
  • "Information technology'southward alive!"
  • Helen claimed she took the potion on October 26th, 1985 — a date in which another boggling event occurred in some other Robert Zemeckis picture.
  • Helen wants to "completely erase" Meryl Streep's character, something Roseanne Barr's character wants to do in She-Devil.
  • Elvis Presley attends Lisle'southward political party, every bit does Jim Morrison in a Freeze-Frame Bonus. Also, Ernest passes by James Dean at the door.
  • Songbird! is a reference to a similar hotel musical scene from 1978's Sextette, though Madeline sings and moves a lot better than 87-twelvemonth-old Mae Due west.
• Shovel Strike: Helen and Madeline go at information technology by attacking each other with shovels- the shovels each wanted Ernest to bury the other with.
• Show Within a Show: Songbird!, a musical adaptation of Sweet Bird Of Youth.
• Sistine Steal: The stained-glass skylight that Ernest destroys when he falls after refusing immortalityinvoked is cleaved precisely where God and Adam's fingertips are most to impact.
• Skewed Priorities: Afterward leaving Ernest'south funeral, both Madeline and Helen fall downwards stairs, which causes their already decaying bodies to intermission autonomously.

  Helen'south broken-off head: [to Madeline's broken-off head] Did you lot remember where yous parked the machine?

• Slapstick: This motion-picture show would autumn under this category due to the cartoonish nature of the Amusing Injuries Helen and Madeline receive.
• Slapstick Knows No Gender: Helen and Madeline received the almost pratfalls due to their undead states.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Zemeckis' 2d-well-nigh cynical picture show after Used Cars.
• Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration: Type Two.
• So Bad, It's Good: Played with in-universe. While most viewers of Songbird! hated it, Ernest roughshod in dear with Madeline through watching her perform, finer triggering the plot.
• Soft Water: Ernest'due south swan dive off the acme of a huge mansion, through a stained-glass skylight, and into an indoor pool leaves him with only a nasty-looking cut on his arm. He hits the basically-apartment skylight on his back (which would minimize firsthand cuts) and the window breaking reduced the force of that bear upon considerably while slowing down his speed enough to keep the water from killing him on second impact. In the commencement draft, Ernest was supposed to die in the fall, with the film ending at his funeral.
• Spiritual Successor: This film shares some thematic elements with the 1960 B-horror movie The Leech Woman: A bitter adult female, trapped in a loveless union with a selfish and superficial doctor, is given the hush-hush to eternal youth by a mysterious woman named Malla. The final act has her using her newly-caused practiced looks to effort stealing a pretty young rival'due south young man. In both films, the secret comes at a cost that makes both female leads become desperate. Leech Woman as well used make-upwards effects to make star Coleen Grayness seem older than she actually is at the offset of the motion-picture show.
• Staircase Tumble: Two examples. The beginning time, Ernest finally snaps when Madeline insults him as he hesitates to terminate her from falling, and he gives her the concluding push; she breaks her cervix on the style down. The second time, information technology is Helen who is teetering at the summit of a staircase while Madeline simply smiles maliciously — until Helen drags her downward as well. From years of immortal decay, they are in such battered and rickety shape they literally smash into pieces when they striking the ground. And they are yet alive.
• Stalker Shrine: Helen Sharp has one of her nemesis and rival Madeline Ashton.
• Stalling the Sip: Ernest is holding a drink laced with a sedative. Nevertheless, his angry rant involves many thousand gestures, spilling near all of the drinkable. At the finish of the rant, he goes to take a sip, before deciding he's giving up alcohol, and throws out the rest of the drink. Then the women, thinking apace, knock him out with a vase.
• Stealth Insult: The girls' affectionate nicknames for each other, crooned as if delighted to see one another. Which is also a sort of Stealth Pun for when they're in Vitriolic All-time Buds mode.
• Stripperiffic: Lisle's chief outfit, which consists of a long cherry-red skirt with a slit up the leg that reaches her waist, and nothing above the waist except for a massive bejeweled necklace.
• Stylistic Suck: Just Meryl Streep, one of the best actresses in the world, could assuredly play one of the worst hams to e'er (dis)grace stage and/or screen.
• Supernatural Aristocracy: Lisle'due south clientele is made up of 'dead' celebrities as they're the only ones who would both be able to afford the potion and whom Lisle would deem worthy of living for eternity.
• "Have That!" Buss: At the book party, Helen, having lost at least a hundred pounds of weight and looking more cute than she had pre-obesity, plants a lipstick buss on Madeline, whom she knows is feeling bitter about her aging and fading star, specially after seeing Helen's miraculous youth and beauty and smash new book release.
• Taking You with Me: At the very end of the flick, Helen is virtually to fall down the stairs in forepart of the church afterward slipping on a can of spray paint. Madeline eventually decides to let her fall, so Helen grabs Madeline and they both tumble down the stairs, slap-up into pieces on the ground.
• Tap on the Head: Ernest gets clobbered with two vases and knocked unconscious, but seems to suffer no further sick effects once he revives.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Helen to Madeline before they fight: "En garde, Bitch!"
• Besides Dumb to Alive: Seriously Madeline, when you're about to autumn downward the stairs and the simply person who can save you lot is your embittered husband, you lot do not insult him. Information technology's telling that Helen lived seven years with her youthful torso earlier she got that hole blown through her trunk, while Madeline didn't even last a full day.
• Took a Level in Badass: After Mad becomes acclimated to being dead, she becomes a lot more than nasty and clever.

  Madeline: What if the police force should receive an anonymous phone phone call virtually you and notice me on the floor not breathing, no pulse? [Psychotic Smirk] Ain't nobody can play dead like me, Ernest. What volition you tell them? You're going to be very popular in prison.

• Trunk with a View: Helen gets a huge pigsty in her stomach after Madeline blows her away with a double-butt shotgun. Information technology actually comes in handy when Madeline throws the remains of her shovel at Helen and it goes through the hole without touching the rest of Helen's trunk.
• Trailers Ever Spoil: The trailer features a shot of Helen with a hole in her breadbasket and therefore gives away the twist that she too has taken the potion.
• Troll: Seems Elvis enjoys making appearances simply to freak people out. He gets teasingly called out for it past the emcee.
• Unfolding Plan Montage: Helen outlines a plan to kill Madeline, simply this is subverted when it turns out to be an Imagine Spot.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: "It'southward a dislocated cervix!" The doctor at the hospital has a kind of No-Sell reaction to this, becoming slightly flustered but dealing with it very well. He then calmly steps outside...and has a heart attack. Very much justified and Truth in Television receiver as doctors are taught to keep focused in sure situations.
• The Unfair Sex: Very, very much averted. Ernest is depicted as a Prissy Guy and The Woobieinvoked no matter what he does — including dumping his fiancé for her friend and trying to murder his nasty wife — while the main women in the film are thoroughly irredeemable. Some of it gets subverted on the grounds that Ernest dumping Helen for Madeline bit him hard when his life turned into a joke, going from a respected plastic surgeon to a funeral cosmetologist, becoming an alcoholic, and getting stuck in a loveless relationship. It'south not then much that Ernest is a Dainty Guy, as the shit he pulls isn't as bad as the vindictive hatred Helen and Madeline have for each other.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Madeline and Helen, who are both vain and selfish female leads with the onetime concerned with obtaining her youth and the latter wanting to steal dorsum Ernest and get her revenge on Madeline. Their manipulative and murderous ways make them lean more toward Villain Protagonist.
• The Vamp: Lisle and, to a bottom extent, both Madeline and (post-makeover) Helen fall into this trope.
• Vanity Is Feminine: While all of the principal cast has their drove of vices, the plot is only able to boot off because the girls feared aging and even to the terminate badly try to proceed their good looks. Meanwhile, the very much masculine Ernest realizes his life doesn't end when his youth does and spends the residue of his life accepting death.
• Wacky Sound Effect: Madeline's de-aging breasts raise themselves and readjust with a cartoonish "pop!"
• Waking Up at the Morgue: Subverted. Madeline learns that her body has died, and faints at the doctor'due south. But considering they can't tell she's unconscious, non dead, they send her to the morgue, where she wakes over again.

  Ernest: The morgue? She'll be furious!

• Walking Out on the Show: In the movie'southward opening scene, Madeline stars in Songbird!, a musical adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth with copious amounts of Stylistic Suck. Audience members go out in droves; most of the ones who stay are only doing so considering they've fallen asleep. Ernest is the only person who loves the performance — much to Helen's alert.
• We Could Have Avoided All This: Madeline and Helen practise reconcile their differences, admitting they were secretly jealous of each other since they were kids. Had they hashed it out before taking the potion, they a) wouldn't be dead, b) they wouldn't have completely alienated Ernest, whom they realize they need to maintain them later all the damage they did.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Rose, Madeline'south personal maid, disappears without explanation after the opening scenes. A deleted scene explained that Ernest let her and the residual of the staff go the morning following Madeline'south autumn, so that no i else would discover their secret "miracle."
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The film presents a surprisingly philosophical discussion of this trope. Of course, when the priest eulogizing Ernest says he'd found the underground to immortality through his children and his skillful works, Helen and Madeline both mock the eulogy.
• World of Ham: Nearly everyone devours scenery similar it'southward going out of mode. Isabella Rossellini, in particular, takes the cake. And eats it too.
• Wound That Volition Not Heal: Subsequently Madeline and Helen potable the immortality potion, they suffer injuries that turn them into walking corpses. Had they been more conscientious, they would have had forever-living bodies, but now they cannot die aslope them. For all intents and purposes, they're zombies; their souls are jump to their bodies forever, merely since their bodies are clinically dead, they no longer have the power to heal. Mad ignored Lisle's warning during the "Now a warning?" substitution: "Take care of yourself. You and your trunk are going to be together a long fourth dimension, be practiced to it."
• Wrecked Weapon: When Madeline and Helen are hitting at each other with shovels, Madeline's gets cut through by Helen's.
• Yank the Canis familiaris's Concatenation: When faced with a life or death situation, Madeline and Helen nearly convince Ernest to take the potion. No doubt he believed for a moment that they were concerned for his well-being for once. ...And so they say out loud that he must take the potion, considering they need him to maintain their expressionless bodies. This is reconstructed, as it finally lets Ernest see both girls' true nature and truly sever his ties with them.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/DeathBecomesHer

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