Death Becomes Her (1992) The Deluxe Edition [CD]

From the storied collaboration of Robert Zemeckis and Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Contact, The Polar Express) comes the devilishly fun 1992 horror–comedy score, Death Becomes Her.

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn star as a feuding movie star and novelist, (with Bruce Willis caught in the middle as a plastic surgeon), as a miracle potion offering eternal youth goes off the rails: it continues to work even after death, allowing for ghoulish and ground-breaking visual effects as the characters try to maintain appearances despite their bodies being hopelessly mutilated.

Alan Silvestri’s score captures, as always, a perfect sense of the film’s tone: grand yet wry, large-scale and symphonic for the supernatural drama, but with a light-hearted touch of the macabre. Particularly noteworthy is a Devilish fiddle for the Faustian bargain the characters make with immortality.

“I always loved this idea,” says Silvestri in a new interview with Al Kaplan for this release, “while the world is unravelling, the Devil is just quietly sitting on a wine barrel or some such thing and just kinda fiddling along while everybody just shows up. There was something about the greed, all of these human qualities, the vanity…and the idea that, ‘Ah, the Devil’s just sitting there. He’s got nothing but time.’”

Death Becomes Her was released by Varèse Sarabande in a 16-track, 35-minute album at the time of the film. This Deluxe Edition CD expands the program to 27 tracks and over 51 minutes, with new liner notes by Al Kaplan.

A limited edition of just 2,000 copies.