Time Tunnels, Blood Baths and Wonton Soup: Movies on the Quest for Eternal Youth – Ranked!

10. The Wasp Woman (1959)

The aging face of a cosmetics CEO (a tragic Susan Cabot in her final film role) is blamed for declining sales, so she injects herself with an experimental wasp enzyme and sheds 20 years in one weekend. Unfortunately, that turns him into a homicidal wasp monster in this low-budget creature feature directed by B-movie maestro Roger Corman.

9. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) was the main asset in the first film of Disney's theme-park franchise, but that charm wears thin in this third sequel as he battles old adversaries, Blackbeard and Barbossa, to find the fountain of youth. The best moment, in the frenzy of frenzy, is a terrifying encounter with vampire mermaids.

8. Cocoon (1985)

It's a close encounter of the geriatric variety as the residents of a Florida old-age home take gentle rejuvenating dips in the swimming pool next door, unaware that the water contains extraterrestrial vitality. A cracking cast of Hollywood veterans, and Brian Dennehy as the alien-in-chief, keep Ron Howard's fiction grounded, although it's hard not to get a little foggy.

7. Dumplings (2004)

Bai Ling, whose extravagant red carpet outfits have enlivened many fashion blogs over the years, works her socks off like a chef who revives Xiaoji Dumplings for Hong Kong's elderly socialites. Once you know his secret ingredient, you'll never think of wonton soup again, though Christopher Doyle's brilliant cinematography makes the larger elements of Fruit Chan's film look like alley decor.

6. Death Becomes Her (1992)

Longtime Hollywood friends compete against each other to stay young and seductive in Robert Zemeckis' cartoonish black comedy Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. Isabella Rossellini steals all her scenes as the purveyor of a mysterious elixir that promises to restore their youth – albeit with unexpected consequences. The film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

5. Fedora (1978)

A film star goes to unsavory extremes to prolong her career and preserve her legacy in Billy Wilder's final film, revisiting the aging diva territory already mined by the writer-director 28 years earlier in Sunset Boulevard. William Holden stars as a Hollywood producer whose efforts to lure him from secluded retirement on a Greek island lead to tragedy.

4. Countess Dracula (1971)

In Ingrid Pitt Hammer's version of Divine, filmed again and again, Elizabeth Bathory plays a depraved Hungarian aristocrat who murders virgins and bathes in their blood to preserve her youth and beauty. Can he walk down the aisle to marry his lusty young lover before he wreaks havoc on his complexion?

3. Unbelievable But True (2022)

In suburban France, a married couple buys a house with an impromptu time tunnel in the basement. Anyone who crawls through it emerges three days younger. But the wife becomes addicted to turning back the clock on her body and becoming a supermodel in this deadpan black comedy from master of mundane surrealism Quentin Dupuis.

2. Monkey Business (1952)

The last (and most innocuous) of the great screwball comedies directed by Howard Hawks involves a chimpanzee pouring revitalizing medicine into a water cooler. Cary Grant plays a chemist who accidentally drinks it and goes back 20 years, leading to teenage high zinc, fast cars and hanging out with his boss's secretary (Marilyn Monroe), much to the chagrin of his wife (Ginger Rogers). .

1. Something Wicked the Way Comes (1983)

Mr. Dark's Carnival grants the residents of a small Illinois town a wish with a carousel that reverses aging by turning backwards. But there is a price to pay. Studio tinkering has lightened Jack Clayton's film of Ray Bradbury's novel, but it's still Disney at its scariest – especially the surprising scene where Dirk (Jonathan Pryce) corners the young hero's father (Jason Robards) in the library and tempts him with an offer to turn around years ago.