Deathtrap (1982) review

Playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine), who hasn't had a successful show in a while and gets roasted by the NYC theatre critics for his latest one, draws up a plan to kill former student Clifford (Christopher Reeve) and steal his newest work Deathtrap (which he claims is "flawless"), but his wife Myra (Dyan Cannon) is opposed to the idea ... at first.  There may be a bunch of twists, but each new one is even more implausible than the one that preceded it, and then there's the issue of Cannon's shrill "performance," the silly "Dutch psychic" (played by stage legend Irene Worth) and the homosexual angle that just seems to be in there (at the time) for "shock value."  Virtually every review I've skimmed over for it wants to compare it to a certain Joseph L. Mankiewicz who-done-it from 1972 (the presence of Caine is the key link), but I'd argue Lumet approaches it the same way he did the claustrophobic 12 Angry Men, except the main characters are simply odious, and there is no moral center.