Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Deathtrap Blu-ray Movie Review

The Play Isn't the Thing

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 30, 2012

As a novelist, Ira Levin was a success whose bestsellers included Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives. As a playwright, however, he usually struck out. But on the one occasion when Levin hit the theatrical jackpot, he really hit it. Levin's play Deathtrap opened on Broadway in February 1978 and played for over four years, setting records that remain unbroken to this day. Even the release of this film directed by master craftsman Sidney Lumet didn't dent ticket sales at the Music Box Theatre (which is the same Broadway theater featured in the film).

As with many successful feats of authorship, Levin started with what he knew. Deathtrap is about a playwright (indeed, two of them) struggling to write a commercially successful play—specifically, a "one-set, five-character, two-act play", which is a format that is relatively cheap to produce and therefore easy to shop to potential investors. Not by coincidence, Deathtrap itself is just such a play; it used a single set, featured five characters and divided neatly into two acts with a stunning curtain close between them to ensure that patrons would return to their seats after intermission.

Prolific screenwriter Jay Presson Allen (Cabaret, Marnie) adapted Levin's script for the screen, retaining much of his original dialogue and wisely leaving most of the action where Levin had set it, in the established playwright's country home (relocated from Westport, Connecticut to Easthampton on Long Island). Under Lumet's direction, the result never feels stagebound, but theatricality is inherent in the material. Deathtrap is a thriller, but it's also a comedy peopled by outsized, eccentric personalities. They're supposed to be outlandish, and it's essential that a viewer approach the film with that expectation.

Deathtrap is one of the first Blu-ray releases by the Warner Archive Collection (WAC), which produces limited quantities on demand of catalog titles for which the studio does not anticipate sufficient sales to justify a wide release. The WAC releases are available either directly from Warner or from retailers who have chosen to offer them for resale.

To paraphrase Deathtrap's trailer, to say too much would be a crime. The film has several major developments that anyone who hasn't seen it wouldn't want spoiled. (If you've already seen either the film or the play, it's still fun to watch these moments coming.)

The film opens with playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) cowering in the back of the Music Box Theatre watching his latest play flop on opening night. Before the curtain even falls, Sidney has retired to his favorite theater district bar to be consoled by the bartender, Burt (reliable character actor Tony DiBenedetto), but it gets even worse when the critics weigh in. Several theater critics of the era appear as themselves giving harsh reviews on late-night TV, and they show no mercy. Early the next morning, Sidney stumbles drunkenly into his Easthampton country home and informs his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon), that his career is finished.

As if to rub salt in the wound, Sidney has received a manuscript from a former student in a play writing seminar. The student, Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve, at the height of his Superman fame), wants his erstwhile teacher to be the first pair of eyes to peruse his new manuscript. He's written a play called (you guessed it!) Deathtrap, and it's a stunner: tightly plotted with sharply written dialogue, five characters, one set, two acts, murders and clever twists. This is the very thing that Sidney has been trying and failing to write for the last few years. "Even a gifted director couldn't hurt it!" he moans to Myra.

If only Sidney had written Deathtrap. Maybe he still can. As Sidney begins mapping out a plan to murder Clifford and steal his play, Myra first thinks he's joking and then is horrified as it dawns on her that her beloved husband may have turned homicidal. A high-strung drama queen, Myra hasn't been well lately, which is why she didn't accompany Sidney to last night's premiere. Myra's piercing shriek whenever she's startled, which is often, is one of the film's running jokes. When Clifford arrives at their home, to all appearances thrilled at the invitation and eager to hear whatever pearls of wisdom Sidney has to offer, Myra's anxiety reaches epic proportions as she attempts to discern her husband's true intentions. (Dyan Cannon was nominated for a Razzie for Deathtrap, and it was unfair, since she no doubt gave exactly the performance for which Lumet asked. For certain kinds of material, he liked extreme performances.)

Adding to the tension is the presence of a new neighbor, a famous psychic from Holland named Helga Ten Dorp (Irene Worth), who shares an agent with Sydney and has come to America to promote her new book. Miss Ten Dorp appears abruptly at the Bruhls' home, announcing that she feels "pain" in the house. She then proceeds to swan about the place making the kind of precise but cryptic pronouncements that only occur in murder mysteries. (Seizing a dagger in Sidney's collection that an actress used to commit a murder in one of his earlier productions, Ten Dorp declares: "Will be used again by another woman, not in play, but because of play.") The name "Ten Dorp" is an anagram of "portend", and much of what the Dutch psychic tells the Bruhls is too close to the truth for comfort. But as with most psychics, the crucial facts always remain shrouded in fog.

The fifth character in the play was Sidney's attorney, Porter Milgrim (Henry Jones), who also appears in the film in a reduced role, along with additional characters that Allen's expansion of the script permitted along the way, including Sidney's philistine producer (Joe Silver). But the main characters remain the Bruhls, Clifford the young author and the nosy clairvoyant with the strange accent. More than that I cannot say.

Lumet's directing experience included the stage, television and previous stage-to-screen adaptations, and he knew all the potential pitfalls of taking a play onto celluloid. Quietly and unobtrusively, he keeps moving the camera and shifting the perspective so that you never feel like you're watching a group of actors perform dialogue. More often, you feel like you're among these people, even when they're behaving so strangely that you feel like they come from another world (which is most of the time).

Deathtrap Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

According to published comments attributed to Warner's George Feltenstein, this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray release of Deathtrap is based on a new high-definition transfer. It certainly looks it. All of the meticulous detail in Sidney Bruhl's elaborately precious country home—from the dainty living room decor, to the museum-like study, to the bedroom beneath the weighty mechanisms of an endlessly turning old windmill (gee, that's not unsettling or anything!)—can be fully appreciated, along with every tiny shift in expression and sideward glance, as Lumet and cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak push in close to observe the faces of Sidney, Myra and Clifford. During the opening sequence in the city, colors are often cool, even downright chilly. They warm considerably when Sidney reaches the country—all those brown woods and earth tones—but the warmth is an illusion. Myra has a greenhouse with ultraviolet grow lights, whose sickly purple glow seems to expand and contract with the evil intentions of certain players onscreen (the "pain" that Helga Ten Dorp feels next door). That light is a classic stage effect discreetly transferred to the movie screen.

The image is so clean that, for a film of this vintage, one suspects a touch of grain removal. I stress the word "suspects", because I have no way of knowing. The digital software used by such top flight post houses as MPI, which is the on-site facility that handles the digital intermediates for Warner's major productions, is now so sophisticated that visible grain can be reduced without sacrificing detail. Certainly none of the telltale signs associated with so-called "DNR" are visible on Deathtrap. What we get is a smooth, virtually noiseless, film-like image from a source that has been well-preserved. Black levels are solid, and there is no indication of compression or other mastering errors. If this is the level of quality we can expect from future WAC releases on Blu-ray, collectors will be happy indeed.

Deathtrap Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Deathtrap arrives with a lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 track that presents the film's original mono soundtrack in the front left and right channels. It's a serviceable track with good fidelity and surprisingly broad dynamic range, especially in the thunderously stormy passages that occur near the end of both "acts". Dialogue is always clear, although the looping is occasionally obvious, and the harpsichord-dominated score by Johnny Mandel (M.A.S.H., The Verdict) achieves the appropriately arch and ironic effect.

Deathtrap Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than a trailer (1080p; 1.78:1, 0:54), the disc has no extras. Consistent with the barebones approach of the WAC program, the menu is basic and, although there are chapter stops, they are unlabeled and cannot be selected either from the main menu or a pop-up menu.

Deathtrap Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The WAC program has made an excellent start with Deathtrap, a film beloved by its fans and one that has aged well, although it never achieved anything like the success of Levin's original stage play. Levin had obviously become thoroughly familiar with the theater milieu that, as demonstrated by the TV series Smash, hasn't changed that much in the past thirty years. In addition to its other virtues, Deathtrap is a sly parody of the grandiosity that seeps into so many of that world's inhabitants. Those characters seemed right at home on a Broadway stage, but in a film they're bound to strike some viewers as wildly over the top. I have always enjoyed watching Caine, Cannon, Reeve and Worth operate the efficient machinery of Levin's thriller, but individual mileage may vary. With due warning, highly recommended.