Quick! How many Oscar-winning zombie movies can you name that star two Oscar-winning actresses? Just the one, I’m thinking: Death Becomes Her. The Oscar it won was for special effects. Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep are the Oscar-winning star actresses and it also has Bruce Willis and Isabella Rossellini for good measure.
Now, this is a very different take on zombie, but they are verifiably reanimated dead people. As a matter of fact, there’s a scene in the hospital where a doctor is taking the vital signs of Streep’s character that is eerily similar to the paramedics checking out the two main idiots in Return of the Living Dead. No brain eating here, though. Just uber-bitchy diva behavior.
The deal is two women who hate each other both get this fancy youth-revitalizing magic potion that makes you live forever, except there’s a catch. If you die, you don’t die. Your heart stops, your temperature drops and you stop healing, but you continue on as the living dead. That plot is used to deliver a slapsticky comedy about the pursuit of beauty and youth in Hollywood. It’s pretty shallow but very well put together and fairly entertaining, albeit probably not what most zombie lovers are looking for.
My usually zombie-hating fiancée watched this one with me. She’s a big fan, actually (apparently it was one of her favorite movies in high school). Also, I should note this is one of the worst DVD transfers ever. Not only it is a chopped, pan-and-scan aspect ration, it’s also grainy, muddy and ugly. Awful.
Again, circumstances (watching with my SO, in this case) dictated skipping the short. But no worries, I have plenty of shorts to come.
I’d like to see Bruce Willis in a real zombie movie. Someone please write the script for Die Hard of the Dead.