Perhaps there's something to be said for the material transcending the people shepherding it onto the screen. Death Becomes Her is a flashy, femme spin on both The Picture of Dorian Gray and hagsploitation with an unmistakably Tales from the Crypt taste for poetic justice.
The best reason to see the film is Streep. She deliriously sends up the kind of show-biz narcissist who can turn a pelvic tilt into an expression of self-love.
In a film without a charitable bone in its body, there is no humanity to Madeleine and Helen (Mad vs. Hel . . . cute?); they are simply the worst that Hollywood can offer, repulsive Norma Desmonds for the digital age.
The contempt for women in this movie actually goes well beyond physical abuse, but it's the violence that gets the biggest laughs, and certainly the movie wouldn't have much impact without it.
Insistently grotesque, relentlessly misanthropic and spectacularly tasteless, ''Death Becomes Her'' isn`t a film designed to win the hearts of the mass moviegoing public. But it is diabolically inventive and very, very funny.