I Need More People To Watch DEATHTRAP
PLEASE -- you can literally watch for free on Tubi!
* As I work on a bigger post that will hit your inbox later this week, I’m using my usual weekend post to shout from the rooftops about one of my recent favorite finds. *
Last weekend, I needed something to watch. Something fun. Twisty. I was open to trying something new, but you can really only know if something’s going to be fun and twisty if you’ve seen it before.
That’s when I turned to Tubi, a streaming service you can use for free — seriously, you don’t even need to sign up for an account — and is the home of a pretty impressive catalog of movies. I digitally thumbed through the catalog until I came across exactly what I was looking for: Deathtrap.
Released in 1982 and based off the play by Ira Levin, Deathtrap is a thriller-comedy about Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine), a once-revered Broadway playwright currently on a flop streak. He knows his next play needs to be a hit, so he turns to an unlikely source for inspiration: an amateur writer, Cliff (Christopher Reeve), who attended one of Sidney’s workshops and has produced what Sidney believes is his next hit. That play, by the way, is called Deathtrap. The layers!
Sidney, along with his neurotic wife Myra (Dyan Cannon), invite Cliff to their Long Island residence, where Sidney has a wall of prop weapons used in his many plays (but are they really props?) The plot gets very fun and twisty from there, but to say anything more would ruin the fun and twistiness.
I first discovered Deathtrap in 2023 and was immediately taken by its premise. Then I watched the movie and absolutely lived for the deliciously devious turns the plot took. It’s really got everything: sharp dialogue delivered perfectly by a spectacular trio of actors; a smart metanarrative; and some inspired cinema flourishes that keep you engaged beyond the plot. There’s a pivotal sequence lit by flashes of lightning, plus some purple lighting at the Bruhl estate that I’m obsessed with (see below).
But let me circle back to that spectacular trio. Cannon really takes what could’ve been a thankless role and turns into a comedic tour-de-force. You believe all of Myra’s little quirks because Cannon makes them feel believable. Then there’s Reeve — in my estimation still the definitive Superman1 — subverting everyone’s expectations while still in the thick of his Clark Kent era. Last year’s great documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story revealed how Reeve wanted to be taken seriously as an actor, taking roles that pushed his craft forward, and this ethos is almost tangible in his performance as Cliff. Rounding out and leading the trio is Caine, whom I feel we take for granted nowadays as the elder statesman archetype who spouts out wise epitaphs to a younger leading character. And he’s great at that, but he’s even better in delicious leading roles such as this. If you only know Caine from his role in The Dark Knight trilogy or any of his other appearances in Christopher Nolan films, Deathtrap is a great entry point into exploring the dark and darkly comedic roles he took on in the 1970s and 1980s.
Okay, if I say anything more about Deathtrap, I’m bound to spoil something. Go watch it, then come back and let me know what you think! And if you have seen it, let me know your thoughts in the comments.
-Dustin
Apologies to my generation’s Superman, Brandon Routh.