Give Liz an A for Zee

I’ve always said that some great roles rub off on the actors who play them. Bette Davis stayed Margo Channing in just about every role after All About Eve. Yul Brynner remained the supercilious King of Siam for life, from the day he first originated the role onstage. Faye Dunaway has continued to channel Joan Crawford more than 30 years after Mommie Dearest. And Elizabeth Taylor’s post-1966 roles all contain echoes of her Oscar-winning turn as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf...including this darkly comic, little-seen gem.

One of the great Taylor performances: Elizabeth as Zee Blakely

Zee (Elizabeth Taylor) and Robert (Michael Caine)

In fact,  X, Y and Zee (1972) is somewhat like a London mod version of Virginia Woolf in psychedelic technicolor, a portrait of a crumbling marriage, with the handsome and talented Michael Caine standing in for Richard Burton in the George-like role of Zee’s passive-aggressive husband. When Robert (Caine) begins a surreptitious affair with  Stella (Susannah York), you-know-who finds out and an ugly game of cat and mouse begins, culminating in hurt feelings, high drama and sweet revenge.

Stella (Susannah York) tolerates Zee's antics

York and Caine underplay admirably as the adulterous lovers. Caine’s qualms about abandoning his marriage foreshadow his comic Oscar-winning turn as the adulterer in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters two decades later. And as the hard-to-read, sexually confused Stella, Susannah York pays homage to one of her own iconic roles, the lesbian love interest in The Killing of Sister George.

The charming and charismatic Caine, so adept in light comedy, reveals brilliant flashes of a menacing dark side as Robert, particularly while sparring with Taylor, who unrelentingly baits and taunts him until he explodes in moments of uncontrolled rage and fury.

Zee and Robert, or George and Martha? 

Robert loses his patience

But, of course, the film belongs to Elizabeth Taylor as Zee, a heightened version of a woman scorned. Zee is mean, nasty, vicious, domineering, childish--a replay of Martha but with an even greater measure of madness. No one plays bonkers like Taylor, as fans of films like Night Watch, Raintree County and Suddenly Last Summer can attest…and as Zee Blakely, she pulls out all the stops. Truly, as the aptly named title character, she runs the gamut of emotions from A to Zed. 

Here, La Liz is grotesque and flamboyant, as foul-mouthed as Martha but now glammed up in full-color splendor, flouncing about in jangling jewelry, powder blue eyeshadow and flowing caftans that barely disguise her ever-more-Rubenesque proportions. Camp yes; over-the-top, sometimes, but make no mistake: This is a bravura star performance by Taylor, a fine actress who redeems the villainy of her character with a generous dose of wry humor and a surprising vulnerability that ultimately leaves the audience on her side, despite Zee’s appalling behavior.

Zee makes some noise

Zee and Gordon (John Standing)

Stella, Robert and Gladys (Margaret Leighton–not Audra Lindley)

Obviously glorying in cinema’s newfound freedom since the abolition of the production code and establishment of a movie rating system, director Brian G. Hutton goes out of his way to make sure X, Y and Zee is hip and (to use the vernacular of the day) “with it”. The language is frank and salty. Hutton takes pains to capture the mood of the early 70s zeitgeist—the hedonistic fervor of the sexual revolution in full swing and burgeoning “Me” decade—particularly in the party scene at the beginning of the film hosted by an eccentric socialite (a marvelous cameo by English theater veteran Margaret Leighton) . This is also one of the first films to use the character of a flagrantly gay confidante (John Standing)  to move the plot forward and provide exposition. But alas, Zee, an equal opportunity psychotic, is as nasty to him as she is to everyone else she comes in contact with.

For Elizabeth Taylor fans, this is the perfect opportunity to enjoy the actress in one of her great unsung roles, ably assisted by great costars, in a campy, colorful, rousing rendition of love gone wrong. And the film’s startling conclusion features a neat twist that makes it all worthwhile.

I Saw Alfie Kissing Superman

The first time I ever saw one man kissing another onscreen was in the comedy thriller Deathtrap (1982), based on the play by the great Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives). The fact that it was international superstar Michael Caine locking lips with strapping Superman star Christopher Reeve only added to the jaw-dropping surprise I (and the rest of the audience) experienced. Sitting in the darkened theater, I could hear men groaning and women gasping at the moment of the man-on-man embrace. A few people even walked out of the auditorium in a huff. Too bad; they missed a really good movie...

Seen today, the Caine/Reeves kiss seems quite tame; you can see hotter male-male makeout scenes on Bravo or reruns of Desperate Housewives. But the film itself holds up superbly. Perfectly plotted, with a clever series of twists that keep you guessing until the very last frame, Deathtrap is a delicious mind game for the mystery movie buff.

When a celebrated playwright Sidney Bruhl (wittily played by Caine) loses his creative mojo, he hatches a diabolical plan for a big Broadway comeback: passing off the work of a neophyte writer and fan (Christopher Reeve) as his own. The fact that Bruhl will have to do away with the young man in the process is a mere technicality. And so the fun and plot twists begin.

Critics of the time complained that Deathtrap was too much of a filmed stage play, but that is by design. The story is a play within a play within a play. All told, there are only six or seven speaking parts, but the action, much like a formulaic mystery play, centers around the playwright, his wife, the student, a lawyer and a next door neighbor. Within the confines of a living room set in the Hamptons, director Sidney Lumet (Network, Dog Day Afternoon) keeps the action taut and suspenseful.

Add a few supporting characters with impeccable comic timing to the tightly plotted narrative, and you have a movie that’s satisfying on every level. The underrated Dyan Cannon, who perfected the role of the comically neurotic wife in her Oscar-nominated performance in Heaven Can Wait (1978), is a scream as the playwright’s high-strung wife. And veteran stage actress Irene Worth all but steals the picture with her deadpan performance as the dotty Teutonic next-door neighbor, psychic Helga Ten Dorp.

It’s also a refreshing opportunity to see Christopher Reeve, who started his own career as a stage actor (he appeared onstage in A Matter of Gravity with the great Katharine Hepburn), in a role that requires more than looking good in red and blue tights.

Here, Michael Caine is, as in all his films, a joy...he delivers every line with a crispness reminiscent of that first sip of an ice-cold dry martini. From 1966’s Alfie to Batman’s butler in 2012, Caine is enduring film royalty. In Deathtrap, he returns to a genre he was particularly adept in, having shared the screen in the brilliant cat-and-mouse thriller Sleuth with Sir Laurence Olivier the decade before. This film is an apt companion piece.

If you enjoy mystery, comedy and good acting, you should love Deathtrap.