User Reviews

Every time you think you have a handle on Deathtrap, another plot twist comes along. Best to just sit back and enjoy the ride on this one. Most noted for its on screen kiss between Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve (which was unfortunately cut from the televised version I saw), this movie has a great deal more to recommend it.

Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) is a very unhappy man. Once a successful playwright, his last several plays on Broadway have flopped. And while his wife Myra (Dyan Cannon) is nothing but supportive, in both the monetary and emotional sense, this does little to make Sidney feel any better. To add insult to injury, young playwright, Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), has just sent Sidney a play to look at. It's Anderson's first, and Sidney can see that the young man is a gifted writer. He jokes to his wife that he should invite Anderson over, kill him, and submit the play as his own. She laughs with him at first, but when Sidney actually invites Anderson over for dinner, she worries that he may really be putting his scheme into action. And her fears just may be justified...

It's a brilliant script. There are twists and turns all through the plot, and they come faster and more furious as you get closer to the end. It's the kind of film that has you on the edge of your seat from the beginning, and keeps you there the entire time. An absolute masterpiece of suspense and mystery.

The acting is excellent. Caine gives his usual excellent performance, and he does exhibit a knack for playing cultured, refined, and intellectual men. Reeve also gives an excellent rendering of a man who isn't nearly as wide eyed or innocent as he seems. Cannon's franticness works well for Myra. And Irene Worth gives a nice performance as a nosy neighbor who is also a psychic.

This is a film with an ending you'd never expect, and repeated watchings help to pick up on things missed in earlier viewings. An unsung classic that is unfortunately only remembered for a scene which ruffled some sensibilities at the time - and that is a real shame.

Christopher Reeve was near 30 when he made this movie, right in the middle of his various Superman movies, and his character takes quite a different path here. I think it showcases what a fine actor he really was, before the unfortunate riding accident cut him short.

Here Reeve plays Cliff Anderson, a young writer who had attended a mystery writing seminar put on by the famous playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine). Cliff contacts Sidney, sends him a manuscript for his first effort, a play called 'Deathtrap.' Sidney tells his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon) that the play is perfect, there isn't anything that could be improved. So Sidney, now with another clunker opening, needs something to get his fame and, more importantly, his fortune, back on track. So he hatches a plan to invite Cliff over, kill him steal his manuscript for his own, and all will be good again.

I didn't give anything away in what I wrote above, because all that is revealed in the first few minutes of the movie. But nothing, I mean nothing is as it seems from the opening. As the story progresses, new surprises develop. And that is the fun of the movie, which plays more like a filmed stage play. Almost all the movie takes place inside the Bruhl home on Long Island, and there are only 4 characters that matter. The 4th is neighbor Helga Ten Dorp (Irene Worth) who is psychic and can "feel" pain at various parts of the house.

SPOILERS. When you watch long enough you find that Sidney and Clifford are apparently gay lovers, and the whole thing was hatched by them to dispose of wife Myra who has a weak heart. Sidney and Cliff have an apparent fight, Sidney apparently chokes him with a chain, Sidney and Myra bury him in the garden at night, but when Cliff comes back in, alive, Myra has an attack and dies. So Sidney and Cliff set up house together, call each other endearing names, even kiss once on camera. There never was a completed play called 'Deathtrap' but Cliff is writing one which is based on what just happened. When Sidney finds out he does not approve, than the two men begin to distrust each other. This friction caused their disposal, and in the end it is Helga Ten Dorp who writes the play 'Deathtrap' and sees it to amazing commercial success.

First, the issue of Dyan Cannon's acting. She never was a top tier actress, and she;s not here. But I'm not sure she deserved all the bad press that she got for this film.

My biggest criticism of this film is some of the scenes when characters are yelling...no, I should say screaming...at each other. It's uncontrolled screaming, rather than good acting, and it makes some of the dialog a little difficult to understand. Uncontrolled yelling is sometimes mistaken for actual acting.

But then again, I never saw Christopher Reeve as anything but a very average actor. And he doesn't particularly impress me here.

I also just have the feeling here that this film is too clever for its own good, although in reality, it's not half as clever as it thinks it is.

Another complain I have is one that I always have about movies that take place pretty much in one room. I know this was a popular play, but I really dislike films that feel too much like a play. And this one does.

My fondest remembrance of watching this film back in 1982 at the theater is when the audience realizes that the characters of Reeve and Caine are gay lovers. Some woman in the audience yelled out, "Oh my god. Say it isn't so!" Biggest laugh I ever heard in a movie theater.

Really, the best thing about this film is that it takes place in an old mill which has been turned into a house. Unfortunately, when that's the best thing there is about a movie, it means it's not a very good movie. And then the very ending just confirms that.

FULL OF SPOILERS.

This is a pretty fast and enjoyable crime thriller based on Ira Levin's play about two gay playwrights (Caine and Reeve) that plot the murder of one's rich wife (Cannon) to get the property and the insurance. The plot succeeds but Christopher Reeve as the younger and less established of the two writers decides to make a play out of the actual murder -- with only slight changes in the details. Reeve allows that Easthampton, Long Island, can become Southampton, Long Island, in the script, for instance. The rest of the play's plot is a dead giveaway and to tell the truth Reeve doesn't mind a little gossip or even an inquiry into Cannon's apparently accidental death. It will boost the revenues and his own Warhol quotient.

Michael Caine is Sidney Bruhl, the megabucks-making playwright whose last four productions bombed and who would like nothing more than to quietly get back to working on a new play, perhaps with Reeve's input, that would redeem his reputation. He cannot permit Reeve's scandalous play-a-clef to be produced. So -- what else? -- he tries to murder him. In the end they wind up killing one another, the manuscript is appropriated by their neighbor, the psychic Helga Tensdoorp, and she makes a million bucks selling it to Broadway.

It's a lot of fun for a number of reasons. One is the production design. That multi-roomed, multi-storied house with the big windmill atop, situated on nine of what must be the most valuable acres on earth (Easthampton!) would be a splendid set of digs anywhere. You wouldn't be able to afford a pup tent in Easthamptom. The house is not overly large or baroque in its decor. It's just magnificently modest, although it's a little tidy for my tastes, the kind of house that's so clean you're afraid to step on the thick carpet for fear of leaving the imprint of a foot.

Next, the acting could hardly be improved upon. Caine, Cannon, and Fred Jones are superb. Dyan Cannon gives a pitch-perfect performance as the anxious wife whose slacks are so tight they look as if they'd been sprayed on, which is okay given her assets. Even Reeve, whose talent was limited, seems to find a comfortable niche in his role of affable but psychopathic murderer. Irene Worth, as the psychic neighbor Helga, was in some way hard to define, a mistake. Granted she -- or someone like her -- was necessary to the plot, but, my God, what an offensive snoop her character is, going around and claiming, "I feel pain in zis woom!" I suppose in order to make her a little more interesting, she's got up in sweats and a goofy looking cap with bicycle reflectors on it. Still, she's a nuisance from beginning to end.

You have to love Ira Levin's bitchy dialog. The distraught Caine begs Reeve to tell him why he wrote the tell-all play. "Because it's THERE, Sidney!" says Reeve, and Caine shouts, "That's MOUNTAINS, not PLAYS! Plays aren't there until some ***hole WRITES them!" Great too is Caine's call to the police after his wife drops dead of fright, as planned. He works himself up into a torrent of sobs, barely able to speak, as he reports the incident and implores that an ambulance be sent immediately. When he hangs up, his face assumes its usual placid expression, he blows his nose into his handkerchief, and walks away, all business again.

The climax, though suitably ironic, is confusing and noisy and full of artifice, lacking in the wicked charm that Levin and Lumet brought to the earlier scenes. The score is mostly made up of light-hearted riffs on the harpsichord, neatly fitting into the film.

You'll probably enjoy it.

"Deathtrap" is a cat-and-mouse game where the roles of the cat and the mouse are constantly reversed. It's a multilayered script (it's a movie about a play being written based on the movie we are seeing!), with witty dialogue ("You wanna know how good this play is? It's so good that not even a gifted director can hurt it!") and some mind-blowing twists for first-time viewers, while Sidney Lumet's inventive direction prevents any claustrophobia from setting in. Michael Caine gives one of his finest - and funniest - performances; his phone call for an ambulance is a classic. Christopher Reeve is also terrific, playing both to and against type. Dyan Cannon is a bit too hysterical, but she has one great scene where her dark side starts coming out. The movie only falters a little in the penultimate sequence, which is unnecessarily murky; other than that, it is even better than I remembered from my previous viewings. ***1/2 out of 4.

There are two big problems with the movie.

The easier problem to remedy is the pacing. There's just too much time spent on material that adds nothing to the plot or the ambiance. 90 minutes might have been a good length, but 120 minutes is way too long.

The larger problem is that the final twist is so stupid it destroys the rest of the experience. A satisfactory twist in a movie consists of three parts:

• the twist is unexpected

• the twist makes sense/plausibility within the movie universe (ie no magic deus ex machina, no lucky coincidences)

• the twist is organic to the storyline. Once it happens, we review the previous material in our minds and see that, yes, it makes even more sense within the light of the twist.

Something that doesn't follow these rules is not a twist, it's a gimmick, the sort of BS that leaves you swearing that you'll never again waste your time watching a movie by that particular director and screenwriter.

This movie delivers a completely satisfactory twist in the first act, leaving one to expect that the second act will be resolved just as satisfactorily. But no such luck --- the second act ends with a gimmick. Unexpected yes, but barely plausible, and utterly inorganic to the story.

The play (from what I read on Wikipedia) seems to have done a substantially better job of making the ending feel natural. So we have the not too unusual story of movie makers (the director? the producers? the financiers?) too stupid to understand what was actually valuable in the property they chose to adapt and insisting on "improving" it. Oh well, what can you do? The stupid will always be with us.