DEATH CRAP

DEATHTRAP (1982)
dir: Sidney Lumet

DEATHCRAP
MAD #234, October 1982
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

From A Special Edition of 20/30 Starring Barbara Waltzers in which Christopher Reeve is interviewed about the movie.

Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) is a playwright in a slump coming home to his wife Myra (Dyan Cannon) dejected after the opening night of his latest work. His student Clifford Anderson (Reeve) has come to visit with advice on his play Deathtrap and Sidney has the idea to murder Clifford so he can pass off the play as his own and be on top again.

Sidney shows off the souvenirs/props from his previous plays, binds Clifford in what he says were Houdini's original cuffs and kills Clifford despite protests from Myra. After Clifford is buried, they are visited by neighbor Helga TenDorp (Irene Worth), a psychic, who knows something went on. Later that might, it turns out Clifford never was murdered, and he comes back giving Myra a heart attack.

Killing Myra was Sidney and Clifford's plan all along. They were secretly lovers and partners. Though as they work on Death Trap together, Sidney is angry that Clifford has now made it about this situation and feels betrayed, and must kill Clifford as to not be incriminated. They battle during a rainstorm and it turns out this whole time it was all a play written by Helga.

Helga wrote it with Margot Kidder as Lois Lane for this parody.

The running joke about Barbara Walters was that she would ask her subjects “If you were a tree, what kind would you be?”