Word: deathtraps
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Homosexuals may have gained some ground with films like Making Love and Deathtrap, which proved that guys can make livings or commit murders just like heterosexuals. Partners takes back the ground gained, and then some...
...Levin's clever drama, things are seldom (if ever) what they seem, at least not for the first hour or so. It would be criminally unfair to those who haven't seen Deathtrap in either its play or movie form to reveal much more of the plot. Suffice it to say, reversal builds on reversal, a persistently wacky character arrives on the scene in the shape of, of all things, a Dutch psychic named Helga Tendorp, and things not only go bump in the night--they also scream and menace various characters with blunt objects...
...often Deathtrap looks like a film version of a staged performance, so self-consciously theatrical is Lumet's direction. The play was so successful in the theatre, that Lumet can't really be blamed for borrowing some of its techniques for his film. The Bruhl's Hampton home looks lovely with its woodsy interior but it also looks stagey. Doors, windows and a spiral staircase are too neatly arranged around the sides of the set; by shooting rooms up from the floor and down from the ceiling Lumet adds a closed-in effect that verges on the claustrophobic. This...
...DEATHTRAP BEGS to be compared to Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, another closed-room, twist-filled thriller, and unquestionably loses out in the comparison. But with intricate plot twists (which unfortunately tend to fizzle toward the end), and some snappy dialogue, it makes a fair attempt at matching the wit and elegance of Shaffer's play. Tendorp, the psychic, adds a nice comic touch by dropping by to see Sidney at all the wrong times, and prophesying ominously about a dangerous playwright named "Smith-Collona." Cannon is suitably daffy as the gushing Myra, and Reeve is, well, a hunk. Caine...
...Deathtrap is enjoyable, if easily forgotten. That its advertisements feature a giant rubik's cube probably says a lot about the film. You might not guess its first few moves, but once on your way things seem to get more and more obvious. A pleasant experience, if not a lasting one. And the novelty soon wears...