Deathtrap is a 1982 American black comedy suspense film based on the 1978 play of the same name by Ira Levin.

It was directed by Sidney Lumet from a screenplay by Levin and Jay Presson Allen, and stars Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve and Dyan Cannon.

Famed playwright Sidney Bruhl debuts the latest in a series of Broadway flops and returns to his East Hampton, Long Island, home hungover and morose.

He reveals he has received a manuscript of a play by a student who recently attended one of his writing workshops, asking for his input.

Sidney considers the work near-perfection, and tells Myra that the best idea he has had lately is to murder its author and produce the play as his own.

Sidney invites young Clifford Anderson to their secluded home, decorated with weapons from his own plays, to discuss the script, Deathtrap.

She reveals nothing during an unexpected visit from neighbor Helga Ten Dorp, a Dutch psychic and minor European celebrity renting an adjacent property.

Sidney is horrified to read that Clifford is using the true story of Myra's murder as the basis of a new play called Deathtrap.

Sidney asks Clifford to arm himself with an axe to demonstrate a bit of stage business, then produces a gun.

The opening night audience erupts in thunderous applause, and at the back of the theater stands an exultant Helga Ten Dorp, now the author of a hit Broadway play called Deathtrap.

Real-life film and theatre critics Stewart Klein, Jeffrey Lyons and Joel Siegel have cameo appearances as themselves.

Critic Roger Ebert gave it three stars, calling it "a comic study of ancient and honorable human defects, including greed, envy, lust, pride, avarice, sloth, and falsehood.

In his book The Celluloid Closet, gay film historian Vito Russo reports that Reeve said that the kiss was booed by preview audiences in Denver, Colorado, and estimated that a Time magazine report of the kiss spoiled a key plot element and cost the film $10 million in ticket sales.

)[9] In his book Murder Most Queer (2014), Jordan Schildcrout describes attending a screening at which an audience member screamed, "No, Superman, don't do it!"