The Stepford Wives (2004)

Rich with material for a big screen adaptation, Ira Levin's book is a macabre suspense thriller and a kind of bodysnatching horror with lots of room for black humor and feminist commentary, but at the cost of this potential, Frank Oz's big, glossy and not very remarkable Hollywood adaptation treats the material primarily as a goofball comedy and has Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick and Nicole Kidman hamming it up as the new residents of the all-too-perfect surburban paradise, Stepford, where residents live picture-perfect 1950s lifestyles thanks to an army of worryingly subservient, docile female homekeepers.

★★★☆☆

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Rosemary's Baby (1968)

For me, it's not a big leap from childbirth to otherworldly gothic horror, and so when director Roman Polanski brings Ira Levin's macabre suspense novel to hideous life, it is just a question of how far he is going to ratchet up the terror as an angelic Mia Farrow experiences a troubled pregnancy and all around her in her and her husband's new New York apartment block, the behaviour of the residents is getting decidedly more odd and more and more in Rosemary's face.

★★★★★

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A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

The clever trick of the Ira Levin book can't be played out in film, certainly not three times, but this 1956 film adaptation starring a young Robert Wagner does a great job telling the suspenseful and at one key moment terrifying neo-noir story of a "talented mr ripley" who will do anything, even murder, to worm his way into his girlfriend's family's fortune.

★★★★☆

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Sliver (1993)

A short-lived genre in the 90s was the "erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone" and in this not very erotic nor very thrilling addition, based on the Ira Levin book, Sharon Stone is the new resident in a NY apartment complex that happens to be not just under the thrall of a serial killer but also a shadowy voyeur who has the building under complete video-surveillance, affording viewers a look at what Director Phillip Noyce evidently thinks titillating: highly improbable, choreographed soft porn interactions between Sharon Stone and the likely culprit.

★☆☆☆☆

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Deathtrap (1982)

This is another Michael Caine film that has been adapted from a suspense mystery play (this one by Ira Levin) and like his two Sleuth films, this one too involves a sinister cat-and-mouse parlour game (check) played out in a theatrically claustrophobic set (check) between a pair of feuding male protagonists (check), one of whom is a successful mystery writer (check), and like Sleuth it is great twisty-turny fun.

★★★★☆

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