Deathtrap (plot Device) - Famous Examples of Deathtraps

Famous Examples of Deathtraps

• Raiders of the Lost Ark: Sealing Indiana Jones and Marion in the Well of Souls
  • Escape method: Seeing a possible tunnel entrance, Jones climbed a statue and toppled it towards the wall to create an entrance to a passageway that led to the outside.

• Live and Let Die: Doctor Kananga and a minion tie James Bond and Solitare to a platform to be lowered into a shark infested pool to be eaten alive.
  • Escape method: Without the villains seeing, Bond activates his watch's rotary saw function to cut through his restraints to free himself and attack Kananga.

• Goldfinger (novel): James Bond is shackled spreadeagled to a table and a circular saw (a laser in the film) is approaching to cut him in half. Unlike many deathtrap scenarios, Bond remains under constant supervision, and he does not use (or have) a device or outside help to escape.
  • Escape method: Bond bluffs Goldfinger, and persuades him that his replacement "008" also knows about Goldfinger's plans and that Bond's death will immediately summon him to investigate, so Goldfinger elects to not take the chance of another spy coming on the scene to interfere, which he can avoid by holding Bond captive.

• Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum": The unnamed character finds himself bound to a large slab, beneath a bladed pendulum that slowly lowers toward him as it swings, with the intention of slicing through his chest.
  • Escape method: The character lures mice to the ropes with a piece of meat. They chew through the ropes, allowing him to escape before the pendulum can slice him open.

• The 1960s live action television series Batman usually had two-part episodes use a bizarre deathtrap as a cliffhanger.
  • Example: The Joker traps the Dynamic Duo without their utility belts in the bottom of an industrial smokestack and begins to gradually fill it with a deadly heavier-than-air gas.
    • Escape method: The pair lock elbows and brace their backs against each other to walk up the smokestack to the top opening and slide down a support cable safely to the ground.

• The Venture Brothers: Doctor Venture in Escape to the House of Mummies Part 2. He described the trap he was in as "Slower than haunted house spiked walls, but not quite as slow as evil scientist spiked walls."
  • Escape Method: Magic forcing the walls to stop. A secondary, previously unknown Boiling Oil trap failed when a henchman confused it for "Hot Voile," which was being warmed in a clothes dryer.

• The Perils of Penelope Pitstop always involved improbable deathtraps, usually set by the Hooded Claw.

• Disney's The Great Mouse Detective: Ratigan ties up Basil and Dawson in an intricate mousetrap and tells them about his plot to kill the queen. He then leaves to see his scheme unfold, assuming that they will soon be dead.
  • Escape method: Basil activates the mousetrap he and Dawson are trapped in early, catching the ball that was meant to crush them, and setting off a chain reaction that interferes with every other aspect of the trap.

• Saw (franchise): The plot of the series revolves around the Jigsaw Killer, a dying vigilante who kidnaps his victims and places them in deadly traps to test them, and give them an opportunity to repent from their former lifestyle in which they took their lives for granted.