The Stepford Wives

---

==The Stepford Wives==

The Stepford Wives-Book by Ira Levin

The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical thriller novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who begins to suspect that the frighteningly submissive housewives ...Joanna Eberhart has come to the quaint little town of Stepford, Connecticut with her family,but soon discovers there lies a sinister truth in the all too perfect behavior of the female residents.The Stepford Wives has been made into several crap movies-much forgetting the satire and going for cheap horror troupes. is more than an allegory of backlash against women’s liberation. Underneath that thinly disguised subtext is a sub-subtext warning that the suburbs suck the humanity out of anyone foolish enough to venture there, replacing even the most vital and progressive individuality with reactionary selfishness and empty-headed conformity.

Template:Two other uses Template:Infobox book

The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical thriller novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who begins to suspect that the frighteningly submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands.

Two films of the same name have been adapted from the novel; the first starred Katharine Ross and was released in 1975, while a remake starring Nicole Kidman appeared in 2004. Edgar J. Scherick produced the 1975 version, all three sequels, and was posthumously credited as producer in the 2004 remake.

The term "Stepford wife", which is often used in popular culture, stemmed from the novel, and is usually a reference to a submissive and docile housewife.

Plot summary

The premise involves the married men of the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut, and their fawning, submissive, impossibly beautiful wives. The protagonist is Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer newly arrived from New York City with her husband and children, eager to start a new life. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the zombie-like, submissive Stepford wives, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends – fellow new arrivals to Stepford – turn into mindless, docile housewives overnight. Her husband, who seems to be spending more and more time at meetings of the local men's association, mocks her fears.

As the story progresses, Joanna becomes convinced that the wives of Stepford are being poisoned or brainwashed into submission by the men's club. She visits the library and reads up on the pasts of Stepford's wives, finding out that some of the women were once feminist activists and very successful professionals, while the leader of the men's club is a former Disney engineer and others are artists and scientists, capable of creating lifelike robots. Her friend Bobbie helps her investigate, going so far as to write to the EPA to inquire about possible environmental toxins in Stepford. However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife and has no interest in her previous activities.

At the end of the novel, Joanna decides to flee Stepford, but when she gets home she finds that her children have been taken. She asks her husband to let her leave, but he takes her car keys. She manages to escape from the house on foot, and several of the men's club members track her down. They corner her in the woods and she accuses them of creating robots out of the town's women. The men deny the accusation, and ask Joanna if she would believe them if she saw one of the other women bleed. Joanna agrees to this, and they take her to Bobbie's house. Bobbie's husband and son are upstairs, with loud rock music playing – as if to cover screams. The scene ends as Bobbie brandishes a knife at her former friend. In the story's epilogue, Joanna has become another Stepford wife gliding through the local supermarket, and has given up her career as a photographer, while Ruthanne (a new resident in Stepford) appears poised to become the conspiracy's next victim.

Adaptations

Main article: The Stepford Wives (1975 film)

In 1975, the book was adapted into a science fiction thriller directed by Bryan Forbes with a screenplay by William Goldman and starring Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson and Tina Louise. The film also marked the screen debut of Brat Pack actress Mary Stuart Masterson, playing one of Joanna's children. While the script emphasis is on gender conflict and the sterility of suburban living, and the science fiction elements are thus only lightly explored, the movie still makes it much clearer than the book that the women are being replaced by some form of robot. Goldman's treatment of the book differed from that of Forbes with the robots closer to an idealized "Playboy Bunny"; it has been claimed that the look was scrapped when Forbes' actress wife Nanette Newman was cast as one of the town residents.

A made-for-TV sequel was produced in 1980, entitled Revenge of the Stepford Wives. It was critically panned. In this film, instead of being androids, the wives undergo a brainwashing procedure and then take pills that keep them hypnotized. As suggested by the title, in the end the wives are broken free of their conditioning and a mob of them kill the mastermind behind the conspiracy.

Yet another made-for-television sequel/remake was released in 1987 called The Stepford Children, wherein both the wives and the children of the male residents were replaced by drones. It again ends with the members of the conspiracy being killed.

A 1996 version called The Stepford Husbands was made as a third TV movie with the gender roles reversed, and the men in the town being brainwashed by a female clinic director into being perfect husbands.

A remake of the original The Stepford Wives was released in 2004. It was directed by Frank Oz with a screenplay by Paul Rudnick, and featured Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Roger Bart, Faith Hill, Glenn Close and Jon Lovitz. It was intended to be more comedic than previous versions. There were many other changes, most importantly the almost complete erasure of the powerful feminist message of the original film, culminating in a role reversal in which it is the powerful woman (played by Glenn Close) who is the evil mastermind of the injustice perpetrated on other women, and featuring a Stepford-drone replacement for the male partner of a gay town resident.

Both the 1975 and 2004 versions of the film were filmed in various towns in Fairfield County, Connecticut, including Redding, Westport, Darien, New Canaan, Wilton, and Norwalk. The 1975 version had several locations in the Greenfield Hill section of Fairfield, including the Eberharts' House and the Greenfield Hill Congregational Church. Additional scenes from the 2004 movie were filmed in Bedminster, New Jersey, with extras from surrounding communities.

In a March 27, 2007 letter to The New York Times, Ira Levin said that he based the town of Stepford on Wilton, Connecticut, where he lived in the 1960s.

In language

The term "Stepford wife" entered common use in the English language after the publication of Levin's book, and is generally used as a term of satire. It has recently been used by critics to describe Laura Bush, and Katie Holmes after her marriage to Tom Cruise. The label "Stepford wife" is usually applied to a woman who seems to conform blindly to an old-fashioned subservient role in relationship to her husband, compared to other, presumably more independent women. It can also be used to criticise any person, male or female, who submits meekly to authority and/or abuse; or even to describe someone who lives in a robotic, conformist manner without giving offense to anyone. The word "Stepford" can also be used as an adjective ("He's a real Stepford employee"), or a noun ("My home town is a Stepford"), denoting servility or blind conformity, or a seemingly perfect society hiding a dark secret.

In popular culture

• Radiohead have a song called "Bodysnatchers", that draws major inspiration from the 1975 movie. Singer Thom Yorke mentioned the connection when the band premiered the song in Copenhagen on May 6, 2006. It is not the first Radiohead song related to The Stepford Wives. "A Wolf At The Door", the final track on the band's sixth album Hail to the Thief, also contains a reference, "Stepford wives, who are we to complain?"
• Norwegian singer-songwriter Ida Maria has a song called "Cherry Red" (released on her album Katla) whose chorus includes the line, "I wanna be your Stepford wife."
• The Stepford Cuckoos, characters in the X-Men comics, were based partly on the Stepford Wives (See also: The Midwich Cuckoos).
• In season one

Series Name
Season {{{season}}}, Episode {{{number}}}
Episode Guide
previous {{{previous}}}	next {{{next}}}

of Desperate Housewives, Rex Van de Kamp tells his wife, Bree, that he wants a divorce because she is "too Stepford." In the pilot her son Andrew Van De Kamp calls her "Stepford Mayor".

• The Rainmakers (band) have a song called "Good sons and daughters", from the album Skin that contains the line "Step daughter of a Stepford wife".

See also

• Cult of Domesticity

External links

• Template:IMDb title
• Template:IMDb title

Template:Ira Levin Template:The Stepford Wives

"|Published

 September 1972Author: Ira LevinPreceded by: This Perfect DayCharacters: Joanna Eberhart, Bobbie Markowitz, Walter KresbyGenres: Horror Film, Satire, Speculative fiction, ThrillerAdaptations: The Stepford Wives (2004), More

The Stepford Wives (1975 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[1] Theatrical Poster
Directed by	Bryan Forbes
Produced by	Gustave M. Berne (exec. prod) Edgar J. Scherick
Screenplay by	William Goldman
Based on	The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Starring	Katharine Ross Paula Prentiss Peter Masterson Nanette Newman Tina Louise
Music by	Michael Small
Cinematography	Enrique Bravo Owen Roizman
Editing by	Timothy Gee
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures Palomar Pictures International Paramount Pictures(2004 DVD)
Release date(s)	February 12, 1975 (USA)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

"|The Stepford Wives"|[2]

Theatrical Poster |- ;"|Directed by;"|Bryan Forbes |- ;"|Produced by"|Gustave M. Berne (exec. prod) Edgar J. Scherick |- "|Screenplay by | ;"|William Goldman "|Based on | ;"|The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin |- !;"|Starring | "|Katharine Ross Paula Prentiss Peter Masterson Nanette Newman

Tina Louise

|- ! "|Music by"|Michael Small |Cinematography "|Enrique Bravo Owen Roizman |"|Distributed by ;"|Columbia Pictures Palomar Pictures International Paramount Pictures(2004 DVD) |- ! ;"|Release date(s) | "|February 12, 1975 (USA) |- "|Running time | |115 minutes "|Country | ;"|United States |- "|Language |;"|English |}thumb|NaNxNaNpx|link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Louise |- ! "|Music by"|Michael Small |Cinematography "|Enrique Bravo Owen Roizman |"|Distributed by ;"|Columbia Pictures Palomar Pictures International Paramount Pictures(2004 DVD) |- ! ;"|Release date(s) | "|February 12, 1975 (USA) |- "|Running time | |115 minutes "|Country | ;"|United States |- "|Language |;"|English |}

The Stepford Wives is a 1975 science fiction–thriller film based on the 1972 Ira Levin novel of the same name. It was directed by Bryan Forbes with a screenplay by William Goldman, and stars Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson, Forbes' wife Nanette Newman and Tina Louise. The film was remade in 2004 under the same name, but was written as a comedy versus a serious horror/thriller film.

While the film was only a moderate success at the time of release, it has grown in stature as a cult film over the years. Building upon the reputation of Levin's novel, the term "Stepford Wife" has become a popular science fiction concept and several sequels were shot, as well as the remake of the film in 2004.Why that is,is beyond me,since my opinion,the first was shit,obviously based on a shitty.The tv sequile was  far better movie,in it removed many elements that made this a stupid,movie for dimwits.The robot replacements nd alledged murdering of the original wives.

book.Going off,topic,this Sometimes movies are crap-often made in the 1970's.And people wondered why just a few short years later,the world needed Star Wars.Because too many people were propucing garbage of this type,in books,comics,on tv and movies.

Plot

Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) is a young wife who moves with her husband Walter (Peter Masterson) who is a none weak kneed nobody,prop character of a cardboard standy and two children -more props from New York City to the idyllic Connecticut suburb of Stepford. Loneliness quickly sets in as Joanna, a mildly rebellious aspiring photographer, finds the women in town all look great and are obsessed with housework, but have few intellectual interests. The men all belong to the clubbish Stepford Men's Association, which Walter joins to Joanna's dismay. Neighbor Carol Van Sant's (Nanette Newman) sexually submissive behavior to her husband Ted, and her odd, repetitive behavior after a car accident also strike Joanna as unusual. [3][4]

Joanna and Bobbie investigate Stepford.Things start to look up when she makes friends with another newcomer to town, sloppy, irrepressible Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss). Along with glossy trophy wife Charmaine Wimperis (Tina Louise), they organize a Women's Lib consciousness raising session, but the meeting is a failure when the other wives hijack the meeting with cleaning concerns. Joanna is also unimpressed by the boorish Men's Club members, including intimidating president Dale "Diz" Coba (Patrick O'Neal); stealthily, they collect information on Joanna including her picture, her voice, and other personal details. When Charmaine turns overnight from a languid, self-absorbed tennis fan into an industrious, devoted wife, Joanna and Bobbie start investigating, with ever-increasing concern, the reason behind the submissive and bland behavior of the other wives, especially when they learn they were once quite supportive of liberal social policies.

Spooked, Bobbie and Joanna start house hunting in other towns, and later, Joanna wins a prestigious contract with a photo gallery with some photographs of their respective children. When she excitedly tells Bobbie her good news, Joanna is shocked to find her freewheeling and liberal friend has abruptly changed into another clean, conservative housewife, with no intention of moving from town.

Joanna panics and, at Walter's insistence, visits a psychiatrist to whom she voices her belief that all the men in the town are in a conspiracy of somehow changing the women. The psychiatrist recommends she leave town until she feels safe, but when Joanna returns home, the children are missing. The marriage devolves into domestic violence when Joanna and Walter get into a physical scuffle. In an attempt to find her children, she hypothesizes Bobbie may be caring for them. Joanna, still mystified by Bobbie's behavior, is desperate to prove her humanity but intuitively stabs Bobbie with a kitchen knife. But Bobbie doesn't bleed or suffer, instead going into a loop of odd mechanical behavior, thus revealing she is a robot.Even though allusions to those Dysney World robots are made,technology of the 1970's would not even close the robot replacements-unless this movies takes place in the Marvel Universe,were they have Life Model Decoys {LMD's].If that were so,Stepford needs to get a kickass visit from Avengers,the Fantastic Four and Nick Fury and his agents of Sheild.

Despite feeling she may be the next victim, Joanna sneaks into the mansion which houses the Men's Association to find her children. There, she finds the mastermind of the whole operation, Dale "Diz" Coba, and eventually her own robot-duplicate. Joanna is shocked into paralysis when she witnesses its soulless, black, empty eyes. The Joanna-duplicate brandishes a cord; it is implied that she strangles the real Joanna to death.Why Joanna dosen't bash in the duplicated head and shitkick diz out a second story window,is beyond me. In the final scene, the duplicate is seen placidly purchasing groceries at the local supermarket, along with the other "wives" all wearing similar long dresses, large hats and saying little more than hello to each other. The final shot focuses on Joanna's now-finished eyes. During the closing credits still images show a very cheerful Walter along with his now conservatively-dressed children in the back of the station wagon, picking up his "Stepford wife" from the supermarket.

Themes

The oppression of women under patriarchy; the challenges to established and traditional roles amidst the second wave feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s; the white flight phenomena where white middle class families abandoned urban areas en masse to rural retreats driven by anxieties over race, drugs, crime etc.; corporations and technological paranoia; male backlash over perceived challenges to authority and power.

Men wanted stupid robot women instead of the real thing

  

Throughout most of history women commonly have had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men. Women were seen as wives and mothers, not lawyers and photographers. The most effective aspect of the story's plot is an examination of the drastic measures some men will take to control women. The men create replicas of their wives and kill their original human counterparts, even while they just as well could have filed for divorce. The new wives don’t have opinions or careers, they undertake and enjoy all aspects of housework and will forever remain beautiful. In the film the men create these women to fulfill their own fantasy desires. The robots exist for their personal pleasure only.Whoopy-a ten year olds fantasy and thats about it. <>The men utilize their talents to create wives that lack character, brains, ambition, creativity, and independence. Their goal is to create women they can control; wives that enjoy housework and fulfilling their husband's every need. The duplicates are "new and improved" versions of their wives. They have larger breasts, narrower waists and higher cheek bones. These robots are sexual objects, so they are intended only to accommodate their husbands' desires while having none of their own. <)!important;">Modern women stand as potential threats to the male-controlled order, because they are outspoken, self-centered, and aggressive.[2] The two women that are seen as the threat throughout the movie are Bobbie and Joanna, who were the only women wearing shorts, overalls, and pants; by the end they dressed and behaved like Stepford housewives. Joanna tries to start a women's association where real issues and emotions are discussed, while the robots are only programmed to talk about housework. All of the wives of Stepford were once female activists who had goals and ambitions until the men felt that there was a need for change.-Women The women become isolated from the real world; they are attractive, sexualized property. These women are helpless, incompetent, and no longer able to defend themselves.The plot also continues a theme of patriarchal critique dating at least from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel "Frankenstein", which, unlike most movies of the same name, is intimately concerned with the implications of men's control of the manipulation of life, a concern of outstanding relevance today. Ira Levin made this a theme in other science fiction novels he wrote, including This Perfect Day (1970) and The Boys From Brazil (1976).Having this all on Wikipedea,the movie still stinks.It is a 115 minute bore-a-thon of shit ideas.Any man,that would want a fracking Dysney robot over the one he dated and married,needs to go Stepford and get his ball cut,off,before he has children.

Like a lot of well-to-do white Manhattanites in the 1970’s, attorney Walter Eberhart (The Exorcist’s Peter Masterson) and his wife, Joanna (Katharine Ross, from The Swarm and The Legacy)— the latter an aspiring photographer— have decided that the time has come to make their escape from the big city. The Eberharts have two young children, and as they see it, New York is increasingly becoming no place to raise a kid. With that in mind, the family is relocating to the charming suburb of Stepford, Connecticut, close enough for Walter to commute to his office uptown more or less painlessly, but comfortably far away from the rising tide of urban blight. It sounds like a reasonable plan, but one major flaw in it is evident from the outset. Despite the fiction she tries to maintain that moving to Stepford was as much her idea as Walter’s, Joanna really has no desire whatsoever to leave the city. So far as she’s concerned, the Connecticut suburbs might as well be the far side of the moon, and she not-so-secretly resents her husband for banishing her there.

>There undeniably is a strong element of culture shock to the move. Stepford is the kind of place where new arrivals are instantly set upon by the daffy old lady (Paula Trueman) who writes the gossip column in the cheesy local paper, interrogating them about their jobs, interests, hobbies, and histories. It’s also the kind of place where your across-the-street neighbors send the lady of the house over to welcome you with a freshly made casserole. Said lady of the house is Carol Van Sant (Nanette Newman, from House of Mystery and [ Captain Nemo and the Underwater City]), and while Walter greets her with what looks like a mix of discomfiture at the old-fashioned-ness of the gesture and nostalgia for a bygone era’s notions of domesticity, Joanna’s reaction is much purer. She’s not one tiny bit impressed with Carol or her husband, Ted (Josef Sommer, of Iceman and The Henderson Monster). It takes her very little time to suss out that Ted is a domineering prick, but Carol presents herself with such bovine docility that it’s difficult to drum up much sympathy for her. Either she spends her whole life pilled up, or there’s something seriously wrong with the woman. I mean, raising no objection when her husband feels her up in the front yard might fall under the heading of Different Strokes, but who the fuck apologizes to the paramedics for putting them to so much trouble while they load her into the ambulance after a head-cracking car accident?

There’s one thing about Stepford that Joanna hates more than any other, the avowedly-all male status of the only apparent social organization in town, and when Walter accepts an invitation to join it, it touches off what might just be the most serious fight in the history of the Eberharts’ couplehood thus far. Joanna does see the logic behind Walter’s decision to join the Stepford Men’s Association (professionally speaking, it behooves him to be well connected to the local well-connected, and there’s supposedly an internal movement afoot to open the association to women anyway), but she still takes it as an affront to everything she believes in— and to everything she thought her husband believed in, too. Her distaste for the Men’s Association (and by extension, for Stepford) increases still further when Walter invites the key members over to the house one evening, permitting her to meet a few of Hubby’s new cronies. Apart from Ike Mazzard (Macabre’s William Prince), a formerly famous men’s-magazine pinup artist whom Joanna apparently dislikes on principle (but dislikes slightly less after he presents her with a portrait he sketched of her during the association leaders’ visit, in which she looks fully worthy of her own wartime Esquire pictorial), the whole lot of them are unendurable bores— and association president Dale “Diz” Coba (Patrick O’Neal, from The Mad Magician and Silent Night, Bloody Night) is an unendurable boor as well.Diz,is a cardboard,nobody,there just to bad guy behind the whole scheme. Rude as it is, one can’t entirely blame Joanna when she insults Coba to his face as soon as circumstance places them alone together. (“Why do they call you ‘Diz’?” “I used to work for Disney World.” “No, really.” “That is really.” “I don’t believe you.” “Why not?” “Because you don’t look like someone who enjoys making people happy.”).This is supposed to be the weakneed explaination for the robots,but works as good as Gepetto,was making wooden dummies into real people,like Pinnochio.Infact,that would more sense any of this and it's sequiles or remakes,that go the robot route.Brainwashing,although impossible,like the Manchurian Candidate,is more probable.If bothers,you them,here is a dumass pill,to make smarter than you are at this momment.

In fact, it seems the only person or thing in Stepford that Joanna does like is Bobbie Marcowe (Saturday the 14th’s Paula Prentiss), the rather irascible fellow newcomer who looks her up after reading the little puff piece on the Eberharts in the Stepford Chronicle. Extrapolating from Joanna’s answers to the stock new-in-town questions, Bobbie rightly figures that she’s finally found someone else “who, given complete freedom of choice, doesn’t want to squeeze the goddamn Charmin.” Joanna and Bobbie very quickly agree that their big project will be to drag the other women of Stepford into the 1970’s, whether they want to make the trip or not. In particular, they want to set up a feminist counterpart to the Men’s Association, so as to engage in a bit of that most quintessentially 70’s sociopolitical activity, consciousness raising. They don’t meet with very much success. Between the two of them, Joanna and Bobbie talk to just about every adult female in town, but the only nibble of interest they encounter comes from Charmaine Wimpiris (Tina Louise, Ginger Grnt of Gillighan's Island,from Evils of the Night and Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby), a tennis-loving wannabe femme fatale who might just be pricklier than the two self-appointed activists combined. The rest of the Stepford wives might as well be so many clones of Carol Van Sant. Not only do they uniformly assert no interest in women’s liberation, but they all plead impossibly busy schedules of cooking, cleaning, and looking after the kids. What’s more, those whom Bobbie and Joanna ask directly aver that their lives of seemingly obsessive homemaking offer all the personal fulfillment that they require, and when the two agitators finally do succeed in finagling a meeting of the Stepford women, it quickly devolves into a forum for comparing notes on the virtues of various cleaning preparations. I believe we can safely say that that was not the sort of consciousness-raising Joanna and Bobbie had in mind!

Now that’s all very frustrating for our heroines, but we’ve also been seeing hints for some time that Stepford holds dangers far worse than boredom and social dissatisfaction. For example, shortly after Carol Van Sant’s car crash, Joanna sees her acting incredibly strange at some sort of community event organized by the Men’s Association. Carol explains later that she was making a drunken fool of herself (confessing, while she’s at it, to a history of alcoholism), but she didn’t look like any drunk I’ve ever seen. What she looked like was a piece of malfunctioning animatronics, cycling through a repetitive set of motions over and over again and repeating the same inane sentence, with exactly the same cadence and inflection, at disturbingly regular intervals.This scene gives the whole endin g away,unless your as bright as a fracking 2 by 4. Later on, an encounter with the Chronicle gossip columnist brings to light the head-scratching information that not only was Stepford once a hotbed of women’s lib activism, but that Carol of all people was the president of the now-extinct Women’s Association. Meanwhile, the Stepford police seem suspiciously vigilant in chasing non-members off the grounds of the historic mansion that now serves as the Men’s Association headquarters, and somebody has made off with the Eberharts’ small but very noisy dog. Then Joanna and Bobbie notice Charmaine’s husband (Franklin Cover) overseeing the demolition of her beloved backyard tennis court, and when they pop in to see what in the hell that’s about, they find that the only other fully autonomous woman in Stepford has somehow transformed into a domestic zombie like all the others. Bobbie freaks out good and proper at that, concocting a paranoid theory that some chemical runoff from the numerous tech-sector manufacturing plants outside of Stepford is leeching into the water supply, and doping the women who drink it into a stupor of placid obedience and compulsive housekeeping.Never do they wonder,why strange water,dosen't effect the men,but then that would ruin the stupid plot of this stupid movie,made from an equilly stupid book.

>By a remarkable coincidence, Joanna is in a position to test her friend’s hypothesis, because an old ex-boyfriend of hers (Robert Fields, of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and the blob is now a professional chemist. He finds nothing out of the ordinary, however, when he performs a chemical analysis on the water sample that the women bring him. Really, though, clues to the mystery of the Stepford wives are all around Joanna, if she would just look closely enough in the right places. Places like those very detailed drawings of her that Ike Mazzard made when he was over at her house with the rest of the Men’s Association. Places like the weird favor Association member Claude Axhelm (George Coe, from The Entity) has Joanna doing for him, recording herself reciting a long list of relatively common words, ostensibly as part of a project to map regional accents scientifically. Places like the community party where Carol’s bump on the head manifested itself in a repeating loop of stock words and gestures. Places like Coba Industries, where the man with his name on the building is also the head of the Men’s Association, and used to devote his engineering talents to creating animatronics for Disney World before he got rich enough to found his own company.

">On the allegorical/satirical level, The Stepford Wives doesn’t really work for me or anyone else,Mister Ebert. The film’s sexual politics look quaintly dated, naturally,even at the time the original movie was mde, but there’s more too it than that. After all, creating the perfect woman artificially to circumvent the hassles that inevitably come with the real thing is a fantasy that never goes out of style. The trouble is that I can’t buy into the form that fantasy takes here. I mean, come on— the men of Stepford have it in their power to remodel their wives into any kind of women they please, and without exception, they opt for dowdy, matronly, dim-witted things that do nothing but bake, dust, and garden all day? Even accepting that the whole town is mentally stuck in the 50’s, you’re telling me that not one of these guys would rather have his own personal Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield,Tina Small or Bettie Page? Sorry, but that’s ridiculous.You can find a woman like that someplace,way simply than getting the stupid Stepford Men's Association,make you a frackin robot copy of your wife and have it kill her off.And in the real world,even we could build robots like that,the countless murders would draw someones attention-sooner or later.

If the aim is to critique what men want in a woman, it’s important for the fantasy to be plausibly attractive— that it actually represent something that you can imagine a man wanting. But as the behavior of the Stepford husbands plainly shows, even they don’t really want this reductio ad absurdum of 1950’s motherhood. The Stepford men neglect and avoid their robot wives just as thoroughly as they presumably had the originals; it’s just that the mechanical versions are programmed to be content with neglect and avoidance. I could understand this bizarre interpretation of male relationship fantasies if The Stepford Wives had been written by a woman, but with William Goldman adapting the screenplay from a novel by Ira Levin, I must admit that I’m pretty completely flummoxed.

Stepford Wives is one of stupid movies,that gets remade as the supior Revenge of the Stepford Wive and got widely panned by idiots,who have convinced themselves,such a shitty movie like the Original Stepford Wives was a classic good movie.And The Stepford Wives remake,in 2005,the Stepford Children and Stepford Husbands must far supior as the movie made,I'd like to see called the Stepford Queers

     Or maybe not. Maybe it does make a certain amount of sense if instead of looking into their own ids to develop the Stepford programming, Levin and Goldman were attempting to extrapolate what those men would find desirable— those scary sons of bitches who reject the self-evident superiority of the city lifestyle and actually like dwelling in the world of cul-de-sacs and two-car garages. (Sarcastic? Who, me?) The Stepford wives may be risible as embodiments of male desire, but as a straw-man argument against the burbs, they do have a fair amount of crude rhetorical power: “Here— you see how horrible it is out there beyond the beltway? Not only do those people enjoy their boring lives, but spend a few months among them and they’ll make you want to live that way too!” The greatest strength of The Stepford Wives is that it does a really good job of making that straw-man argument. It’s still bullshit (I’ve lived in the suburbs all my life; if doing so turns you into a shallow conformist, chalk it up to your weakness of character, not to the insidious power of the environment), but it’s bullshit put forth with a terrible and momentarily persuasive eloquence. However little scrutiny the motives for the conspiracy against Joanna can withstand, there’s no gainsaying the commitment the filmmakers bring to bear in presenting its effects, and as a tale of paranoia that turns out to be all too well justified,The Stepford Wives falls only a little short of the standard set by Rosemary’s Baby seven years earlier. It helps a lot, given the thematic concerns of the film, that Katharine Ross’s Joanna is (with one inexplicable lapse at a key moment during the climax) such a legitimately strong and resourceful character. There’s no mistaking how much would be lost if she were replaced by another of Coba’s robots, and it is thus truly horrifying when Walter gradually accommodates himself to the idea of trading her in. The scene in which Joanna confronts her unfinished doppelganger is the movie’s real masterpiece, not least because of the unique way in which this specific gynoid is portrayed. Bustier, curvier, and all-around sexier than the real Joanna, the fake one is the only “improved” Stepford wife to offer any recognizable benefit to counterbalance what she lacks in intelligence, drive, and personality. Maybe that’s significant, too, because Walter, after all, is not naturally a Stepford man. He had to be seduced by this suburban dystopia, and it had to offer him something for which one could believe him selling out. If only this movie’s creators had understood that the same applied just as much to the other men, The Stepford Wives would be a much stronger satire than it is.Cast

• Katharine Ross as Joanna Eberhart
• Paula Prentiss as Bobbie Markowe
• Peter Masterson as Walter Eberhart
• Nanette Newman as Carol van Sant
• Josef Sommer as Ted van Sant
• Tina Louise as Charmaine Wimperis
• Franklin Cover as Ed Wimperis
• Toni Reid as Marie Axhelm
• George Coe as Claude Axhelm
• Carole Mallory as Kit Sundersen
• Barbara Rucker as Mary Ann Stavros
• Judith Baldwin as Patricia Cornell
• Michael Higgins as Mr. Cornell
• William Prince as Ike Mazzard
• Carol Eve Rossen as Dr. Fancher
• Robert Fields as Raymond Chandler
• Remak Ramsay as Mr. Atkinson
• Patrick O'Neal as Dale Coba

Cast notes

• "Brat Pack" actress Mary Stuart Masterson made her film debut here as one of Joanna's children. Masterson is the daughter of Peter Masterson.
• Nanette Newman is the widow of the late director Bryan Forbes.
• Dee Wallace, later known for her role in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, appears as Charmaine's maid. Franklin Cover, of the situation comedy The Jeffersons also appears in a supporting role.
• Tina Louise originated the role of "Ginger Grant" on the situation comedy Gilligan's Island. When the actress declined to appear in later incarnations, she was replaced by actress Judith Baldwin, who had a role as one of the minor wives. Baldwin also appeared in a small role in the telesequel The Stepford Children.
• ===Casting===

Bryan Forbes met with Diane Keaton about playing the lead role, but she turned it down.Good call. When he asked why, she said her analyst did not like the script.

Initially, Joanna Cassidy was cast as Bobbie. When she left after a few weeks of production, her scenes were reshot. Tuesday Weld initially accepted the role of Joanna, but cancelled before filming began.

Reception

The Stepford Wives has a 67% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Some critics deride its leisurely pace. Most applaud the "quiet, domestic" thrills the film delivers in the final third and earlier sections as "clever, witty, and delightfully offbeat". As for the satire in the film, Roger Ebert wrote, "[The actresses] have absorbed enough TV, or have such an instinctive feeling for those phony, perfect women in the ads, that they manage all by themselves to bring a certain comic edge to their cooking, their cleaning, their gossiping and their living deaths."

Initial reaction to the film by feminist groups was not favorable, arguing that it was "anti-woman". Cast and crew vehemently disagree, as the men in the film are characterized as "swinish and grotesque", and the heroine is dispatched in the finale. They maintain that critics misunderstand the premise, that Stepford is a sort of chauvinistic dystopia, and that the depiction of subservient, robotic women is intended as a satirical statement against traditional gender roles. There was a TV ad campaign that fueled further the resentment, ending with the words, "See 'The Stepford Wives'.....Before your husband does."

Awards and nominations

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror films

• • Best Actress 1975 — Katherine Ross-Won
  • Best Science Fiction film 1975 — nominated

American Film Institute Films

• • AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated
  • AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Science Fiction Film

Sequels

Many sequels have been produced over the years including:

• • Revenge of the Stepford Wives (1980) Starring Don Johnson, Sharon Gless, and Julie Kavner.
  • The Stepford Children (1987) Starring Barbara Eden.
  • The Stepford Husbands (1996) Starring Donna Mills and Michael Ontkean
  • The remake The Stepford Wives (2004) Starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick

Parodies and popular culture

• • Married... with Children, season 11, episode 10, "The Stepford Peg": Peg (Katey Sagal) bumps her head on the coffee table after slipping on a candy wrapper, and becomes a stereotypical housewife thanks to Al (Ed O'Neill) implanting suggestions that she does do housework.
  • The Chronicle, season 1, episode 18: "The Stepford Cheerleaders"
  • Homeboys in Outer Space, season 1, episode 10: "A Man's Place is in the Homey, or The Stepford Guys"
  • Desperate Housewives: In Season 1, Bree Van de Kamp is said to be running for the "mayor of Stepford" because of her perfection.
  • Newhart, season 2, episode 4: "The Stratford Wives"

• • • Note: The BBC movie soundalike The Stretford Wives (2002) is not related.
  • In one episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide there were three "perfect" girls in the class, and Moze thinks they are robots.
  • In an episode of My Hero, Pierce is asked if it is possible to make the Stepford wives a reality.
  • S'Express sampled the line "yes, yes, this, it's wonderful" in their 1989 hit "Hey Music Lover".

References

• 1. ^ [. < http://www.wic.org/misc/history.htm >. "Women’s History in America"]. www.wic.com.
  2. ^ ^{a b c d e} "The Stepford Wives". www.ejumpcut.org.
  3. ^ 38d9 353 9ff4-46e5-bed7 3d997f71a8b1%40sessionmgr104&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d% 3d#d b=aph &AN=7466613>. "The Cyborg Mystique". web.ebscohost.com.libdb.njit.edu.
  4. ^ Reel.com review – deprecated link
  5. ^ Dennis Brown, Shoptalk, Newmarket Press, 1992 p 70
  6. ^ Bryan Forbes, A Divided Life, Mandarin, 1993 p27
  7. ^ Creating Horror in Connecticut Sunlight Wolf, William. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 11 Aug 1974: q30.
  8. ^ BBC review
  9. ^ Roger Ebert.com
  10. ^ DVD documentary
  11. ^ AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills Nominees
  12. ^ AFI's 10 Top 10 Ballot

External links

• • The Stepford Wives at the Internet Movie Database
  • The Stepford Wives at Rotten Tomatoes
  • The Stepford Wives at the TCM Movie Database
  • The Stepford Wives at AllRovi

|}