Deathtrap

Sidney Lumet’s film Deathtrap plays a cunning game. From one perspective, the 1982 feature redeploys thriller tropes of the era, offering a twisty cat-and-mouse scenario about two duplicitous professional and romantic rivals circling each other in a single location, leading to an inevitable murder or two. From another perspective, Lumet embraces playwright Ira Levin’s postmodern spin on such fare with a subversive undercurrent. In the former case, the film presents its bisexual characters as criminal types capable of murder and backstabbing, reinforcing discriminatory biases and representational norms of the time. However, the latter interpretation grants Deathtrap enough intelligence to recognize those negative stereotypes and blame not the individuals but the social conditions that force them into the closet. Consider the poster: The characters played by Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, and Dyan Cannon are depicted inside a Rubik’s Cube, with panels marked with guns and knives. They peek out as if society has stashed them there, awaiting the promise of what the poster calls a “who’ll-do-it.” But like most aspects of Deathtrap, the threat is both literal and cleverly metatextual.

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