Ghouls on Film

“This is life’s ultimate cruelty. It offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then it makes us witness our own decay.”

Do you remember the time in your life (hopefully during childhood, else that would’ve been an awkward conversation!) that you comprehended your impending demise? Like, you’d known about death, maybe even experienced it with pets or relatives, but then your brain finally turned over and you realized that someday you wouldn’t be alive anymore?

I don’t remember how old I was, or what finally triggered my revelation, but I vividly remember being openly tearful and sorrowful for weeks. The depression about this nugget of knowledge was so thick, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see myself out of it. I thought about it the second I woke up and would stare at the ceiling, whimpering, when I tried to sleep at night. And then I saw Death Becomes Her.

Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn star as archnemeses who, through a series of unimportant (to this post) events, stumble upon a potion that promises eternal youth. Each woman reverses the effect of her respective aging and eventually even survives death.

This film became utterly fascinating to me, and found me at the exact moment I needed it. I watched it every time it was on television, no matter if it was from the beginning or not. Every trip to Blockbuster found me renting it out, despite its way-too-mature-for-a-child content (my parents must’ve been scared of me). This film ignited my love for everything undead that would cross my path in the years since and, while I still haven’t fully come to terms with my eventual death (I think I might cry just thinking about it), I do hold out hope that, one day, I’ll come upon a nearly-nakey Isabella Rossellini who’ll offer me the key to immortality.