I saw DEATHTRAP late in its initial Broadway run at the Music Box with Farley Granger in the lead. It had already been bought for the movies at the highest price any non-musical, and the question in my mind was how to open it up for the screen. Part of the tension in a show is maintained by shocking the audience by focusing the attention on the performers on one part of the stage, then shifting that focus abruptly. You can't do that in a movie, where attention is forced by camera and editing, and I don't believe that that cameraman Andrzej Bartkowiak's restless viewpoint and editor Jack Fitzstephens' punctuated pace quite accomplish that.
Even so, the movie works because of Ira Levin's clockwork plotting and impenetrable performances by Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve taking a break from Superman. Dyan Cannon also gives a fine performance; she's a great screamer. Certainly, being directed by Sidney Lumet was no small part in their performances' success. It's about as good a translation to cinema as can be managed.
Nonetheless, it remains a stage piece, and as much as you may enjoy the movie, I think it shows best in its original format as a two-set, five-actor play.
