Few films are as riddled with pitfalls for the cocky viewer-as-detective as Stage Fright, one of Hitchcock's most underrated films. Playing deviously and mercilessly against expectation and convention, Hitchcock weaves a web-like stage/film metaphor in which to trap victim and viewer alike. Here we have an elaborate garden party (and we are taken up the garden path more than once!) to which the guests are invited to bring their own universes. Richard Todd impersonating an innocent, Jane Wyman impersonating a cockney maid, Marlene Dietrich impersonating Marlene Dietrich: actors all, their realities never coincide, but rather circumvent one another. When the final curtain falls, the murderer is trapped, as we have been all along, between reality and illusion.