Deathtrap

Sidney Bruhl was once Broadway's most profitable thriller writer; now he has had four flops in a row and lives on his wife's money. A play arrives in the post from a former student and it is flawless. Sidney says something half-joking to his wife: if I invited the boy here and killed him, the play would be mine. Then he invites the boy. The film keeps talking about its own genre. While the characters discuss curtain lines, two-hander sets and the rules for fooling an audience, the film applies exactly those rules, which is why no scene can be trusted after the first half hour. Sidney Lumet directed, from Ira Levin's 1978 play, with a screenplay by Levin and Jay Presson Allen. Michael Caine plays Sidney, Christopher Reeve the student and Dyan Cannon the wife. The kiss between Caine and Reeve caused argument in 1982; at one screening a woman in the audience is said to have shouted at the screen for Superman not to do it. Made for ten million dollars, it took nineteen. Reviews were mostly favourable, though nearly all of them noted the resemblance to Caine's Sleuth from 1972. Who it is for: anyone who likes thrillers with a stage origin and plots built on reversals. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism. It happens almost entirely in one house, none of the characters is sympathetic, and after a point the sheer number of twists dulls the effect.